Jobs, Steven Paul

Jobs, Steven Paul

(1955–  ) American

Entrepreneur

Steve Jobs was cofounder of Apple Computer and shaped the development and marketing of its distinctive Macintosh personal computer (see Apple Corporation). Jobs showed an enthusiastic interest in electronics starting in his high school years and gained experience through summer work at Hewlett-Packard, one of the dominant companies of the early Silicon Valley. In 1974, he began to work for pio-neer video game designer Nolan Bushnell at Atari. He also became a key member of the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of hobbyists who designed their own microcomputer systems using early microprocessors.

Meanwhile, Jobs’s friend Steve Wozniak had developed plans for a complete microcomputer system that could be built using a single-board design and relatively simple cir-cuits (see Wozniak, Steven). In it Jobs saw the poten-tial for a standardized, commercially viable microcomputer system. They formed a company called Apple Computer (named apparently for the vanished orchards of Silicon Val-ley) and built a prototype they called the Apple I. Although they could only afford to build a few dozen of the machines, they made a favorable impression on the computer enthusi-ast community. By 1977, they were marketing a more com-plete and refined version, the Apple II.

Unlike kits that could be assembled only by experi-enced hobbyists, the Apple II was ready to use “out of the box.” It included a cassette tape recorder for storing pro-grams. When connected to a monitor or an ordinary TV, the machine could create color graphics that were dazzling compared to the monochrome text displays of most com-puters. Users could buy additional memory (the first model came with only 4K of RAM) as well as cards that could drive devices such as printers or add other capabilities.

The ability to run a program called VisiCalc (see spread-sheet) propelled the Apple II into the business world, and about 2 million of the machines were eventually sold. In 1982, when Time magazine featured the personal computer as its “man of the year,” Jobs’s picture appeared on the cover. As he relentlessly pushed Apple forward, supporters pointed to Jobs’s charismatic leadership, while detractors said that he could be ruthless when anyone disagreed with his vision of the company’s future.

However, 1982 also brought industry giant IBM into the market. Its 16-bit computer was more powerful than the Apple II, and IBM’s existing access to corporate purchasing departments resulted in the IBM PC and its “clones” quickly dominating the business market (see ibm pc).

Jobs responded to this competition by designing a PC with a radically different user interface, based largely on work during the 1970s and the Xerox PARC laboratory. The first version, called the Lisa, featured a mouse-driven graphical user interface that was much easier to use than the typed-in commands required by the Microsoft/IBM DOS. While the Lisa’s price tag of $10,000 kept it out of the mainstream market, its successor, the Macintosh, attracted millions of users, particularly in schools, although the IBM PC and its progeny continued to dominate the business market (see Macintosh). Meanwhile, Jobs had recruited John Sculley, former CEO of PepsiCo, to serve as Apple’s CEO.

After a growing divergence with Sculley over man-agement style and Apple’s future priorities, Jobs left the company in 1985. Using the money from selling his Apple 

stock, Jobs bought a controlling interests in Pixar, a graph-ics studio that had been spun off from LucasFilm. He also founded a company called NextStep. The company focused on high-end graphics workstations that used a sophisti-cated object-oriented operating system. However, while its software (particularly its development tools) was innova-tive, the company was unable to sell enough of its hardware and closed that part of the business in 1993.

In 1997, Jobs returned as CEO of Apple. By then the company was struggling to maintain market share for its Macintosh line in a world that was firmly in the “Wintel” (Windows on Intel-based processors) camp. He had some success in revitalizing Apple’s consumer product line with the iMac, a colorful, slim version of the Macintosh. He also focused on development of the new Mac OS X, a blending of the power of UNIX with the ease-of-use of the traditional Macintosh interface.

Beyond the Mac

At the beginning of the new century, Jobs and Apple made bold moves beyond the company’s traditional strengths. The Power PC chip in the Mac was phased out in favor of Intel chips, the same hardware that runs Microsoft Win-dows machines. (Indeed, the Mac was also given a utility that allowed it to run Windows.) This potentially opened the Mac to a much wider range of software.

The biggest move, however, was into media, first with powerful video-authoring software for home users as well as professionals, then with the tiny iPod that redefined the portable media player (see music and video players, digi-tal). At the same time, Apple entered the digital music business in a big way with the iTunes store (see video distribution, online). In 2007 Apple charged into the mobile communications market (see smartphone) with the innovative if expensive iPhone. So far the market has responded positively to Jobs’s initiatives, with Apple stock increasing in value more than 10 times between 2003 and 2006.

While Jobs is brash and unconventional (reflecting his countercultural roots), critics have accused him of egotism and of having an overly aggressive (and abrasive) mana-gerial style. Jobs has also been the subject of lingering investigations into his receiving discounted Apple stock options, failing to report the resulting taxable income, and correspondingly overstating Apple’s earnings. In Decem-ber 2006 Apple’s internal investigation cleared Jobs of responsibility for these issues, and the options were never exercised. Whatever the future brings, Steve Jobs has an assured place in the history of entrepreneurship and inno-vation in computing.