Steve Jobs
1955–

Chief executive officer, Apple Computer, and chief executive officer and chairman of the board, Pixar Animation Studios

Nationality: American.

Born: February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California.

Education: Attended Reed College, 1972.

Family: Adopted son of Paul (bill collector) and Clara (accountant) Jobs; married Laurene Powell; children: four.

Career: Atari, 1974, game designer; Apple Computer, 1975, co-founder; Apple Computer, 1975–1977, chairman of the board; 1977–1981, de facto chief executive officer; 1981–1984, chairman of the board; NeXT, 1985–1996, president and CEO; Pixar Animation Studios, 1986–, CEO and chairman of the board; Apple Computer, 1995–1997, consultant; 1997–2000, interim CEO; 2000–, CEO.

Awards: Technical Excellence Award and Lifetime Achievement, PC Magazine, 1997; Hall of Fame, Fortune, 2000.

Address: Apple, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California 95014; http://www.apple.com.

■ Steven Paul (Steve) Jobs was responsible for building Apple Computer twice, as well as for rescuing Pixar Animation Studios and turning it into one of the world's most successful motion picture studios. He also built NeXT, a good idea that did not catch on. He was a hands-on manager, who studied even the minutest details of his products, with the heart and eye of an artist. His insistence on high-quality, good-looking products struck a chord with many people who appreciated the beauty of Apple products, resulting in such fabulous successes as the Macintosh computer and the iPod portable music system. These successes often reshaped how consumers viewed technology and also reshaped the technology itself. Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates are the two people most often credited with the development of the mass-market personal computer, perhaps decades before it might otherwise have evolved.

ROUGH BEGINNING

Jobs was adopted in February 1955 by Paul and Clara Jobs, who were indulgent parents. They were so focused on their son's needs that they even moved from Mountain View, California, to Los Altos, California, in 1968, to put Jobs in a new school because he said that he could not get along with the children in his old school. (One account says that he told his parents that he was not learning anything at his old school.) He was an odd student, out of step with both classmates and teachers, with a mind that looked at science from unusual angles. He preferred to spend his time with older students rather than ones his own age, including Stephen Wozniak, an electronics genius four years older than Jobs.

Jobs worked during the summers, spending one summer in an apple orchard; he was so happy there that he later named his first legitimate business "Apple." Even in grade school he had shown a great aptitude for electronics, and he had been fortunate to have an engineer for a neighbor, who answered his many questions about how electronic devices worked. While he was in high school, he built electronic devices. Once, he wanted for his projects some rare parts made by Hewlett-Packard; he wrote to William Hewlett, cofounder of Hewlett-Packard, and asked for the parts to be sent to him. Hewlett responded by giving Jobs a summer job in a Hewlett-Packard factory. Wozniak already worked there as an up-and-coming engineer.

In 1972 Jobs attended Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, dropping out after one semester. He hung around the school for about a year longer, before submitting a résumé that greatly inflated his electronics experience to Atari, a pioneer in video gaming. For part of 1974 he worked as a game designer, helping create Breakout. After saving up enough money to pay his way, he left Atari and journeyed with friends to India to search for enlightenment. He shaved his head and walked through what he saw to be appalling poverty. He soon left India believing that Thomas Edison had done more for the betterment of humanity than all the gurus in the world. Jobs lived briefly in a farm commune and then returned to his parents' home. In 1975 he joined the Homebrew computer club, which included Wozniak among its members. Wozniak had discovered that a toy in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes made the same tones that telephone companies used for long-distance switching. Soon, with Jobs's help, he was making small blue boxes that could be used with telephones to circumvent the safeguards of telephone companies and make free long-distance calls. It was Jobs who turned this into a business venture by selling the boxes to college students.

APPLE II

Wozniak was an electronics enthusiast. He enjoyed making gadgets and then sharing his inventions with anyone who was interested, without concern for patents or profit. It was Jobs who soon saw the potential marketability of Wozniak's circuit board combined with the microprocessor chips. In 1975 he and Wozniak became partners, and Jobs gave their enterprise the name "Apple." They designed their simple computer in Jobs's bedroom. When more space was needed, Jobs's father cleared out his home's garage, where Jobs and Wozniak cobbled together their combination of a circuit board, a microprocessor, a video screen, and Jobs's most important contribution, a typewriter-style keyboard. The inventors called it the Apple I.

Jobs had already discovered a local electronics store owner who wanted 50 personal computers to sell to college students, who were the bulk of electronics enthusiasts. Jobs and Wozniak gave the Apple I the whimsical price of $666.66 and ended up selling more than 600 of them, making $774,000. The Apple I was a hobbyist's machine, a clumsy-looking beast of wires and boards that invited tinkering. The partners wanted to build something more sophisticated and easier to use—making technology easier to use would become essential to Jobs's views for building his companies. In 1977 the former Intel executive Mike Markkula, a venture capitalist, invested in Apple, becoming its chairman of the board and bringing in outsiders to help govern the company. Jobs persuaded a successful publicist, Regis McKenna, to join Apple. That year the Apple II was introduced. It took only about four hours for a purchaser to set it up and have it running, and it could run some business programs, reducing to minutes from hours certain accounting tasks. With a canny sales campaign created by McKenna, and Jobs's own magnetic personality helping persuade corporate buyers, the Apple II became the first successful mass-market personal computer.

Jobs had to have been a concern for McKenna: Jobs had long hair and a scruffy beard, and he usually wore jeans when meeting the conservatively dressed businessmen who had the power to order dozens of Apple IIs at a time. But Jobs was charismatic. When he spoke of what his machines could do and of the future the machines would shape, he created what came to be known as his "reality distortion field." His power to persuade was remarkable, and he often had potential customers vying for his attention. He was soon perceived to be a visionary genius who foresaw how to marry high-technology electronics and everyday business.

CHANGING THE WORLD

The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, known as PARC, attracted some of the best engineers in the world. It was a secretive place, but after years of trying, in 1979 Jobs was allowed to visit PARC with a few of his Apple colleagues. Legend has it that he saw Xerox's graphical interface, featuring drop-down menus and pictures that could be clicked on with arrows to start programs, and he was gripped by the potential marketability to which Xerox's employees seemed oblivious. The truth is more complex: The interface at Xerox was one of several that various computer developers had been toying with for several years, and Jobs was already very familiar with them. What he may have picked up from PARC was the utility of a little handheld device called a "mouse."

In December 1980 Apple had its initial public offering of stock, becoming Apple Computer. Shares opened at $22 but rose to $29, making Apple's value $1.2 billion. Jobs was the company's leading shareholder, with 15 percent of the stock. His shares were soon worth $239 million. In 1980 the Apple III was introduced, but the first 14,000 units were recalled be cause of defects. The Apple II remained the machine preferred by customers. In 1981 IBM introduced a personal computer. Whereas Apple made all of its machines proprietary, not allowing anyone to even license the technology, IBM made its machine an open architecture, meaning that outsiders were welcome to write programs for it and to build their own variations of it.

Jobs set about waging war for personal computer supremacy. A striking feature of his work over the next five years was that he had no official corporate authority; he ruled by force of personality, making numerous enemies with his ridiculing of the ideas of others, his unwillingness to hear views contrary to his own, and his outbursts of bad temper. In 1982 he hired the executive John Sculley away from PepsiCo to become CEO of Apple. In 1982 Apple for the first time grossed $1 billion.

In 1983 the Lisa computer was introduced. It had a 32-bit microprocessor as well as an inexpensive mouse. Jobs had worked on Lisa obsessively, demanding that it be easy to use, attractive to look at, and more powerful than any other personal computer. In the process, he pushed Lisa's costs too high; the machine was too expensive and flopped. Still, Jobs and Sculley already had put Apple to work developing a machine that would be called the Macintosh. It would use much of Lisa's internal architecture, but it would be simpler. In 1984 the machine debuted with a spectacular television commercial during the Super Bowl, showing a gallant woman athlete defying a monolithic, oppressive government by hurling her hammer into a screen that represented, without actually saying so, IBM. The first Macintosh was small and beige, featuring the style of graphical interface that would become the world's standard. It sold for $2,495 and was a hit.

