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And despite years of si gns of poor health, his resignation as chief executive of Apple caused a global gasp as the world contemplated the future of an icon and the firm he symbolises.
“Steve Jobs is the most successful CEO in the US of the last 25 years,“ said Google chairman Eric Sch midt, who used to sit on Apple's board but stepped do wn because of overlapping business interests.
“He uniquely combined an artist's touch and an engineer's vision to build an extraordinary company, one of the greatest American leaders in history,“ Schmidt said in a statement.
A college dropout, Jobs floated through India in se arch of spiritual guidance prior to founding Apple — a name he suggested to cofounder Ste ve Wozniak after a visit to a commune in Oregon he ref erred to as an “apple orchard.“ With his passion for mi nimalist design and marke ting genius, Jobs changed the course of personal computing during two stints at Apple and transformed the mobile market.
The iconic iPod, the iPh one — dubbed the “Jesus phone“ for its quasi-religi ous following — and the iP ad are the creation of a man known for his near-obsessive control of the product development process.
“Most mere mortals can not understand a person li ke Steve Jobs,“ Guy Kawas aki, a former Apple employee who considers Jobs “the greatest CEO in the history of man“, said recently. “He's just got a different operating system.“ Charismatic, visionary, ru thless, perfectionist, dict ator — these are some of the words that people use to describe the larger-than-life figure of Jobs, who may be the biggest dreamer the te chnology world has ever known, but also a hard-ed ged businessman.
“Steve Jobs is the business genius of our generation,“ former eBay chief Meg Whitman said recently.
“His contributions to Apple, his contributions to technology, frankly his contributions to America, are unparalleled in the business world. He is amazing.“ Former nemesis Bill Ga tes, the co-founder of Micr osoft, has called Jobs the
most inspiring person in the tech industry and president Barack Obama has he ld him up as the embodim ent of the American Dream.
It's hard to imagine a bi gger success story than Ste ve Jobs, but rejection, failure and bad fate have been part and parcel of who he is. Jobs was given away at birth, driven out of Apple in the mid-80s and struck with cancer when he finally had regained the top of the mountain. His resignation as CEO on Wednesday co mes at a young age of 55.
Jobs grew up with an adopted family in Silicon Valley, which was turning from orchards to homes for workers at Lockheed and other defence and technology companies.
Electronics friend Bill Fernandez introduced him to boy engineer Wozniak, and the two Steves began a friendship that eventually bred Apple Computer. “W oz is a brilliant engineer, but he is not really an entrepreneur, and that's where Jobs came in,“ remembers Fernandez, who was the first employee at Apple.
Wozniak said that his goal was only to design hardware and he had no interest in running Apple.
“Steve Jobs' role was defined — you've got to learn to be an executive in every division of the company so you can be the world's most important person some day.
That was his goal,“ recently joked Woz, who is still listed as an employee reporting directly to Jobs, even tho ugh he has not worked at Apple for years.
Jobs created Apple twice — once when he founded it and the second time after a return credited with saving the company, which now vies with Exxon Mobil as the most valuable publicly traded corporation in the United States.
“Every day to him is a new adventure in the company,“ said Jay Elliot, a former senior vice-president at Apple who worked very closely with Jobs in the eighties. “He is almost like a child when it comes to his inquisitiveness. Steve has such a thirst of understanding for what's going on in the company. What he is intolerant about it — politics, bureaucracy.“ But the inspiring Jobs came with a lot of hard edges, oftentimes alienating colleagues and early investors with his my-way-orthe-highway dictums and plans that were generally ahead of their time.
Elliot was a witness to the acrimony between Jobs and former Apple chief executive John Sculley who
often clashed on ideas, products and the direction of the company. The dispu te came to a head at Apple's first major sales meeting in Hawaii in 1985 where the two “just blew up against each other,“ Elliot said.
“Sometimes life's gonna hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith,“ he told a Stanford graduating class in 2005. He returned to Apple about a decade after he left, working as a co nsultant.
To this point, he has re invented the technology world four or five times, fir st with the Apple II, a beau
tiful personal computer in the 1970s; then in the 1980s with the Macintosh, driven by a mouse and presenting a clean screen that made computing inviting; the ubiquitous iPod debut ed in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and in 2010 the iPad, which a year after it was introduced outsold Macs.
How did he do it? Desi gn fans, Apple employees and Jobs acquaintances credit a natural design sense driven to simplify.
Jobs' return to Apple was a study in reduction.
Ed Niehaus, who was hired by Jobs to do PR for
resurgent Apple, re membe rs an elevator ride that ev e ryone in Silicon Va lley has heard of, but see med more myth than reality. It was so on after Jobs' triumphant return and he was axing pr oduct plans — and people.
Apple was bloated, Nie haus added, and Jobs was bringing back simplicity and focus. “What makes Steve's methodology different from everyone else's is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do — but the things that you decide not to do.
He's a minimalist,“ former CEO Sculley — who was recruited by Jobs, watched him build the Mac, and then helped throw out the Apple founder in a boardroom battle — told the CultofMac website in 2010.
A few steps to Apple design have leaked out over the years, despite the obsessive secrecy that is part of the company culture.
A new product or feature begins with 10 ideas — good ideas, no also-rans, which are presented as “pixel-perfect“ mockups.
Apple culls the 10 to three, which are tried out for months more, before a final star is chosen.
Meanwhile, the design team meets for two types of weekly meetings -one to brainstorm with no limits, and one to focus on getting the product out the door, BusinessWeek described.
When Steve Jobs weighs in, it is with a simple set of verdicts: insanely great; really, really great; and shit, Niehaus recalled.
“Basically Steve tells you exactly what he wants and you just go build it,“ said one former iPhone engineer, who declined to give his name. He remembers working on one project for two months. “Steve said 'What is this shit? Why are you wasting my time?'“ he recalled.
Jobs likes to push. From the very start, people told tales of him putting his — often dirty — feet on the table in meetings. Others tell of Jobs putting down their company, making them defend themselves in interviews. “He was clearly looking for someone who could stand up to him,“ said another former member of the top team. He remembers Jobs and Tim Cook, who is taking over as CEO, as the “metronome“ of the company, with vastly different personal styles and exactly the same “insane“ attention to detail.
Jobs, in fact, revels in details, many a time irking everyone around him with his obsessiveness.
Apple's first CEO Michael Scott has said that Jobs spent weeks contemplating how rounded the edges of the Apple II case should be.
Even Jobs' appearance si mplified over the years.
When he returned to Apple after his decade away, he wore fancy white shirts and vests and even a pin stripe suit to introduce new products.
The black mock turtleneck and jeans that have become the defining Jobs outfit showed up at more comfortable settings, when Jobs wooed developers, in the late 1990s. But he pulled the iPod out of a jeans pocket to introduce the music player in 2001.
From then on, he's barely taken off the outfit.
Jobs has been on leave three times since 2004, and he clearly has thought about an Apple without him. Jobs has had a liver transplant and a rare form of pancreatic cancer.
For years every presentation by Jobs sparked discussions of whether the gaunt executive looked better or worse. Jobs has talked about his own mortality, and said it has been a major driver in his life and work.
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