Steve Jobs in San Francisco - Free Essay Example

Steve jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was abandoned by his parents just after he was born. Luckily, Paul and Clara jobs, a nice couple, adopted him. He lived near silicon valley in the United States. His neighbors were all employees of hewlett-packard company. Influenced by these people, jobs became obsessed with electronics as a child. One HP engineer saw how obsessed he was and recommended him for the companys discoverers club, a gathering for young engineers held every Tuesday night in the companys cafeteria. At a party, jobs saw computers for the first time, and he began to have a hazy understanding of them. In junior high, jobs met Steve wozniak at a school reunion and the two hit it off. Steve wozniak was President of the schools electronics club and was very interested in electronics. When he was 19, jobs took a one-semester break from school for financial reasons and became an employee of atari video game company. Living in the garage of wozs house, he often audited calligraphy classes and other courses at the community college. He made a pilgrimage to India in August 1974, at the hottest time of the subcontinent. While at work, jobs often worked with wozniak on computers in his garage. They dreamed of having a computer of their own, but at that time, all the computers on the market were commercial, huge and expensive, so they prepared to develop their own. In 1976, he bought the 6502 chip at the Wisconsin computer fair in San Francisco. With the 6502 chip, the two young men installed the first computer in the garage of jobs home. Jobs sold his Volkswagen car to raise money for mass production, and woz sold his HP 65 calculator. So they have $1,300. On April 1, 1976, jobs, wozniak and jobs friend RON Wayne signed a contract to start a computer company. Jobs, 21, and Steve wozniak, 26, founded apple in their garage. The company was named apple by jobs. Their home-made computers have been dubbed the apple generation. In the early days of apple inc., the apple machine business was slow. In July 1976, an accidental opportunity brought about a turning point for apple. The retailer Paul Jay Terrell went to jobs garage and, after watching jobs demonstrate his computers, decided to order 50 of them, his first deal. Then apple started making small batches. In October 1976, markkula visited woz and their garage. Mr. Markkula, an electrical engineer who specializes in marketing, volunteered to help them develop a business plan and lent them $690, 000, which helped speed up apples growth. In April 1977, jobs presented the apple II codename prototype at the first computer show in the United States. On December 12, 1980, apple stock went public, and within an hour, 4.6 million shares were snapped up, closing at $29 each. At that closing price, apples top ranks have produced four billionaires and more than 40 millionaires. Jobs is number one as a founder of the company. In 1983, Lisa database and Apple Iie were released for $9,998 and $1,395 respectively. However, Lisas expensive price is not much in the market, and Lisa steals a lot of Apples rd funds. Since jobs business philosophy was different from that of most managers at that time, and IBM launched personal computers to seize a large market, the general manager and directors blamed the failure on the chairman jobs, who was removed from the management power by the board decision in April 1985. Jobs left apple on Sept. 17, 1985, after several unsuccessful attempts to regain power. After resigning from apple, jobs bought Lucasfilms Emeryville, calif., computer-animation effects studio from George Lucas for $10 million in 1986, and formed the independent pixar animation studio. The company became known as 3D computer animation and in 1995 released the worlds first full-3d animated 3D film, toy story. The company was acquired by Disney in 2006, making Mr. Jobs Disneys largest individual shareholder. In 1996, apple was in trouble, and its market share dropped from 16% at its peak to 4%. By contrast, jobs company became famous for toy story, with a personal fortune of $1 billion. However, jobs came back from apples crisis. After his return, jobs made great changes, stopped unreasonable research and production, ended the patent dispute between Microsoft and apple for many years, and began to develop new products iMac and OS X operating system. In 2000, during the technology bubble, jobs put forward the advanced idea of designing PC as digital center, and developed iTunes and iPod successively. At the same time, he began to open stores in prime locations and achieved great success. Subsequently, a series of products such as Apple TV and iTunes Store were praised and recognized by the market. On June 29, 2007, apple launched its own iPhone design, using iOS system, and then released the new generation iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. On June 8, 2010, the fourth generation iPhone 4 product was released, and each time it was released, it attracted great madness and sales upsurge in the world. In addition to the iPhone series, the release of the iPad tablet computer using iOS system, which was not widely expected at first, was a great success. On August 24, 2011, Steve jobs submitted his resignation application to apples board of directors. In his resignation letter, he also suggested chief operating officer Tim cook take his place. In his resignation letter, Mr. Jobs said he could no longer serve as chief executive, but was willing to serve as chairman, director or general staff. Apple shares were suspended from after-hours trading. Mr. Jobs didnt specify the reasons for his resignation, but he has been battling pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. On August 25, 2011, apple announced his resignation with immediate effect and Tim cook took over. Apple also announced the appointment of Steve jobs as chairman and Tim cook as CEO. On October 5, 2011, apples board of directors announced that jobs died on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56. The funeral was held on October 6. Jobs believed that innovation has no limit and imagination is limited. If its a growth industry, innovation is about making products more efficient, easier to use, easier to work with. If its a shrinking industry, innovation is about moving quickly out of the box, changing yourself quickly before products and services become obsolete and unusable. According to jobs, the first ten employees of a startup determine the level of the company, because everyone has to be able to afford a tenth of the work of the company. He also used the beatles as a metaphor for the power of teams: no major job can be done by a single person, or by two, three, or four people. In order to get things done, work cannot be done by just one person. Finally, the forces generated by individual interactions are summarized, so that the overall force is far greater than the sum of individual forces. Hes also a perfectionist. He thinks, perfect quality does not have shortcut, must locate outstanding quality to oneself commitment, and hold to adamantly. When you are more demanding of yourself and pay attention to all the details, the product will be different from others. Instead of using a focus group approach, jobs told consumers to tell them what they wanted. Thats why he succeeded. Steve jobs has brought too much change to the world and great convenience to human beings. Many celebrities have commented on jobs. For example, President Obama once said, jobs is one of the greatest innovation leaders in America, and his outstanding talent makes him a person who can change the world. Bill Gates once said, few people have had the same impact on the world as Steve jobs, and the impact will be long-term. Jobs himself said, your time is limited, so dont waste it living someone elses life. Dont be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other peoples thinking. Dont let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly think. Everything else is secondary. To live is to change the world. Is there any other reason? Your time is limited, so dont waste it living someone elses life. Focus and simplicity have always been one of my secrets. Simplicity can be harder than complexity: you have to try to clear your mind to make it simple. But in the end its worth it, because once you do it, it can work wonders.