Jobs was great recruiter of talent, but he tended to belittle and mock employees after he recruited them; Sculley, for one, had had enough of Jobs's bizarre behavior. He persuaded the board of directors to make Jobs chairman of the board but without any authority over anything. Too many of his colleagues avoided him, and Jobs found himself with no work to do. In 1985 he quit Apple and sold all but one share of his Apple stock, losing about $500 million by selling shares when the stock was low but still leaving with about $250 million.

NEXT

In 1986 Jobs founded NeXT in Redwood City, California, investing $15 million of his own money to start the company. He discovered that he was held in high regard by most of the high-technology businesses in California's Silicon Valley, and his charisma was still magical. After seeing Jobs in a PBS documentary, the billionaire H. Ross Perot offered to help fund NeXT. Major businesses soon followed. In a couple of years, Jobs had raised over $250 million, mostly on his word alone.

Also in 1986 Jobs bought a computer animation studio from the motion picture magnate George Lucas, saving it from dissolution. Named Pixar Animation Studios, the newly independent company found in Jobs a CEO and chairman of the board who understood the creative process very well and who could combine his artistic nature with a sound understanding of computers. Further, Jobs financed the company himself and gave his new employees freedom to explore what they could do. It was part of Jobs's evolving vision of computers: he became an advocate of the technology as enhancing creativity, telling people that computers were not important but that what could be done with them was important. By 1988 Pixar had done well enough to win an Oscar for its computeranimated short film Tin Toy.

In October 1989 the NeXT computer was introduced. It was beautiful, with careful attention paid to the looks of every detail inside and out. To meet FCC rules on electronic interference, Jobs had the entire case made of magnesium poured into a single mold and then carefully sanded to remove sharp edges. The magnesium was good at containing electronic emissions and was strong, but it was hard to work with and drove manufacturing costs up. Repeatedly, Jobs had made workers redo work, trying to incorporate great power into NeXT while making it easy to use. It cost $9,950, too much for the mass market that might have appreciated it best. From 1989 to 1992 only 50,000 were sold.

In 1989 Jobs gave a lecture at Stanford University. While there, he met Laurene Powell, an MBA student. In 1991 they married, and they would have three children over the next dozen years. In May 1991 Jobs negotiated a contract with Walt Disney Pictures, under the terms of which Disney would pay for half the production costs of three computer-animated feature films and would receive half the income plus distribution fees for each motion picture. Pixar began work on Toy Story.

By 1993 NeXT was doing badly. Jobs was harshly criticized for supposedly wasting money and for bad management, even though those who worked for NeXT still believed that he knew what he was doing. He had spent much of his career defying criticism and insisting that he knew better than anyone else which choices were the best, but in February 1993, he closed NeXT's Fremont factory, laid off half of NeXT's employees, and stopped making computers, focusing instead on software. NeXT's computer had dazzled with its programming, and Jobs put the company's future in the open programming of Unix and the object-based programming of NeXT, which made programming simple enough that consumers could write their own programs to work with NeXT. In 1994 Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems contracted with NeXT to put NeXT operating software in their workstations.

TRIUMPHANT RETURN

Meanwhile, Apple was ailing. In 1993 Apple's share of the personal computer market was 8 percent; it had fallen to the status of an also-ran, becoming almost irrelevant to the future of computers. Sculley was fired and replaced by Michael Spindler as CEO. In 1995 Spindler left Apple and was replaced by Gilbert F. Amelio, who also became chairman of the board. Amelio found a company in disarray; the corporate culture was one of indifference and depression. When he would call meetings, people would not show up; his orders were ignored; and employees refused to cooperate with each other. Apple's share of the market had fallen to 5.3 percent. It may have been desperation or exasperation that led Amelio to ask Jobs to join the board of directors and become a consultant to management.

The year 1995 was good for Jobs. For the first time, NeXT turned a profit. He and his antagonist Bill Gates contracted for NeXT and Microsoft to collaborate on the designing of object-oriented software for Windows NT. On November 22, 1995, Toy Story was released to acclaim; by then Jobs had invested $60 million in Pixar. In its first release, Toy Story grossed $360 million worldwide. On November 29, 1995, Pixar had its initial public offering. Shares were offered at $22 but rose to $39. Jobs owned 80 million shares and had become a billionaire. In December 1995 Apple bought NeXT for $400 million.

By 1996 Apple's sales were in free fall. That year it shipped 3.7 million computers, for a 5.2 percent market share; in 1997 it was 2.6 million units for a 3.2 percent share. In 1997 Jobs was named "interim" CEO, at a salary of $1 per year, and Amelio left Apple. Jobs dropped the NeXT operating system that Apple had purchased. On August 6, 1997, Apple and Microsoft announced that Microsoft would invest $150 million for a minority stake in Apple. Many in the audience at the MacWorld convention in Boston booed the announcement. Although he was still certain that his vision for Apple was the only right one, Jobs's management style had radically changed from what it had been in 1985; he seemed more relaxed and open to ideas. In fact, he seemed to relish other people's ideas; perhaps his work at Pixar had improved his ability to work with the creative people at Apple. He wisely surrounded himself with top-notch executives in all the key corporate positions, and he held on to them rather than driving them away. Almost by willing it, he transformed the corporate culture into one in which employees wanted to come to work and where they saw themselves as part of a great company that had a mission to change the world for the better. Moreover, Jobs, the hobbyist of old, brought the fun back into tinkering with electronics.

In August 1998 one of Jobs's big risks, the iMac was released. It was sleek, with elegant lines, and the "i" was for "Internet"—that is, it was designed to work well with the Internet. Selling 278,000 units in its first six weeks, the iMac at first did not seem to be enough to pull Apple out of the doldrums, but then it took off, selling six million units and making Apple an important player in computers again. In 1999 Jobs had the iMac released in a choice of several colors, which proved popular. In January 2000 he was made CEO without the "interim" addition to the title. In March 2000 Apple shares peaked at $75 each. Apple grossed $7.98 billion and netted $786 million for fiscal 2000.

In 2001 Jobs began opening a chain of Apple retail stores, where customers could try out the computers, making multimedia shows and playing with the software, with unobtrusive salespeople ready to help, if asked. It was a big risk, but the idea was that if people had the opportunity to use Apple's goods, they would find them worth a higher price than competing brands. In 2003 the stores began turning a profit. Another event in 2001 launched Apple into a broader world of consumer electronics: in October, Apple introduced the iPod. So shiny and attractive that owners delighted in showing it off, it downloaded and played thousands of MP3 files, at first only from Apple computers but, in a year, from IBM compatibles as well. The iPod was pricey at $399 and a risk, but Apple had a cash reserve of $4.1 billion to fall back on, up from $280 million at the time Jobs had returned to the company. Even so, Apple shares dropped to about $25 for 2001.

In what may have been the most brilliant salesmanship of his career, Jobs persuaded every major record company to sell Apple the rights to market their songs on the Internet, even though the companies were suspicious of the Internet, viewing it as a haven for thieves of their music. In April 2003 Apple opened the online store iTunes, at first only for Macintoshes but soon for Windows operating system computers as well. At 99 cents per song, with 65 cents going to the music companies, 25 cents to overhead, and only 10 cents to Apple, iTunes seemed fated to lose money. But as Jobs pointed out, the idea was to sell iPods, which could download music from iTunes. By 2004 iPod was the world's dominant portable music player, with iTunes owning 70 percent of the market of downloaded music.

