This day in CS History – 5th October 2011 – Steve Jobs passes away
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Steve Jobs is best known as the co-founder and CEO of the American multinational technology company Apple. He was instrumental to its success, helping it enter the computer market in 1984 with the introduction of the Macintosh.
Steve Jobs was the CEO of Apple from 1997-2011. He had a few other roles at Apple as well, including being a co-founder of the company.
He came up with many inventions and products during his time at Apple, some of which became very popular and which can be seen below:
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Invented: Macintosh computer [1977], iPod [2001], iPhone [2007]
Created: Macintosh operating system [1984], iTunes [2001], iPad [2010]
Introduced: iMac computer [1998], MacBook laptop computer [2006]
Steve had a vision for the products he created and did not stand for people who did not share his vision. This sometimes made him difficult to get along with and one of the main reasons why he fell out of favour with the Apple board and was usurped as CEO in 1985.
Once outed from Apple Steve set up his own company again NeXT which would create high end computer systems aimed at the education market with their own proprietary operating system known as NeXTSTEP.
In 1986 Steve invested in the part of Lucasfilm which became Pixar, the computer animation studio responsible for hit animated films such as the first computer generated animated film Toy Story.
In 1996, Apple bought NeXT and Steve Jobs went back to Apple. Apple had floundered after Steve had left but Steve wasted no time in turning the ship around using the technology and software developed at NeXT.
On his return to Apple, the company churned out lots of innovative and original products in quick succession such as the iPod, iPhone and Macbook computers. The products were first of their kind and were industry leading.
This is the time that Steve Jobs slogan “Think Different” came into passing. The phrase has been very frequently used by Jobs to describe Apple’s attitude. It reflects how he wanted his employees to be committed to their work and to challenge the status quo something that he certainly did on his return to Apple.
Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011, due to complications from pancreatic cancer. After his death, Apple’s stock dropped by more than 10% and they lost $35 billion in value.
Apple became more conservative after Steve Jobs death. They had no new product launches for 18 months following his death until they released their first new phone on September 12th, 2013 – The iPhone 5S.
Steve Jobs will be remembered as an innovator, a person who wanted to push the boundaries of style, design and technology. He believed that computers and digital devices shouldn’t just be functional but also have style, unlike the competition at the time. He wanted computers to be able to be used by everyone and his work with graphical user interfaces and simplifying user experiences still live on to this day.