“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matter to me”
– Steve Jobs
We all know the company – Apple Inc. “The technology giant headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley that designs, develops, and sells computer electronics, computer software and online services” – this is what internet would tell you. Through this article today, I’ll try to give you a tour through the history of Apple, how it started, what it stands for, what were some of the problems faced by the company through the course of climbing the ladder to become what it is today and why I find this story interesting and worth reading.
Let us start with a fun fact. Do we know Steve Jobs was forced out from his own company? Yes, in 1985 after a long power struggle with the company’s board and its then CEO John Sculley, Steve Job was forced to leave the company he had founded. What a disheartening moment it would have been for him, when he was separated from his dream company, when his hard work and vision was stolen from him. But this did not stop him. He founded another company, NEXT which performed pretty well, though let’s not deviate to that.
Fast forwarding to the story of Steve Jobs and Apple Inc…
Steve Jobs, the business tycoon was a college dropout with a fantastically genius brain. He stood for perfection, innovation and creation. After dropping out of college in 1972 he travelled through India in 1974 to seek enlightenment and study Zen Buddhism. He soon got back, and continued with his casual life. It was then that he realised that he was not meant to work under someone. He was meant to create, to be his own boss and to do the impossible.
With his friend Steve Wozniak, Jobs laid the first stone towards building what Apple is today. They launched the Apple I – a computer that could save program data. Saving data is something that might sound pretty common to us today, but back then it was not. It was a HUGE thing. Here, we refer to the era when having a computer was not a necessity or a commonality. It was considered to be a useless expenditure to a common man. Consider today’s world, living through the covid-19 pandemic without a laptop and mobile phone might seem next to impossible, though back then, things were different.
Jobs had a bigger role to play than simply designing and creating the impossible, he had to convince people about its importance. He had to make people know that the new devices they have created is the future. Struggles marked this path, and Jobs sailed through it like a hero.
He was a man of perfection. Everything as simple as the preference to choose from a list of font styles was given due importance. He believed that the device they were creating is for the common people, and thus should not only be simple and easy-to-use, but it should also be elegant. We need to thank Jobs for the PC, the mouse, speakers that are in-built, the i-pod, (list continues) and the vision.
Gradually, taking one step after another, probably even stumbling on many, and sometimes even falling back to where he started from, Steve Jobs built the Apple Inc empire. Today, Apple is not just a company that manufactures best quality devices, it is a social status. The symbol of the scooped fruit of creation, has its own eminence.
There was a time once when Steve Jobs was forced out of his own company, his personal life was disrupted, and Apple was facing loss quarter reports. But Jobs as we know, he thought differently, the result of which is pretty evident to each one of us.
The Unique Selling Point of Apple is its desire to understand the people and their needs, and thus create a gadget that serves the needs of those people by looking into every minute detail. This is how they realised the need for privacy, one thing that can in today’s world be directly associated with Apple. Apple does not only believe in creating innovative technology, but also aims at using the best version of the existing technology. An i3 processor Apple laptop is much more efficient than the same processor in any competitor company laptop.
We have been taught to accommodate and live with what we have. The very first lessons taught to us have been on the lines of being contended with all that is available to us. But Apple believes in steeping out of that box. It believes that it is a bad idea to be contended, because if that was so, we would still be nomads roaming around in jungles rubbing stones to see how magically ‘the red flower’ emerged from it. Apple believes that a person who can dare to say to the world that ‘I want to change you’ can actually be the ‘genius’ who changes the world – and Apple have sheer respect for that ‘genius’.
‘We are here to put a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?’
– Steve Jobs
By Krina K Sanghvi, Tamil Nadu