See also entries on Apple Computer, Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios in International Directory of Company Histories.

sources for further information

Landrum, Gene N., "Steven Jobs (Apple)–Autocratic," Profiles of Genius: Thirteen Men Who Changed the World. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1993.

Langer, Andy, "The God of Music? If Apple's Brash and Bold New Digital-Music Venture Works, That's Pretty Much What He'll Be: A Conversation with Steve Jobs," Esquire, July 2003, pp. 82–85.

Quittner, Josh, "Steve Jobs: The Fountain of Fresh Ideas," Time, April 26, 2004, p. 75.

Stross, Randall E., Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing. New York: Atheneum, 1993.

—Kirk H. Beetz

Jobs, Steve

February 24, 1955 • California

CEO of Apple, CEO and chairman of Pixar Animation Studios

Computers had been around long before Steve Jobs entered the field, but his contributions revolutionized the personal-computer industry. As the cofounder of Apple in 1976, Jobs introduced the concept of a small, relatively inexpensive desktop computer that the average person could own and operate. Since that time, Jobs has presided over a number of technological innovations with Apple. He has also made an impact in the field of animated movies as the head of Pixar, the studio responsible for such blockbusters as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo. Jobs headed up yet another innovative success story with Apple's online music shop, iTunes, and with its portable digital music player, iPod. Jobs has a reputation for being intimidating to employees and difficult with peers, but he is also seen as a visionary who dreams big and enjoys taking risks. While not all of his risks have paid off, those that have succeeded have significantly altered the high-tech landscape and paved the way for future advances.

Searching for meaning

Steven Paul Jobs was born in California on February 24, 1955. His parents, unmarried and unable to care for a baby, put him up for adoption. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, who raised him in a northern California community surrounded by apricot orchards and farm country—a community that has since become the center of technological innovation known as Silicon Valley. When Jobs was in the seventh grade, he encountered troubles at school, the victim of bullies. He refused to return to that school, and his parents decided to move to Los Altos. Jobs attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, where he had a reputation as a loner and developed a keen interest in technology. During a school field trip to the plant of the Hewlett-Packard computer company in nearby Palo Alto, the concept of a desktop computer attracted Jobs's notice. Later, in pursuit of computer parts for a school project, Jobs went straight to the source, contacting William Hewlett, cofounder of Hewlett-Packard. Jobs got more than just the needed parts; he was also offered a summer job at the company.

"I think Apple has had a good hand in setting the direction for the whole industry now, again. And that's where we like to be."

During his internship at Hewlett-Packard, Jobs met Steve Wozniak (1950–), an electronics whiz who had attended Homestead High School a few years prior. They formed an immediate bond and soon began collaborating on various projects, including a device that would allow users to make free long-distance phone calls. Wozniak supplied the technological know-how, while Jobs dreamed up ways for consumers to use the products they developed. These roles would remain the same years later, when the two men became reacquainted for a new venture. In the meantime, Jobs graduated from high school in 1972 and then enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He dropped out after one semester, but he continued to spend time on campus, searching for life's meaning: he studied philosophy and meditation, experimented with drugs, and became a vegetarian.

Apple bites back

Jobs returned to California in 1974, restless and looking for work. He answered a help-wanted ad in the newspaper and was hired to work for Atari, a video-game manufacturer that had risen to prominence with Pong, a game that today looks extremely primitive but at the time seemed quite high-tech. According to a profile in Time magazine, Jobs's intense personality made him few friends at Atari. "His mind kept going a mile a minute," reported Al Alcorn, the chief engineer at Atari. "The engineers in the lab didn't like him. They thought he was arrogant and brash. Finally, we made an agreement that he come to work late at night." After a short time at Atari, Jobs left to take a trip to India, continuing his quest for spiritual fulfillment. After his return to the United States, Jobs traveled for a time and then got involved with the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975. At meetings for this club, computer enthusiasts would gather to share information and technology. Jobs's friend from Hewlett-Packard, Steve Wozniak, was a member of the club, and in 1975 Wozniak was still working at Hewlett-Packard and trying to build a computer in his spare time.

Jobs, excited by the prospect of building and selling reasonably priced personal computers, teamed up with Wozniak. While Jobs had a decent grasp on the technology, it was Wozniak who brought the brilliant engineering skills to the partnership. Jobs, on the other hand, was the entrepreneur, the person who understood what they would need to get their business off the ground, how the products would be used, and how to market the products to the public. Jobs and Wozniak formed a company, which Jobs named (he told Jay Cocks of Time: "One day I just told everyone that unless they came up with a better name by 5 p.m., we would go with Apple"), and they released their first product, the Apple I, for the price of $666. At that time, few people outside of computer hobbyists felt the need to own a desktop computer, but Jobs set out to change that. In 1977 Apple released the Apple II computer, which was a huge success and established the model for personal computers that all other companies attempted to imitate. Three years later, Apple's sales reached $139 million. The company then went public, selling shares to those who wished to invest in Apple.

The Man behind the Man: Edwin Catmull

While Edwin Catmull's name may not be as familiar to the average citizen as Steve Jobs's name, his contributions to Pixar have been unparalleled. "Put simply, computer animation and films like Toy Story would have never have happened without Ed Catmull," Jobs told Laura Ackley of Variety. As president and cofounder of Pixar, Catmull provides exceptional leadership, hiring talented people to work for him and continually striving to keep his employees productive and happy. He has also made tremendous technological contributions to the company, developing new and better ways to create computer-animated films. Catmull has received numerous awards, including three Scientific and Technical Engineering Academy Awards, for his work at Pixar.

Born in 1945, Catmull grew up in Utah. His love for animated movies as a child instilled in him a desire to become an animator, but he felt he lacked the drawing skills and instead studied physics and computer science in college. While pursuing a graduate degree (he has a Ph.D. in computer science), Catmull became interested in the relatively new field of computer graphics, a subject that allowed him to merge his interest in computers with his love for art. He was determined to use this new tool to make movies. During this time, in the early 1970s, Catmull made several technological innovations, including the invention of an animation technique called texture mapping, which allows for a more realistic depiction of an object's texture, whether the object is moving or standing still.

In 1974 Catmull moved to New York to work for Alexander Schure, a wealthy supporter of technological advancements whose passion for making computeranimated movies equaled Catmull's. After several years, Catmull decided to move to California and go to work for the computer-graphics division of Lucas-film, the company owned by George Lucas, who was then at work creating the first Star Wars trilogy. At Lucasfilm, Catmull continued to develop new technology to improve computer animation, and he established his reputation for hiring the right people. In spite of the great strides made by Catmull's division, Lucas decided in 1985 that he wanted to sell that segment of his company, and he instructed Catmull to start looking for a buyer. Catmull approached Steve Jobs, who expressed an interest in the division only as a potentially new computer company, not as a movie studio. Disappointed, Catmull kept looking for a buyer who had the same goal he had: to make the first feature film animated completely on the computer.

One year later, Jobs reconsidered and decided to buy Lucasfilm's computer-graphics division. Jobs named the company Pixar after a device invented by Catmull and George Smith, another computergraphics pioneer from Lucasfilm; the Pixar made great strides in increasing the speed of the animation process. Jobs appointed Catmull chief technological officer of Pixar, a position he held until 2001, when he was made president. As a top executive at Pixar, Catmull spent several years presiding over the effort to make the company's (and the world's) first feature-length computer-animated movie. That film, Toy Story, was released in 1995, and while it boasted great technical achievements, audiences connected with the warm, funny story and fully developed characters. The movie was a huge success, paving the way for Pixar's future efforts, each of which boasted more sophisticated technology than the last—and much of that technological development sprang from the mind of Catmull.

