On The Job: The Launch Of Apple

While the 26-year-old Wozniak was content with his computer hobbyist group, the 21-year-old Jobs had a greater vision for the future. After seeing a computer that Wozniak had designed for himself, Jobs began to think about the marketability of such products. He convinced Wozniak to leave his job at Hewlett Packard and together the two began working on constructing a personal computer. Jobs’ passion and Wozniak’s engineering talent would soon combine to become a revolutionizing force in the computer industry.

Working out of Jobs’ bedroom, the duo designed the Apple I, and later moved to Jobs’ garage to build the prototype. In order to raise the money they needed to finance their company, Jobs sold his Volkswagen van while Wozniak sold his programmable calculator. With $1,300 in capital, the pair created Apple Company and within weeks, they were taking orders.

Jobs had secured the company’s first sale of 50 Apple I computers for a price of $666 each. The success of Apple I led the pair to design a successor, the Apple II. With a sleeker design, a disk drive, an open system and a new plastic casing that featured the Apple logo, the Apple II achieved even greater success. Within just three years, Apple Computer had experienced a growth of 700%. In December 1980, the company became a publicly traded corporation and Jobs’ stature continued to grow.

Competition from IBM soon began to threaten Apple’s position on top of the market. The release of Apple III did not come with the similar success that its predecessors had, nor did the release of Lisa. Apple II had numerous design flaws while Lisa was too expensive and thus was not commercially successful. In order to maintain its competitive edge, Jobs decided to convince then-President and CEO of Pepsi John Scully to become Apple’s CEO.

In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, which became the first commercially successful computer with a graphic interface. Over 400,000 Macs were sold in its first year of production. But, while the company was experiencing success, an internal power struggle was also taking place. In 1985, Wozniak left the company and Jobs was stripped of his duties by the board of directors. Jobs resigned in protest, but that would not be the end of him.

Jobs went on to found NeXT Computer, a company that focused on educational computing. While its workstation was technologically advanced, it proved to be too expensive to gain widespread appeal. But, NeXT did experience modest success in the scientific and academic fields, developing such products as the DSP chip and the built-in Ethernet port. In 1986, Jobs also purchased Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division for $10 million and created Pixar, a new computer animation company that has since partnered with Disney to create such hit films as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.

In 1996, NeXT was bought by Apple for $204 million and Jobs was brought back on as an interim CEO of the company he had originally founded. As CEO of Apple once again, Jobs cut a number of projects that he saw as being useless and began to turn his attention to the iMac. Since the iMac was introduced in 1998, Apple has seen its sales rise significantly. The company continued to branch out with such successful products as the iPod and iTunes. Apple currently has 14,800 employees and grosses over $17 billion in revenues.

In 2005, The Walt Disney Company purchased Pixar for $7.4 billion making Jobs Disney’s largest single shareholder with 7% of the company’s stock. While his aggressive personality and demanding management style have often been criticized, Jobs is undoubtedly a visionary, who turned his dreams for the personal computer into a billion dollar enterprise.



On The Job: The Launch Of Apple

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