Darshil Gandhi
The Modern Steve Jobs: A Normative Critique.
Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs was an American information technology entrepreneur and inventor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. CEO and largest shareholder of Pixar Animation Studios; CEO of NeXT Inc. Jobs is widely recognized as pioneer of the Microsoft revolution of the 1970s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. His passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computer, animated movie, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 to sell Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. The duo gained fame and wealth a year later for the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers. In 1979, after a tour of Xerox PARC, Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface. This led to development of failed Apple Lisa in 1983, followed by the Successful Macintosh in 1984. In addition to begin the first mass-produced computer with a GUI, the Macintosh instigated the sudden rise of the desktop publishing industry in 1985 with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphic. Following a long power struggle, Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985.
After leaving Apple, Jobs took a few of its members with to found NeXT, a computer platform development company specialized in state of the art computers for higher-education and business market. In addition, Jobs helped to initiate the development of the visual effects industry when he funded the spin out of the graphic division of George Luca’s company Lucasfilm in 1986. The new company, Pixar, would eventually produced the first fully computer- animated film, Toy-Story, an event made possible in part because of Job’s financial support. In 1997, Apple purchased NeXT, allowing...