In 1979 Jobs oversaw the development of a radically new kind of personal computer, one that required little experience with computers and was the first to incorporate a mouse. Called the Lisa (Local Integrated Systems Architecture), the computer sold for $10,000 when released in 1983, a price that put it out of reach for most consumers. The development of the Lisa did lead to Apple's next great innovation, however—a computer that was not only affordable but also easy to use, a critical factor at a time when most people considered computers intimidating and foreign. The Macintosh, released in 1984, brought personal computing to the masses, with its easily understood graphics and point-and-click mouse. Rather than typing in complicated commands, users could simply click on an icon, or picture, on the screen. Jobs's obsession with developing the product, however, had caused problems at Apple. Many years and much of the company's money had been spent on the product's development, causing many at Apple to wonder whether Jobs had lost sight of the big picture. When Macintosh's initial sales were lower than expected, Jobs was pushed to resign by the company's president and CEO, John Sculley. In 1985 both Jobs and Wozniak left the company they had founded.

To infinity and beyond

While his departing deal with Apple included millions of dollars in severance pay, Jobs, thirty years old at the time, did not consider taking any sort of extended vacation from the high-tech industry. He formed the NeXT Computer Company, releasing his first product in 1988. While the NeXT computer had a number of desirable features—including fast processing speeds and sophisticated graphics and sound—it did not sell well due to its high price and an inability to network with other computers. Jobs then turned his attention to developing new software and improving operating systems, the programs that run all other programs on a computer. During this period, in 1991, Jobs married Laurene Powell; the couple has three children.

In 1986 Jobs bought the computer graphics division of the movie studio Lucasfilm Ltd., which had been formed by George Lucas (1944–), the multitalented filmmaker behind the Star Wars movies. With this new company, renamed Pixar Animation Studios, Jobs set out to create a major animated-movie studio. Pixar began by making commercials and short animated films, many of which won prestigious awards. The animation industry quickly understood that this new kid on the block was doing something quite different and doing it exceptionally well. In 1991 Pixar signed a deal with Disney to develop and distribute feature-length animated movies. Four years later Pixar released its debut film, Toy Story, the first movie to be completely computer animated. A huge success, Toy Story earned more than any other movie that year and came to be one of the most successful animated movies in history. It earned several Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. At that point, looking to concentrate on Pixar, Jobs sold NeXT to his former company, Apple, for $400 million.

The subsequent Pixar animated movies—A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo —continued in the Toy Story vein, hitting it big at the box office and earning the adoration of fans. Toy Story 2 earned the distinction of being the only animated sequel in history to earn more than the original, and it won a Golden Globe Award for Best Picture—Musical or Comedy. Released in 2003, Finding Nemo broke box-office records, earned an Academy Award for Best Animated Film, and sold an astonishing eight million copies on the first day of the DVD release.

During 2003, Jobs and Michael Eisner (1942–), CEO of Disney, began negotiating for a new contract between Disney and Pixar. Ten months later, in early 2004, the two companies ended their negotiations without an agreement and announced the upcoming end to their partnership, which would dissolve after the 2004 release of The Incredibles and the 2005 release of Cars. Jobs had demanded a greater percentage of the films' earnings (under the previous contract, the two companies evenly split the cost of making the films and then divided revenues in half, with Disney getting an additional fee for distributing the movies). Disney refused, and Pixar began its search for a new distribution partner. Taking into account the multibillion-dollar earnings of Pixar's first five films, a number of major studios put in hasty calls to Steve Jobs to talk about a partnership. As Andrew Simons wrote in the Los Angeles Business Journal, "Everyone wants to take Steve Jobs to the big dance."

Coming full circle

When Apple began to struggle in the mid-1990s, Jobs agreed to act as a consultant, offering advice on turning the company around. In 1997 he was named Apple's interim CEO—a position intended to be temporary until a permanent CEO was found. Three years later, a permanent CEO was named: Steve Jobs. After returning to the helm at Apple, Jobs made a number of decisive moves that immediately improved the company's fortunes. He simplified the product line, introduced a new version of the Apple operating system, and entered into a cooperative agreement with Microsoft. In 1998 Jobs introduced the iMac. This computer offered sufficiently powerful processors and an affordable price tag, but the key to its success may have been the PC's streamlined design and array of bright colors. Upon Jobs's return to Apple, the company pioneered a wireless technology called Air-Port, which enables users to surf the Internet and print without having anything plugged into their computers. A number of new products followed, some of which, like the iBook and PowerMac, were extremely successful, and some of which were not—including the G4 Cube, which sported a slick design but an out-of-reach price.

Jobs's endless quest for technological innovation soon led him to tackle the digital music industry. In 2001 Apple launched a sleek new handheld product, a portable digital music player called the iPod. Comparable to MP3 players introduced by other companies, the iPod allowed users to download music from CDs or from online sites. Thanks in part to a memorable advertising campaign and good word-of-mouth, Apple sold three million iPods in less than three years. By 2004, almost half of the digital music players bought by consumers were iPods.

Apple's next move, in 2003, was to open an online music store. The music industry had been in a sales slump, with many concerned that such free file-sharing services as Napster, which allowed users to download songs without paying a penny, would spell doom for CD sales. Soon after legal battles complicated the practice of downloading music for free, Jobs opened the iTunes Music Store. Others had attempted online music sales with little success, failing either because they offered a poor selection or because users rejected the notion of paying a monthly subscription fee to download songs. Jobs's iTunes offered simplicity: with the blessing of the world's major record labels, customers could download any of the two hundred thousand songs for just ninety-nine cents each. Users could then create their own CDs with the downloaded songs or transfer them to a portable digital music player, to take with them wherever they go. While iTunes did not live up to Jobs's high expectations of one hundred million downloads in the first year, it did perform astonishingly well. In the first week, one million songs were downloaded, with the total exceeding fifty million after one year. Many observers cautioned that Apple would have to continue to approach online music sales in a creative and aggressive way: while Apple was an early innovator, a number of major players, including Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and some record labels, soon followed suit, offering stiff competition to iTunes.

Many industry observers have noted that, for all its innovation and creativity, Apple has never become a powerhouse in terms of sales. Apple commands just a small percentage of the personal-computer market and earns a tiny fraction of the revenues of its primary software competitor, Microsoft. Jobs shrugs off such details, however, suggesting that it's more important to him to continually create new, original, high-quality products than to become the leader in PC sales. In an interview for Macworld on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Macintosh, Jobs summarized his point of view: "Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes's or Porsche's [is] in the automotive market. What's wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?"

For More Information

Periodicals

Ackley, Laura A. "Pixar's Deep Talent Pool Lured by Catmull's Vision." Variety (July 20, 1998): p. 32.

Burrows, Peter. "Pixar's Unsung Hero." Business Week (June 30, 2003): p. 68.

Burrows, Peter. "Rock On, iPod." Business Week (June 7, 2004): p. 130.

Cocks, Jay. "The Updated Book of Jobs." Time (January 3, 1983): p. 25.

Hawn, Carleen. "If He's So Smart.... Steve Jobs, Apple, and the Limits of Innovation." Fast Company (January 2004): p. 68.

Quittner, Josh. "Steve Jobs: The Fountain of Fresh Ideas." Time (April 26, 2004): p. 75.

Simons, Andrew. "Studios Anxiously Jockey to Court Pixar As Jobs Patiently Revels in New Control." Los Angeles Business Journal (April 26, 2004): p. 1.

Snell, Jason. "Steve Jobs on the Mac's Twentieth Anniversary." Macworld (February 2004).

Web Sites

Apple. http://www.apple.com (accessed August 1, 2004).

Pixar. http://www.pixar.com (accessed August 1, 2004).

