Much has been written in these months about his life and character, full of chiaroscuro, but what no one can deny is the direct influence that his ideas have had on the way in which we all relate today to technology, music or movies. What do not you believe? Exaggerated? try to read and decide.
1. The First Personal Computer: The Macintosh
By early 1979, Apple had grown into a solid company preparing to go public. The Apple II, an evolution of that first computer that Jobs and Wozniak had built in a garage, was a great sales success, and the company's value would soon rise to $ 1.790 billion. However, at the Cupertino headquarters there were reasons for concern. The Apple III, its natural replacement, had been a total fiasco and the new Lisa project seemed more of the same.
Steve Jobs began to grow impatient. He wanted to create an "absurdly cool" and revolutionary product that would take the nappies out of the computer industry (computers of the day could barely display lines of code on a phosphor green screen and were powered by complicated commands). It was then that he set his sights on the Palo Alto Research Center, owned by the Xerox company. In this laboratory of ideas, the future of the digital age as we know it today (graphical user interface, bitmap screen, desktop with windows, mouse…) was brewing and Jobs sensed it. In what has been considered the largest industrial heist in history, he struck a deal with Xerox executives to let him take a look at what was happening there in exchange for Apple stock.
When he entered the facilities in December 1979 with several of his collaborators, what he saw inside left him stunned. That was exactly what he had been looking for. Four years later, the Macintosh was introduced in society, the first truly personal computer. 1984 would never be 1984 again.
The First Personal Computer: The Macintosh
2. Design, design, design
Jobs understood from the beginning that careful design in a world of technologists unconcerned about the final shape of their products would give the company a distinctive character. To the horror of his engineers, he insisted that even parts of a device that couldn't be seen, such as a Macintosh motherboard, must be pretty. "A cabinetmaker doesn't use bad wood for the back of a display case." His interest went beyond creating eye-catching objects. “Most make the mistake of thinking that design is what something looks like. Design is how that something works, "he said.
Jobs was the first to understand that technology should be easy to understand, intuitive and beautiful, and already in Apple's first brochure was a phrase that has become a mantra for the company: "Simplicity is the utmost sophistication." Steve applied this philosophy to every detail, no matter how small, from the packaging of the products to the architecture of the stores. This obsession was a real headache for his employees (like the day when, a few weeks after the launch of the iPhone, he decided to completely modify its case). At times, it reached the paroxysm of the absurd. When his accomplice and Apple designer, Jonathan Ive, presented his proposal to seal the iPhone 4 with a thin strip of metal, Jobs was so enthusiastic about the idea that he ignored the engineers who warned him that he would give coverage problems. You know: "We are not perfect, and neither are telephones."
Design, design, design
3. Digital animation
In late 1985, Jobs was removed from the Apple presidency and from any executive position in the company by the Board of Directors. So he found himself on the streets, with a lot of free time and $ 100 million in his pocket. He launched his own supercomputer, NeXT, but the project was a miserable failure. At the time, George Lucas, burdened by his divorce, wanted to get rid of Lucasfilm's digital division. Jobs bought it from him for five million dollars with the intention of developing hardware and software. But he soon realized his mistake: the real treasure of that small company called Pixar was not the work of its engineers, but the talent of its team of animators, led by John Lasseter. Pixar reached an agreement with Disney and, in November 1995, Toy Story was released. The film grossed 362 million euros.
Toy Story
4. From iPod to iTunes
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was crashing and the market for personal computers was languishing. Jobs worked hard - with the help of Jony Ive - to renew his entire range of computers, with products as attractive as the iMac. But he realized that all those beautiful machines would have no future if they did not become a new center around which all consumer digital entertainment pivoted. Thus were born programs like iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD and, finally, iTunes.
Jobs's dream, however, went further: it was to create a closed environment in which he could control 100% of the user experience. So he developed his own music player, the iPod, a device that made a computer manufacturer the most valuable technology company on the planet. The success of the iPod lay in its beautiful design, its capacity - enough for a thousand songs - and its simple user interface (for complicated operations there was already iTunes).
To close the circle, Jobs struck deals with major record companies and launched his own music store, the iTunes Store, from which any user could download songs for $ 0,99. It is said that the head of Windows development, upon seeing it, wrote an e-mail to four of his subordinates with a single sentence: "We have been swept away."
