5 Interesting Facts about Apple and Steve Jobs

Do you know these about Apple and Steve Jobs?

Apple

• The original Mac computers(1984) engrave all the team members’ signs and can be seen when opened. This is because Steve considered the team members as artists and all the artists sign their work.

Signatures of the team members in mac case(Photo by Carlos Pérez Ruiz)

• Almost in every apple advertisement, the time is set to 9:41 on the device this is because that is the time when the first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs in 2007.
• For many times, Apple has been the most valuable company in the world since 2011. It touched the value of 3 trillion dollars for a brief time in Jan 2022 which is less than the GDP of only four countries(USA, China, Japan, Germany) at that time. Back in the 1990s, the company flirted with bankruptcy many times.
• During the 1970s computers had only command-line interfaces(users have to type commands to use or start any application).In 1979 a company called XEROX first developed Graphical User Interface, GUI(applications start when their icons are clicked as we’re using now).

Steve Jobs saw their prototype and started building GUI into his machines in a much better way which eventually became a great success.

This is sometimes described as one of the biggest heists in the industry. Jobs once quoted from Picasso “Great artists steal”. Later, this GUI idea is also copied by Bill Gates in Window’s PCs from Apple.

• To open the Macintosh you need special tools. Since Jobs believed in a closed system and end-to-end control of software and hardware for a great user experience. It made the mac OS incompatible with other hardware and Microsoft made the open windows OS which took the lead in the software industry.

Steve Jobs

• Steve Jobs was forced to resign from Apple in 1985 by Sculley who was appointed as the CEO by Jobs. Jobs was out of Apple for almost 12 years. During that period, he founded the companies NeXT which developed the NeXTSTEP OS, and Pixar which produced the movies like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, etc. In 1997 he was back to Apple as the CEO.
• Jobs had a binary view of the world. He would say a person is either a hero or a shithead and the same applies to the products and ideas. Jobs also sometimes comment on his colleague’s ideas as shit in their face and the next day he would say the same idea to other people as if it were his own idea.
• Jobs had a quest for perfection in designing things. He built a new factory for manufacturing Mac and he wanted to paint the factory walls white. The director protested about painting the factory white as there will be dust and stuff all over.

Jobs replied that they have to keep the company that clean. When painted white, many people liked it and found it to be effective.

Jobs said “If there’s no discipline to keep the factory spotless there will be no discipline to keep the machines running”. Japanese companies also have a clean workspace like this and have an edge in manufacturing.

• Similarly, Jobs wanted the machines to be repainted in bright colors as in the apple logo. For which the director objected since it will make problems in the precision machines. But jobs insisted and made them to repaint it. But this time it made many problems as expected.
• Jobs had their own team within Apple for developing Macintosh. He used to call the other team ‘B team’ when their product failed and other members ‘B players’ who didn’t yield a good result even though they worked their part. Eventually firing a fraction of them or fully.

One time he suddenly fired an employee in Pixar without giving any notice. And when the employee asked for two weeks' notice, he said “notice is retroactive from two weeks ago”.

Key Message: Steve Jobs was an artist in making great products and made the Computers, smartphones available to every person.

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References: ‘Steve Jobs’ a book by Walter Isaacson, economictimes.indiatimes.com