Jobs, Steve

(1955-)
Apple Computer; Pixar

Overview

Maverick computer innovator Steven Jobs, along with his friend and partner, Steve Wozniak, is considered to be the one of the central figures in the development of the personal computer. Jobs and Wozniak formed the Apple Computer Company in the late 1970s, pioneering the design and development of desktop computers for the general public. The creation of the Macintosh computer in the mid–1980s ushered in a new era of tremendously widespread user–friendly machines. After being ousted from Apple, Jobs went on to form the NeXT Computer Company. He also bought Pixar Animation Studios, where Toy Story, the first wholly computer generated and animated film, was created. In the late 1990s, Jobs returned to Apple and oversaw its regeneration with the iMac products.

Personal Life

Jobs was born in 1955 and was placed for adoption by his unwed parents shortly after his birth. Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, California, became his adoptive parents. The elder Jobs was a machinist who worked on lasers, and his wife was an accountant.

Jobs and his parents moved to Los Altos, California, before he entered high school. A statement the preteen Jobs made to his parents allegedly precipitated the move: He said that he wouldn't return to school in Mountain View, so his parents decided to move. While a high school student, Jobs showed a special interest in technology. He once went so far as to contact William Hewlett, the president of Hewlett Packard, for some parts he needed for an electronics project. Jobs not only obtained the parts, he was also offered a summer job at Hewlett Packard.

Jobs graduated from high school in 1972 and attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, for just one semester before dropping out. In 1974, he went to work for Atari Incorporated as a video game designer. After saving some money from his stint at Atari, Jobs was able to embark on a spiritual sojourn to the Indian subcontinent during the summer of 1974. While in India, Jobs sought to immerse himself in the Eastern way of life. A bout with dysentery in the autumn of 1974 cut his trip short, and Jobs moved back to California and into a commune.

When he was 23 years old, Jobs had a relationship that resulted in the birth of his daughter, Lisa. He reportedly dated folk singer Joan Baez for a time during his twenties. Jobs met Laurene Powell while on a lecture trip to Stanford University; the two married in 1991. Along with daughter Lisa, Jobs and his wife have three children; they live in Palo Alto, California.

By 1975 Jobs started to get involved with the Homebrew Computer Club, which was headed by Steve Wozniak, an acquaintance of his from Hewlett Packard. Wozniak was starting to develop what would become the prototype for the Apple Computer series. Jobs persuaded him to market his designs and prototypes, and the two of them began, in earnest, to develop what would ultimately become the first Apple Computer.

Career Details

Jobs and Wozniak worked on the Apple I in Jobs' parents' garage, and by 1976 they offered models for sale. The most innovative feature of the $700 machine was its single board read–only memory (ROM), which instructed the computer to load and read other programs from outside sources.

The development and sale of the Apple II, which retained the unique features of its predecessor in an updated format, began in 1977. Jobs then got in touch with Mike Makkula, the former marketing manager at Intel, and brought him to Apple as the chairman. Jobs began to encourage independent programmers to create software for the Apple II, and soon over 16,000 programs were available, ranging from business management tools to video games.

First–year sales for Apple were almost $3 million. Impressive as that was, it paled in comparison to the figures reached by the beginning of the 1980s. By 1980, sales had ballooned to $200 million, and the phenomenal success of Apple helped to usher in the revolutionary personal computer era.

Throughout the 1980s, Apple was forced to continually update its systems to stay ahead of the competition. Jobs and Apple faltered a bit with the release of the Apple III in 1980. The model was riddled with technical and marketing problems and, as a result, sold poorly. However, sales picked up after the bugs were fixed. Nonetheless, the executive organization was restructured; Makkula became president, and Jobs became chairman. Apple went public in 1980, and the company's market value rose to $1.2 billion.

In 1983 Jobs pitched a model he named "Lisa" as the computer for business people who had limited computer expertise. Lisa did not sell well due to its high price and the increased competition from IBM who, by 1983, had gained half of Apple's market share. In the same year, Jobs lured PepsiCo president John Sculley to Apple as the new president and CEO.

In 1984 Apple released the Macintosh computer. Envisioned as the computer that would revitalize not only Apple but the computer industry as well, the Macintosh floundered at first. The initial downfall of the Macintosh in business circles was its lack of a letter–quality printer and a hard drive. The less–than–stellar sales of the Macintosh were instrumental in bringing about Jobs' forced resignation from Apple in 1985. Essentially, Jobs lost a boardroom powerstruggle with Sculley and resigned with $150 million in severance.

Jobs, who still remained chairman of the Apple board of directors, then formed the NeXT Computer Company. The NeXT computer, introduced in 1988, boasted a number of innovations, including extremely quick processing speeds, a superb graphics and sound system, and an optical disk drive. Despite all of these innovations, however, sales of the NeXT computer fell flat due to its steep price, black and white screen, and inability to network. Not to be deterred, Jobs pressed on with NeXT, changing the focus from hardware to software. NeXT eventually gained some prestige by helping to facilitate the establishment of the World Wide Web in the 1990s.

In 1986, Jobs acquired Pixar Animation Studios for $10 million from filmmaker George Lucas. Jobs poured large amounts of his own money into Pixar to develop and establish it as a premiere movie studio. His $50 million investment in Pixar paid off when the first wholly computer–animated film Toy Story, released by Walt Disney Pictures, was a certified smash hit when it opened in 1995. By 2000 Toy Story had become the second highest domestic grossing animated feature in history. A Bug's Life, released in 1998 and using even more sophisticated technology, was the highest grossing animated film of the year. Likewise, the sequel, Toy Story 2, which won a Golden Globe award for Best Picture, Musical, or Comedy, was the highest grossing animated film of 1999. The three films combined grossed $1.2 billion worldwide. By 1999 Jobs' 73 percent share of Pixar was worth $1.1 billion.

Hoping to concentrate more fully on developing Pixar, Jobs decided to sell NeXT; Apple bought the company in 1996 for $400 million. At the time, Apple was in need of an updated operating system, and NeXT had one to offer. NeXT had also developed an association with Internet users that Apple desired as well. Apple, which by then had lost about a third of its market share and was struggling to keep afloat, also acquired Jobs as a non–salaried, part–time consultant to Apple's CEO Gilbert Amelio.

The renewed relationship shifted into high gear in 1997 when Jobs agreed to take over as interim CEO of the troubled company after the board of directors ousted Amelio. Jobs implemented the eighth version of the Macintosh operating system, developed a dialogue with Microsoft, and eliminated Apple's clone licensing program. Jobs' leadership proved successful. In less than two years, he had pared Apple's confusing product line down to four basic models and introduced the innovative iMac. With its translucent case, bright color choices, and affordable price tag—just $1,199—the iMac was an astounding success. Launched in 1998, the iMac sold more than 1 million units in its first year and helped boost Apple's market share to about 6 percent. Following on the iMac's success, Jobs introduced the portable version, known as the iBook, in 1999. That year, the combined value of Apple and Pixar reached $6.3 billion.

Following Jobs' success with the iMac, and G3 and G4 PowerMacs, which addressed the needs of the publishing and multimedia markets long dominated by the Macintosh, Jobs brought out a moviemaking application, iMovie, that allowed non–experts to make their own home videos. Next came iTunes, which allowed novices to burn their own CDs. The latest offering is an application that allows users to make their own DVD discs at home. In January 2000, Jobs announced that he was taking over as the company's permanent CEO.

Jobs also remained the chairman and CEO of Pixar, which struck a deal in 1997 with Walt Disney Pictures to co–produce five animated films, sharing all associated costs and profits. Monsters, Inc., the first film under the new deal, was released November 2, 2001. The second film, Finding Nemo, is scheduled for release in 2003.

Chronology: Steve Jobs

1955: Born.

1975: Joined Homebrew Computer Club.

1976: Formed Apple Computer Company with Steve Wozniak.

1977: Unveiled Apple II computer.

1984: Introduced Macintosh computer.

