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Steve Jobs

The foundation of Apple

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Steve Jobs was the co-founder and CEO of Apple. He also founded NeXT and was the majority shareholder of Pixar, both of which he was also CEO. Jobs is known as an icon of creativity and entrepreneurship. The prolific author Walter Isaacson released Jobs’ biography in October of 2011. Isaacson describes his major accomplishment as being a “creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.”

Jobs attended Reed College for a short period of time before dropping out in 1972. However, he continued to dabble with classes unofficially and came across a calligraphy course instructed by Robert Palladino. This course ended up being highly influential for Jobs as he attributed it to bringing multiple typefaces to the Mac.

Steve Jobs founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. After a drawn out power struggle Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985. He then founded NeXT in 1985 and also funded the move of Lucasfilm’s Graphics Group to become its own corporation, which became Pixar in 1986. Just over a decade later in 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as they acquired NeXT. His return marked the beginning of a new era of success. He took over as CEO in July of 1997 and continued on until handing the position to Tim Cook on August 24, 2011 after increasing health problems. Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011.

Isaacson describes his major accomplishment as being a “creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.”

Apple product delays have more than doubled under Tim Cook’s watch, says WSJ analysis

Delays between Apple announcing a product and shipping it to customers have more than doubled under Tim Cook’s watch, according to a WSJ analysis.

Of the 70-plus new and updated products launched during Mr. Cook’s tenure, five had a delay between announcement and shipping of three months or more, and nine had delays of between one and three months. Roughly the same number of products were launched during Mr. Jobs’ reign, but only one product was delayed by more than three months.

The averages bear out the paper’s claim, though also illustrate the rather small difference for a typical product launch …


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Newsweek magazine signed ‘I love manufacturing’ by Steve Jobs fetches $50K at auction

A Newsweek magazine signed by Steve Jobs fetched far more than initial expectations at an auction this week. According to a report from CNET, the 1988 magazine was originally expected to go for between $10,000 and $15,000, but ultimately brought in $50,587. Meanwhile, Jobs’ BMW Z8 is predicted to fetch between $300,00 and $400,000 at auction in December…


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Tony Fadell describes competing teams working on different iPhone designs

It scarcely seems possible now that Apple ever considered an iPhone based on a click-wheel iPod, but we actually got to see a surviving prototype earlier this year. Steve Jobs created competing teams to work on different approaches to an iPhone, and ‘father of the iPod’ Tony Fadell has spoken about this in a new interview …


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Tim Cook talks Steve Jobs as Apple’s ‘Constitution,’ HomePod, AR, taxes, Trump, innovation & more

In a wide-ranging interview, Tim Cook has spoken about Steve Jobs‘ DNA as Apple’s ‘Constitution,’ why he thinks HomePod will be a success, wanting to ‘scream’ in excitement about augmented reality, how he thinks taxes should be applied to repatriated overseas earnings, his experience of working with Donald Trump and how he responds to the view that Apple is no longer an innovative company.

His comments are an excerpt from a detailed interview out next week …


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Photos posted from exclusive tour inside Apple Park, with video coming soon [Gallery]

Wired has been given an exclusive look inside the spaceship ring of the Apple Campus, revealing the ‘pod’ approach that was the brainchild of Steve Jobs.

As with any Apple product, its shape would be determined by its function. This would be a workplace where people were open to each other and open to nature, and the key to that would be modular sections, known as pods, for work or collaboration. Jobs’ idea was to repeat those pods over and over: pod for office work, pod for teamwork, pod for socializing, like a piano roll playing a Philip Glass composition. They would be distributed demo­cratically. Not even the CEO would get a suite or a similar incongruity. And while the company has long been notorious for internal secrecy, compartmentalizing its projects on a need-to-know basis, Jobs seemed to be proposing a more porous structure where ideas would be more freely shared across common spaces. Not totally open, of course—Ive’s design studio, for instance, would be shrouded by translucent glass—but more open than Infinite Loop.

The site has posted a small selection of teaser photos (below), and promises that video is coming soon …


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Laurene Powell Jobs to grant rare interview on her approach to philanthropy

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Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs doesn’t speak publicly very often, but will be appearing at the Code conference next month to talk about her approach to philanthropy. Her appearance will take the form of an unscripted conversation on stage.

You have billions of dollars and you want to make the world a better place. Where to start? That’s the question facing Laurene Powell Jobs, who has an estimated net worth of $20 billion.

Interestingly, most of that net worth doesn’t take the form of AAPL shares …


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Seiko to re-release the watch worn by Steve Jobs in one of his most iconic photos

One of the most iconic photographs of Steve Jobs shows him sitting on the floor in this Woodside, California home while holding the first Macintosh in his lap. On his wrist in that image is a very simplistic Seiko watch that has drawn a fair amount of attention, especially since the release of the Apple Watch.

Seiko has now announced plans to re-release the iconic watch…


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Tim Cook: Hundreds of Apple employees affected by immigration ban, company considering legal action

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Tim Cook has told the WSJ that hundreds of the company’s employees have been affected by Trump’s executive order on immigration, and says that Apple is considering taking legal action. He also said that the company would be supporting employee fundraising efforts for organizations providing relief to refugees.

Cook said that he hopes that the White House can be persuaded to rescind the order, but that the company may resort to the courts if not …


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The ‘golden path,’ hidden Wi-Fi & cellular tricks behind the iPhone presentation ten years ago

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Looking back at Steve Jobs demonstrating the first iPhone in 2007, it all looks so slick that it’s hard to believe just how close it came to falling over. The Internet History Podcast has done a nice job of pulling together the inside story of how much preparation went into ensuring that the demo worked.

In practice demos, the iPhone – which was nowhere near complete – kept failing in various different ways.

Jobs rehearsed his presentation for six solid days, but at the final hour, the team still couldn’t get the phone to behave through an entire run through. Sometimes it lost internet connection. Sometimes the calls wouldn’t go through. Sometimes the phone just shut down.

Engineers came up with a combination of three things that allowed the prototype iPhone to make it through the demo …


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Ten years on, the people behind the famous ‘Get a Mac’ ad campaign reminisce [Videos]

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It’s ten years since the launch of the famous ‘Get a Mac’ ad campaign, admired even today as one of the most entertaining and effective series of ads ever produced. The team responsible for it – from creative directors to Mac & PC actors – have been looking back at the series in a two-part feature in ad industry journal Campaign.

The piece describes the campaign as the end result of ‘an excruciating seven-month quest for an idea that Steve Jobs didn’t hate.’ The campaign ended up running for three years, with 66 ads making it to air, though the team actually shot a total of 323 …


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