From iPod to iTunes
5 The Iphone
In 2005, the iPod accounted for 45% of Apple's revenue. Jobs worried that those sales could collapse when cell phone makers included music players in the device, as they already did with digital cameras. So, after an unsuccessful attempt to partner with Motorola, his conclusion was clear: "We have to do it ourselves." The touch screen, as we know it, was not the first option. By contrast, the first prototype ran on the classic iPod wheel. That's when Jonathan Ive came up with an idea that would change smartphones forever. His team had developed a multi-touch device for the MacBook Pro trackpad that could fit a tablet (the future iPad), although no one was sure it would work for a phone. Jobs was excited about the prospect of using it, and after six months working on both prototypes under the code names P1 and P2, he called in his closest associates to make a decision. Pointing to the touch screen, he said, "We all know this is the version we want to create, so let's make it work." To curl the curl, the Jobs-Ive duo decided to make it out of glass. There was only one company capable of building glass as strong as the iPhone needed, Gorilla Glass, but it had never been mass produced. Steve, applying his trademark reality-distortion technique, convinced them they'd have it in six months. He was absolutely right. After a race against time, the iPhone was unveiled at the 2007 MacWorld conference in San Francisco. "Today we are going to show three revolutionary products," Jobs began. "A widescreen iPod with touch control, a revolutionary phone and a next-generation internet communications device." And, after a dramatic pause, he asked, 'Do you understand? They are not three independent devices, they are a single device and we are going to call it the iPhone. In essence, the iPhone had almost no new features, but it was the most beautiful, versatile and easy-to-use phone that had ever been seen. An object of desire. Many predicted that its $ 500 price tag would impede its success (including Bill Gates). In three years, 90 million units had already been sold.
The Iphone
6. APPs
One of the main virtues of the iPhone was that –thanks to its user interface, its powerful Mac OS X and its large memory capacity– it allowed downloading small programs and entertainment, information or work utilities to add them to those already existing on the phone. . Apple christened them Apps.
As it had done with the music business, the Californian company chose to sell these applications directly to the user, created by thousands of developers around the world, and then distribute a percentage of the profits among their inventors.
In an example of Steve Jobs' obsession with control, he centralized his distribution through a store created specifically on iTunes in July 2008, the App Store. In this way, it could guarantee the quality level of the Apps, ensure that each and every one of them used the full potential of the iPhone software and, where appropriate, censor those whose content was offensive (including all those that included pornographic material) .
The iPad did nothing but increase sales figures exponentially. In mid-2011, there were already 425.000 applications in the iTunes Store for both devices (today they exceed half a million) and there had been 14.000 million downloads. The App Store created a flourishing industry out of thin air. Thousands of entrepreneurs around the world set out to create their applications, venture capital firms set up investment funds dedicated to financing new ideas, and magazine and book publishers embraced the new technology as record companies had done years ago with the store. from iTunes. Add and go ...
APP Store
7. The iPad
The progressive displacement of the traditional computer by other mobile devices led Steve Jobs to think about developing a netbook in early 2003. Jonathan Ive, however, convinced him to launch a lighter device that could be operated with one hand and that integrated the keyboard into a large multi-touch screen. The project stopped to give priority to the iPhone, but at the end of 2007 the idea took shape again and the entire Apple team got to work on a tablet that works without a stylus. When it was unveiled in January 2010, the huge buzz the new gadget had generated turned into a wave of disappointment.
The iPad, finally, was configured as a closed system that did not even allow the user to connect a USB stick. Unlike a Macintosh, it was more of a content reader than a machine for creativity. And also, because of an old dispute between Jobs and Adobe, he did not read Flash.
Some specialized journalists even spoke of a bloated iPhone with steroids. Still, Apple sold a million iPads in its first month of marketing. The tablet's unprecedented success made it the new industry standard and put the Californian company, once again, ahead of all its competition. The barrage of new Apps designed for the iPad, including versions of major newspapers, magazines and books, did the rest. Nine months later, sales already amounted to 15 million. King Midas had got it right again, and his critics, again, were forced to go through the hoop.