1985: Resigned from Apple.

1985: Formed NeXT Computer Company.

1986: Bought Pixar Animation Studios.

1995: Pixar released the animated feature, Toy Story.

1996: Rejoined Apple as consultant to CEO.

1997: Named Apple interim CEO.

1998: Launched iMac computer.

1999: iMac sales reached 1 million; introduced iBook portable computer.

2000: Became permanent CEO of Apple Computer Company.

2001: Introduced the iPod, a 1000–song MP3 player; Pixar released Monsters, Inc. with Walt Disney Studios.

Social and Economic Impact

Jobs was one of the most important figures in the development of the personal computer industry. The Apples and Macs produced by his company were user–friendly, enabling a whole generation of office workers and home users to become comfortable with computer use. Jobs was also instrumental in engineering the joint agreement between Apple and its great rival Microsoft. Both companies agreed to cooperate on selected marketing and technological issues of mutual interest, which helped to simplify choices for consumers.

Jobs' understanding of consumer preferences has been a big part of his success. By pitching his products to young, savvy audiences, he helped dispel the stereotype that computer users were socially inept "nerds." Jobs insisted on being directly involved, for instance, in Apple's "Think Different" advertising campaign, which focused on such cultural icons as Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Ghandi. And with his introduction of the immensely popular iMac, Jobs proved that consumers would respond to innovative design. "For most consumers," he said in a June 1999 Advertising Age article, "color is much more important than the megahertz, gigabytes and other gibberish associated with buying a typical PC."

This focus has served Jobs well in renewing creative energies and profitability at Apple. His leadership was "a superb example of what can happen when a CEO has a simple, focused vision and gets the whole company to focus on and implement that vision," commented marketing executive Allen Olivo in a June 1999 Advertising Age article. "He got everyone on the same page, at the same time and for the same goal." As Jobs himself put it in an interview in Fortune, "if [great artists like Bob Dylan and Picasso] keep on risking failure, they're still artists. . . . This Apple thing is that way for me. . . . If I try my best and fail, well, I tried my best."

As the PC market slowed down and many of his competitors were already lamenting the death of the PC, Job remained optimistic about its future—despite the fact that Apple's share of the PC market has fallen to 4 percent in the United States and 3 percent worldwide. (In Apple's defense, Jobs points out that no one holds more than 16 percent of the market.) In 2001 he prophesied about the coming age of the digital lifestyle, in which the computer would serve as the hub of a vast array of home appliances. "The personal computer has the power and the memory to do the things that all the devices we are beginning to use will not be able to do. The software will be the glue holding it all together," Jobs told Garry Barker of The Age.

Numerous factors are working against Jobs' pleasant predictions. First, Jobs' pet project, the G4 Cube, a more expensive Mac version just one–fourth the size of a regular PC, was a retail flop. Jobs was convinced that the $3,000 model would sell at a rate of at least 200,000 per quarter. In reality, the G4 Cube sold only 100,000 during the first quarter on the market; in the next two quarters, sales dwindled to only 29,000 and 12,000. In July 2001, Apple announced that it would scrap the model and rely on sales the more popular, less expensive regular desktop G4. The significant slowdown of the economy in 2001 also took its toll on Apple's profit. In the third quarter of 2001, Apple posted a 70 percent decline. Nonetheless, cash reserves, just $280 million in 1997, have grown to $4.1 billion under Jobs' leadership. And Jobs isn't resting on his laurels; in October 2001, Apple introduced the iPod, a pocket–sized 5–gigabyte MP3 player able to store 1000 songs and is equipped with an industry–leading 10–hour battery. Charles Haddad of BusinessWeek Online predicted, "this new handheld digital–music player will stand tall. Very tall. It's going to do for MP3 music what the original Palm Pilot did for handheld computing in the late '90s—that is, ignite demand like a match to dry twigs."

In Silicon Valley, Jobs remains widely admired, if not universally loved. He is lauded not only for his own ability but also for recognizing and hiring top quality personnel. He has a well–deserved reputation as one of the most demanding and intimidating bosses in the United States, if not the world. Stories still circulate about Apple employees being afraid to ride the elevator with their irascible boss lest they find themselves without a job when they reach their floor.

Sources of Information

Contact at: Apple Computer
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
Business Phone: (408)996–1010
URL: http://www.apple.com

Bibliography

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Steve Jobs

Born: February 24, 1955
San Francisco, California
Cofounder and CEO, Apple Computer, Inc.

Steve Jobs, cofounder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Computer, Inc., may be one of the best examples of a modern business leader willing to "think outside the box." Jobs saw the potential of the personal computer as a tool for businesses, families, and schools at a time when computers were expensive and foreign to most people. At Apple and his other businesses, NeXT and Pixar, Jobs has always looked for what he calls the next "insanely great" product.

Electrical and Spiritual Interests

Steven Paul Jobs was put up for adoption shortly after his birth in 1955. His adoptive parents were Paul and Clara Jobs of San Francisco. When Jobs was a boy his family moved from the city to Mountain View, near Palo Alto. The Jobs moved again several years later, to Los Altos. Jobs grew up in "Silicon Valley," the heart of the U.S. computer industry.

"What is Apple after all? Apple is about people who think 'outside the box,' people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get the job done."

A bright student, Jobs skipped a grade in elementary school. Shy and not very social, he developed an early interest in electronics. A neighbor encouraged Jobs to join an electronics club sponsored by Hewlett-Packard Company (see entry), one of the major corporations in Silicon Valley. At one of the meetings, Jobs saw his first computer. He was twelve years old.

Around 1970, Jobs met Steve Wozniak, who shared his interest in electronics and knew more than he did on the subject. By the time he left high school in 1972, Jobs had worked with Wozniak on several projects. By then Jobs was a "hippie," with long hair and ripped jeans. He went to Reed College in Oregon for two years then dropped out to pursue another interest—Eastern religions, particularly Zen Buddhism. He and a friend planned to travel to India, the birthplace of Buddhism more than twenty-five hundred years ago.

Before the trip, Jobs worked at Atari, a computer and video-game manufacturer based in Silicon Valley. An assignment with the company took him to Germany, and from there Jobs went on to India. After exploring Indian religions, Jobs returned to California and his job at Atari. The trip, and some later psychological therapy, seemed to change Jobs. One friend told Jeffrey S. Young, author of the Jobs biography The Journey is the Reward, "He was a lot easier to be with after that. He started to think a little more about how things he said might affect other people."

The Birth of Apple

While working at Atari, Jobs renewed his friendship with Wozniak. The two went to meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, and Wozniak began building his own computer. While Wozniak and most of the other club members saw computers as a hobby, Jobs began to see their potential for business. Jobs convinced Wozniak they could build a computer that others would buy.

In April 1976, Wozniak and Jobs formed the Apple Computer Company to sell the computer Wozniak had designed. They assembled them in the Jobs family's garage. From the beginning, Wozniak's role was to improve the technology; Jobs took charge of finding money for the new company. When the second Apple computer, the Apple II, came on the market, Jobs also took the lead in convincing programmers to create software for the computer. With the Apple II, Jobs and Wozniak created the personal computer industry.

Although Wozniak designed the insides of the Apple II, Jobs played a role in how the computer looked. He insisted it come in a plastic case and look sleek sitting on a desk. He also wanted the computer to be quiet. Most computers need a fan to keep the parts cool and functioning properly. Jobs found an engineer who designed a power-supply unit that did not produce much heat and did not need a fan, creating a nearly silent machine.

Leaving Apple

Sales of the Apple II rose steadily the next few years. As Apple grew, Jobs tried to keep the atmosphere fun. Employees could wear t-shirts and the company threw many parties. Jobs, however, sometimes conflicted with top managers or anyone who questioned his decisions. He developed a reputation for having a large ego and always wanting things his way. When his ideas worked, Apple did well. When they did not, the company sometimes struggled.

