The Story Of Apple - Research Paper Example

The Story Of Apple Steve Jobs is the man behind the popular Apple products everyone uses these days. From a Macbook Pro to an iPhone, all of these were the brainchild of Steve Jobs. However, reflecting back on his early life, Steve Jobs describes himself as having “no idea what [he] wanted to do with [his] life” (Stanford Report, n.pag.). In his Stanford Commencement speech, he emphasized the need to “connect the dots” and said that to do so, it requires trust in whatever matters to a person (Stanford Report, n.pag.). Having had no idea about his future, Steve Jobs was still able to make it big with his exemplary ideas that changed the way people work today. No one could have thought a simple touchpad would be the next generation’s portable computer. But Steve Jobs was able to make this true through his revolutionary ideas that transformed the way people interact with the digital world. Lakin notes how Steve Jobs studied in a garage about all the engineering and technical things such as electronics and circuits (n.pag.). This was the start of an inspiration that later led to the founding of Apple. Back in the days, people did not have personal computers at home and the innovation towards computers came about after several versions of advanced calculators that could perform mathematical calculations. As technology progressed, the calculators were able to perform even more complex operations giving rise to the modern computer. Two other people were vital to the development of Apple and these included Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (Isaacson, 62). The initiation of Apple was a marked turning point in the life of Steve Jobs which was to have a great impact on his future. Inspired from the Gravenstein apple trees which Steve Jobs had pruned at a farm he visited, Apple I, their first computer was prototyped and designed (Isaacson, 63). This was the beginning of an interesting journey which was later to result in the development of further Apple products. Unlike many may think, Apple was not always invincible. The present state of the company we see is the result of the efforts made by Steve Jobs and his wonderful persona. Apple has gone through several ups and downs and what is truly remarkable is that the company was able to get through one of the toughest times. The company’s massive success can undoubtedly be attributed to Steve Jobs. 1977 was an important year as it marked the creation of Apple II, the second version of the same company which now came up with a personal computer that shook the industry because of its unique attributes (Sutherland, 5). This new Apple computer had a built-in keyboard which was cased in the computer (Isaacson, 71).The idea was great and it required a large investment for the prototype to be turned into reality. Hence, the Apple Computer Company was officially launched on 3rd January 1977. The years to come were to play a dominant role in Steve Jobs’ career as well as his overall life. However, Apple’s story is not all marked with successes. There were many failures and the company faced several ups and downs throughout the course of time. It should be remembered that Apple is the same company that Steve Jobs founded but was fired from despite being his own company (Chen, n.pag.). This is a phase, which Steve Jobs has also mentioned his address at Stanford University (Stanford Report, n.pag.). The computer developed to better Apple I – that is, Apple II – was great yet it somewhat fell behind relative to computer manufacturing giants including IBM and Microsoft (Sutherland, 5). Many people also associated Apple II to be the work of Steve Wozniak even though Steve Jobs’ efforts were great in launching the product but this was to prompt Steve Jobs to create something that could be called his own. With this, Steve Jobs started work at the new Apple III computer which would support many previously unavailable options such as upper and lower cases. The product was shipped however the computer version failed to get a good response. So, Apple III was not a success but the product failed to deliver what people had anticipated. Clearly all of Apple’s products were not absolute successes and hence, the company went through a cycle of successes and failures. After Apple III, Steven Jobs introduced many other computers including the Lisa, a computer named after his daughter, which at first refused to acknowledge. Despite contributing a lot to the company which he created many years ago, in 1985, Steve Jobs had to resign from Apple (Stanford Report, n.pag.). Steve Jobs recalls the moment as “the best thing that could have ever happened to [him]” (Stanford Report, n.pag.). This is indeed a turning moment of his life which proved to pave the way for further innovations. Steve Jobs started the company called NeXT and Pixar. Pixar was a pioneer in character animation and went on to create the world’s first animated film called the Toy Story (Stanford Report, n.pag.). After a series of events NeXT was bought by Apple and Steve Jobs returned to the company he had created. Steve Jobs’ return to Apple in 1996 was clearly an important moment of his life after being forced to resign from the company he had created. Steve Jobs does not regret this moment of his life as it gave him a lot to learn from. With this, he advises to never lose hope and keep faith in what one loves to do. In this case, Steve Jobs loved his job and he was genuinely interested in the work he did – building computers – innovating. In the years that followed Steve Jobs’ return to Apple, many revolutionary products were created that came to become popular computer products. For example, in 1998, the company introduced its iMac computer, a blue colored computer loaded with functionalities (Chen, n.pag.). In those days, the floppy disk was the most common storage device which was after all unreliable. However, the iMac was unique in its dismissal of the traditional floppy disk slots but instead introduced connectivity ports for a USB drive. This was to change the way files are stored for many years as USBs have completely replaced the now obsolete floppy disks. Hence, Steve Jobs’ reentry into the company was fortunate for Apple as a successful product was introduced that took the company’s profitability to new heights. The iMac was extremely popular and with this Apple continued to bring many new products. In 2001, it introduced its own music player called the iPod (Chen, n.pag.). iPod was unique because it was pleasantly designed but it was not the first MP3 music player to be introduced. There had been a couple music players that were there in the market but the introduction of iPod was successful. The most distinguishable feature of the device was the wheel which controlled the scrolling and selections of songs in the device. With its popularity, the company introduced the iTunes which later came on to become the largest retailer of Music through its iTunes service (Chen, n.pag.). In the same year, another invention was made: this was the Mac OS X operating system which used the programming language, Unix. However, the operating system was not flawless as it contained many bugs and programming errors. It did however possess compatibility for earlier versions of the operating systems. Over the years, the operating system was tweaked and bettered. The long process over the years culminated in a successful operating system that ran smoothly and is now the native operating system of all MacBooks. With time, Apple kept innovating based on Steve Jobs’ philosophy of thinking differently. After the emergence of an Intel chip processor, the MacBook computer was introduced. The MacBook had a unique design was loaded with nice typefaces and beautiful fonts, inspired from Steve Jobs’ years studying calligraphy at Reed (Stanford Report, n.pag.). The MacBook was a popular laptop computer that continues to be used today. There are many versions of the MacBook now including MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Hence, the MacBook was another product that revolutionized the computer industry and spurred technological revolution. Throughout Steve Jobs’ life, he was not always a success despite the fact that he gave us many of the world’s best inventive products. The company he founded – Apple – was not always making popular and successful products and many of his previous computers had several bugs and flaws. Steve Jobs was also forced to resign from his own company but he did not lose faith. After his return to Apple, his life had changed and the company turned towards a new route to success and high profitability as the company introduced many strong products such as the iPod, MacBook, iPad, and others. Despite having strong rival competitors in the market, Apple continued to innovate and differentiate which was popularly supported by consumers. Hence, there have been man important turning points in Steve Jobs’ life. Works Cited Chen, Brian. '7 Key Turning Points That Made Apple No. 1'. WIRED. N.p., 2010. Web. 8 Dec. 2014. Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print. Lakin, Patricia. Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print. Stanford Report. 'Text Of Steve Jobs' Commencement Address (2005)'. N.p., 2005. Web. 8 Dec. 2014. Sutherland, Adam. The Story Of Apple. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2012. Print. Read More