Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs (pronounced {{IPA|/d?o?bz/}}) (born February 24, 1955) is the CEO of Apple Computer and a leading figure in the computer industry. As co-founder (with Steve Wozniak) of Apple in 1976, he helped popularize the concept of the home computer with the Apple II. Later, he was one of the first to see the commercial potential of the GUI and mouse developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, and saw that these technologies were incorporated into the Apple Macintosh. Today as the CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs is known to be the man behind the recovery of Apple Computer, especially through an idea he pushed for, the iPod. Jobs is also chairman and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, a leading producer of computer-animated feature films.

Departure from Apple, Creation of NeXT

While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic evangelist for Apple, critics also claimed he was an erratic and tempestuous manager. In 1985, after an internal power struggle, Jobs was stripped of his duties by the board of directors and resigned from Apple. Note that Jobs still remained president of Apple Computer at that time.

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After leaving Apple, Jobs founded another computer company, NeXT Computer. Like Lisa, NeXT was technologically advanced, but it never was able to break into the mainstream because of its high cost. For those who could afford it, it did, however, garner a strong following due to its technical strengths, chief among them being its object-oriented software development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products toward the scientific and academic fields because of the innovative, experimental new technologies it incorporated (such as the Mach kernel and the DSP chip).

Related Topics:
NeXT Computer - Object-oriented

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The NeXT Cube was Jobs' philosophical idea of an "interpersonal" computer, which he believed was the next monumental step after "personal" computing. That is, if computers could allow people to communicate and collaborate together in an easy way, it would solve a lot of the problems that "personal" computing had come up against. Jobs had been criticized for not including built-in networking features on the original Macintosh (calling it an "umbilical cord to the company"), and he was determined not to make the same mistake again. During a time when e-mail for most people was plain text, Jobs loved to demo the NeXT's e-mail system, NeXTMail, as an example of his "interpersonal" philosophy. NeXTMail was one of the first to support universally visible, clickable embedded graphics and audio within e-mail.

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Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for perfection at any cost. This eye for detail ultimately destroyed NeXT's hardware division, but, on the other hand, it also showed the world that Jobs could design a Macintosh that was arguably better than the original. The NeXT Cube's laser-cut magnesium case has popularly been cited as an example of the quest for perfection-at-any-cost.

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Just as Jobs railed against IBM at Apple, Jobs railed against Sun Microsystems as an Evil Empire while at NeXT. Later, after NeXT's hardware division was dropped, Jobs and Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy introduced OPENSTEP together.

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While Jobs' stint at NeXT is often glossed over in history books, his contributions at NeXT would bring the world two monumental events:

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1. The World-Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee developed the original World Wide Web system at CERN on a NeXT workstation. Jobs' insistence that average people should be able to write custom "mission-critical" applications formed the basis of Interface Builder, which Berners-Lee utilized to do just that ? write a program entitled "World-Wide Web 1.0".

Related Topics:
Tim Berners-Lee - World Wide Web - CERN - NeXT

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2. The Return of Apple Computer. Apple's reliance on ancient software and internal mismanagement had brought it near bankruptcy throughout the early to mid 1990s. Jobs' progressive stance on UNIX underpinnings were considered overly ambitious and somewhat backward in the 1980's, but his choice ultimately became an expandable, solid foundation for an operating system. Apple would later acquire this software and, under Jobs' leadership, experience a renaissance.

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NeXT's technologies also helped the advancement of technologies such as object-oriented programming, Display PostScript, and magneto-optical devices.

Related Topics:
Object-oriented - Display PostScript - Magneto-optical

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