One failure was the Lisa, a new computer introduced in 1983. Named for Jobs's daughter, the computer offered many new features but was overpriced. The next Apple product was the Macintosh, or "Mac." Jobs had been working with his engineers on the computer for several years. Like the Lisa, the Mac had features that made it easy to use. Unlike the Lisa, the Mac was affordable. Introduced in 1984, the Macintosh later turned out to be Apple's best seller.

When young Steve Jobs went to Germany on business, the engineers who met him did not believe that the longhaired "hippie" was really from Atari. Jobs amazed them when he solved a technical problem with a video game in just two hours.

By 1985, Jobs was chairman of Apple's board of directors. He shared control of the company with John Sculley, Apple's president and CEO. The company faced difficult times, trying to overcome early problems with the Mac, and Jobs and Sculley argued over how to turn around Apple's misfortunes. Finally, Sculley asserted his authority. He reorganized the company so that Jobs lost all his power. In September, Jobs resigned.

NeXT and Pixar

At thirty years old, Jobs was the most dynamic executive in Silicon Valley, a multimillionaire—and out of a job. He wasted no time starting a new company, NeXT, to build computers and design software. Jobs planned to target the education market, and he took several Apple employees with him to help build his new computer. Some of the money needed to start the new firm came from selling his shares in Apple. By 1986, he owned just one. That year, Jobs also bought a computer animation company, Pixar, from filmmaker George Lucas (1944-), the producer of the Star Wars films. Over the next several years, Jobs spent $40 million more on this new venture.

The Other Steve

Steve Jobs has always been the most public of Apple's two cofounders, but without Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak, the first Apple computer would not have been built. Born on August 11,1950, in San Jose, California, Wozniak designed his first computer while in sixth grade. In high school, he was president of the electronics clubs, won several awards for his creations, and worked as an intern at a local electronics company. Like jobs, Wozniak did not have many friends. Unlike his more serious partner, however, Wozniak was known as a practical joker. He once built a very realistic-looking fake bomb and put it in a friend's locker.

After high school, Wozniak worked for several electronics firms, continuing to design computers in his spare time. In 1975, he built the computer that became the Apple I, first testing it on equipment available at Hewlett-Packard Company (see entry), his employer at the time. Thanks to his partnership with Jobs and the founding of Apple, Wozniak made more money than he ever dreamed possible, but he never saw himself as a businessman. He told People in 1994, "I was meant to design computers, not hire and fire people."

In 1981, Wozniak was injured in a plane crash and took time off from Apple to recover. During his break from Apple, he went to college and sponsored two large rock concerts, the US Festivals. After he returned to work, Wozniak limited his involvement with the company and finally left in 1985. In 1992, he started a new job: teaching computers to elementary school students.

Wozniak kept his shares in Apple's stock, though he had given away a great number of shares right before the company went public in 1980. He also followed the company's progress through good and bad times. In 1996, during one of Apple's low points, he wrote in Newsweek that Apple's leaders—including him—had failed the company with some of their decisions. The biggest mistake, he wrote, was not letting other manufacturers use Apple's superior operating system. Wozniak added, "We were also naive to think that the best technology would prevail. It often doesn't."

Along with teaching, Wozniak did charitable work, giving time, money, and computer equipment to different groups. He also remained involved with new technologies. In 2001, he joined the board of directors of Danger, a company that designs wireless communication devices. The next year, Wozniak announced he was forming a new company, Wheels of Zeus (wOz) to design his own wireless products.

NeXT introduced its first computer in 1988. Housed in a black metal case, the machine looked beautiful. It also had its own operating system, better than existing ones. But NeXT could not compete with Apple and the Microsoft-based personal computers that dominated the market. In February 1993, Jobs announced that NeXT would stop selling computers to concentrate on designing software.

Jobs had better success with Pixar. Working with the Walt Disney Company (see entry), Pixar made the first full-length animation movie created totally by computers. This historic film, Toy Story, was released in 1995 and became an immediate hit. Shortly after the movie was released, Jobs appeared on Charlie Rose, an interview program on PBS. Jobs said he was "not really following the computer industry much anymore." Jobs's involvement in the industry shrank again in December 1996, when he sold NeXT to Apple.

Back to Apple

Just a few months later, Jobs was ready to return to the computer industry—as a consultant at Apple. The title did not indicate Jobs's true role, as he soon took charge again. At a convention for Mac users and programmers, Jobs received a standing ovation, a sign of the respect he had earned for his earlier successes at Apple. By some accounts, Jobs had mellowed. He was not as demanding as he had once been. But he still possessed what some journalists called the "Reality Distortion Field": his ability to make others believe even his wildest ideas were possible.

Under Jobs, Apple continued to introduce successful new products and a few that did not sell very well. His most important contribution may have been restoring a sense of enthusiasm to the Apple "family"—its employees and devoted customers. Even as the United States economy hit difficult times in 2001, Jobs was confident about the future. In January 2002 he told Time, "Victory in our industry is spelled survival. The way we're going to survive is to innovate our way out of this."

For More Information

Books

Malone, Michael S. Infinite Loop. New York: Currency, 1999.

Young, Jeffrey S. Steve jobs: The Journey is the Reward. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1988.

Periodicals

Booth, Cathy. "Steve's Job: Restart Apple." Time (August 18, 1997): p. 28.

Collins, James. "High Stakes Winners." Time (February 19, 1996): p. 42.

Kahn, Joseph P. "Steven Jobs of Apple Computer: The Missionary of Micros." Inc. (April 1984): p. 82.

Min, Janice. "Wizard of Woz." People (February 14, 1994): p. 61.

Mossberg, Walter S. "Radical New iMacs Boast Power, Features, at Competitive Prices." Wall Street Journal (January 17, 2001).

Quittner, Josh. "Apple's New Core." Time (January 14, 2002): p. 46.

Schlender, Bret. "Apple's 21st-Century Walkman." Fortune (November 12, 2001): p. 213.

Wozniak, Steve. "How We Failed Apple." Newsweek (February 19, 1996): p. 48.

Web Sites

Apple Computers, Inc. [On-line] http://www.apple.com (accessed on August 15, 2002).

"Woz.org." [On-line] http://www.woz.org (accessed on August 15, 2002).

"www.apple-history.com." [On-line] http://www.apple-history.com (accessed on August 15, 2002).

JOBS, STEVEN

As the founder and CEO of Apple Computer Co., the prolific Steve Jobs was at the very heart of the computer revolution. The early Apple computers played an integral part in opening the personal computer market. Through the years, as Jobs shifted his focus to his myriad side projects, Apple's market strength dissipated. By the 2000s, however, Jobs was back in command at Apple, and was busily positioning the company to regain its position atop the personal computer market.

EARLY LIFE, 1955-1975

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco and raised by adoptive parents, Paul and Clara Jobs. The Jobs family moved in 1961 to Mountain View, California, the heart of what would become Silicon Valley. Jobs reportedly saw his first computer when he was about 12 years old. After graduating from high school, Jobs briefly attended Reed College in Oregon. He soon dropped out of college and led an alternative lifestyle, working for a time as a video game designer at Atari to finance a trip to India.

PROFESSIONAL LIFE BEGAN IN 1975

Jobs returned to California and the family home in Los Altos in 1975. He began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with other computer professionals and hobbyists, including his friend Steve Wozniak. In 1976 Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer Co. Jobs handled most of the business aspects of the company, including marketing and sales, while Wozniak was responsible for computer and software design. They built computers in Jobs' parents' garage. Jobs and Wozniak began selling their first computer, the Apple I, in 1976. Like other computers of the time, it was too complex to be used by anyone but computer professionals.

