World Changer

Oct 07, 2011 Editorial

To say that Steve Jobs was larger than life, while he was alive, would be the understatement of the decade. To a large extent he defined life for two generations that grew up during the last three decades. His passing two days ago at the age of 56, after a prolonged and well publicised struggle with pancreatic cancer since 2004, forces a retrospective that in many ways defined our life and times.
When we boast that this is the age of personal computing, Steven Jobs as much as Bill Gates is responsible for that happy circumstance. In 1976, Jobs – then only twenty-one – and his partner Steve Wozniak founded Apple in a garage, following a long tradition of native American creativity and entrepreneurship. A year later their Apple II took off and at twenty-six, Jobs had earned his first $100 million.
By 1984, their Mac took on the giant IBM that had thrown their considerable weight on the PC in 1981 with the operating system designed by Gates. Displaying from the beginning a penchant for keeping total control over software and hardware, the Apple computer was to lag behind PCs in sales but won a dedicated following that swore by its greater reliability and ease of operation.
He introduced the mouse into personal computing, enabling users to easily interface with the computer without having to type in the tedious commands of the PC. Gates was forced to respond with Windows, which imitated the icon-based approach of Apple.
The early competition between Jobs and Gates during the eighties was legendary and the latter upon learning of Jobs’s passing said: “Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.”
But the early rise of Jobs was to be followed by a fall, and in the classic American dream, culminate in an even more spectacular rise.
With sales of Mac’s lagging, Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985 by its Board, under the prodding of the CEO that he himself had recruited from Pepsi. Jobs admitted later: “”I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.” He became involved through ownership with a computer company, NeXT, and a computer animation company, Pixar. Pixar revolutionised the animation industry (with films like “Toy Story”) and was sold to Disney for $7.4 billion.
NeXT was not very successful with its hardware, but its software caused Apple to purchase the company in 1996, the same year the latter was draining red ink with plummeting sales of Macs. Jobs was brought back as “interim CEO” the next year and declared a new slogan for computer users: “Think Different”. Apple’s first new product under his direction, the brightly coloured, plastic iMac that used the operations system from NeXT was launched in 1998 and sold about 2 million in its first year. It catapulted Apple into profitability and Jobs dropped the “interim” from his title by 2000.
The iPod was the first non-computer gadget produced by Apple and hooked many lifelong Windows users that could now have “1000 songs in their pocket”. It became smaller and sleeker and more in demand every year. The iTunes music store in 2003 gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song and changed the music industry, while making Apple the gatekeeper.
The iPhone’s launch in 2007 was an amazing tribute to the marketing wizardry of Jobs, as faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad’s debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance. Apple was now the second most valuable business in the US – far outstripping the old rival Microsoft. Can Guyana nurture such a talent?

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