It was the Apple II, introduced in 1977, that began the personal computer revolution. The Apple II was the first fully programmable, fully assembleddesktop computer. Designed for computer novices and general users, it was smaller than other computers and included color graphics and a built-in keyboard, speaker, power supply, and case.

In 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh, which featured a new operating system with a graphical user interface (GUI) instead of an operating system based strictly on text and text-based commands. The GUI used icons as well as text for commands and allowed users to point and click with a mouse. The first GUI was developed by Xerox Corp., but Apple was the first to apply it to a personal computer. The Macintosh was so easy to use that it came to be regarded as the first personal computer for the average person with no special computer training or knowledge.

JOBS SEPARATES FROM APPLE, 1985-1995

Jobs and Wozniak both left Apple in 1985 after Jobs hired John Sculley from PepsiCo to run the company. Jobs immediately started a new computer company, NeXT Computer Inc. At first NeXT built computers for colleges and universities. After the computers failed to become big sellers, the company turned to creating software. It developed an operating system, NextStep, which was soon overshadowed by Microsoft's Windows.

While continuing to run NeXT, Jobs became involved in another business. In 1986 he bought the special effects division of George Lucas's LucasFilm Ltd. for $10 million and renamed it Pixar. Under Jobs Pixar made workstations and software to enhance digital images. One of its notable software products was called RenderMan. It enabled computer graphic artists to add textures and color onto three-dimensional objects. One of the applications of RenderMan was to create the realistic skin and teeth on the dinosaurs in the 1993 film, Jurassic Park.

Another division of Pixar was involved in making short animated films. Although these films were designed to showcase Pixar's software, they began winning awards. The films were made under the direction of John Lasseter, who joined Pixar when it was a division of LucasFilm. In the early 1990's Lasseter and his colleagues teamed up with Walt Disney Co. to work on full-length animated feature films. Pixar developed a new way to create three-dimensional animation for use in film sequences, videos, CD-ROM games, and other applications.

Following the release of its first animated feature, Toy Story, in 1995, Pixar became financially successful. The company went public and followed up with two more hits, A Bug's Life in 1998 and Toy Story 2 in 1999. Following these successes, Jobs' share of the company was worth more than $1 billion.

JOBS RETURNED TO APPLE, 1996-2001

As Windows became the dominant operating system in the 1990s, Apple was struggling with dwindling sales and market share. In December 1996 Jobs sold NeXT to Apple for $400 million and returned to the company as a consultant. After then-CEO Gilbert Amelio was forced out by Apple's board of directors, Jobs assumed an expanded role as a key advisor to the company. Morale at the company returned to a higher level because of Jobs' new role, and the company's loyal customers looked forward to new developments.

In September 1997 Jobs was named interim CEO of Apple. At the time Apple had only about 10 percent of the personal computer market, compared to 85 percent for Windows. As interim CEO Jobs took steps to refocus the company and cut costs. He eliminated Apple's licensing program so that other manufacturers could not make computers based on the Macintosh operating system. He refocused the company's product lines to better serve the education, home, and desktop publishing segments. He cut costs by outsourcing manufacturing, cutting the number of distributors, and reducing the amount of inventory on hand.

Jobs and Microsoft head Bill Gates were able to reach an agreement whereby Microsoft agreed to settle Apple's long-standing patent-infringement lawsuit and invest $150 million in Apple. Microsoft announced that it would develop software to run on the Macintosh platform, thus giving Mac users more choices in software.

In August 1998 Apple introduced a new line of computers, the iMac, that came in different colors and featured a new, rounded shape. A bold advertising campaign featuring the slogan, "Think Different" launched the iMac and helped it become an immediate sensation. Following the introduction of the iMac, Apple's financial performance improved. As the company posted solid gains in earnings its stock rose on Wall Street, reaching an all-time high of $118 in December 1999.

In January 2000 Jobs dropped "interim" from his title and became CEO of Apple, but 2000 would prove to be a difficult year for the company. Its stock fell to a low of $13, and its new Power Mac G4 Cube was not well received and was subsequently discontinued.

RETOOLING APPLE, 2001 AND BEYOND

In January 2001 Apple announced its first quarterly loss since Jobs returned to the company. For the quarter ending December 30, 2000, Apple reported a $247 million loss from operations, due largely to the poor performance of the G4 Cube. It was the end of a disappointing year for Apple. Critics noted that Apple had anticipated strong demand for video, building DVD drives into its computers and installing its critically acclaimed video editing software. Instead, 2000 was the year in which consumers, downloading digital music files and burning their own audio CDs, wanted more audio from their computers. Apple failed to anticipate that demand and, in fact, none of its computers came with installed read/write CD drives.

Apple computers were also equipped with slower processors than Intel-powered PCs. At the end of 2000 the fastest processor in an Apple computer was the 500-megahertz G4 chip in Macs for the professional market. By contrast, Intel-based chips were up to 1.5 gigahertz, three times the size of Apple's largest processor.

To retool the company and focus on innovation, Jobs directed several initiatives at Apple in the first half of 2001. He announced plans to open up to 25 retail stores by the end of the year, starting with outlets in Glendale, California, and Tysons Corner, Virginia. To lead Apple's retail team, Jobs recruited former Target Corp. merchandising executive Ron Johnson, who designed a 4,500-foot open space divided into subsections that focused more on what people do with their computers than the computers themselves. Apple expected the stores to become profitable by fiscal 2002.

Apple also introduced version 10.1 of its OS X operating system and updated versions of the iBook notebook computer and the Titanium PowerBook G4. Strong sales of the PowerBook in 2000 helped offset the Cube's poor sales. The new G4 PowerBook would come with a choice of three processors: a 733 MHz, 867 MHz, or a high-end version with dual 800 MHz processors.

Jobs was also determined to recapture lost market share in the education market, where Apple held more than 50 percent of the market in 1997. Through its low-priced PC program, Dell Computer Corp. had captured 34.3 percent of the U.S. education market, compared to Apple's 19 percent, by 2001.

Judging by a 25 percent increase in attendance at the mid-2001 Macworld Expo, consumer interest remained strong in Apple's innovative products. A major concern among consumers and professionals who managed networks of Macintosh computers for businesses and educational institutions was a lack of new software for Apple's new Unix-based OS X operating system. To address those concerns, Jobs displayed demo products from 10 software makers, including Adobe and Microsoft, that would be available later in the year for OS X, at the 2001 Macworld Expo.

Jobs, known as a charismatic leader and adept marketer, appeared committed to transforming Apple into a high-performance company. Even though Apple only had a 5 or 6 percent share of the personal computer market, Jobs told Business Week, "We only have to convince another 6 percent of PC buyers to buy from us and we can double the size of our company. That's exciting."

FURTHER READING:

"Apple." Business Week, July 31, 2000.

Bedell, Doug. "Ambitious Plan to Retool Apple Makes Jobs Lose Sleep." Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, July 18, 2001.

Clark, Ken. "Next Act for Apple: Stores." Chain Store Age Executive with Shopping Center Age, July 2001.

Deutschman, Alan. The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. New York: Broadway Books, 2000.

——. "Despite Recent Stock Slip, Jobs Isn't Finished with Apple." Computer Reseller News, October 16, 2000.

Fortt, Jon. "Jobs Trying to Revive Apple after Disappointing Year." Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, January 8, 2001.

"If the PC Doesn't Change, It'll Go the Way of the Dodo." Business Week, July 31, 2000.

Jobs, Steven. "Apple's One-Dollar-a-Year Man." Fortune, January 24, 2000.

Johnson, Cecil. "Warts-and-All Portrait of Steve Jobs a Valuable Account." Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, November 9, 2000.

"Steve Jobs' Apple Gets Way Cooler." Fortune, January 24, 2000.

SEE ALSO: Apple Computer; Wozniak, Steve