Steve Jobs

February 15, 1982: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs appears on the front cover of Time magazine for the first time. The lengthy cover story makes Jobs the public face of successful tech entrepreneurship.

The first of many Time covers for Jobs, the article — titled “Striking It Rich: America’s Risk Takers” — casts him as the prototypical young upstart benefiting from the burgeoning personal computing revolution. It also identifies him as part of a surge of freshly minted millionaires running their own businesses.

February 12, 2012: Months after his untimely death, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is honored with a Special Merit Grammy Award in recognition of his contributions to the field of music with the iPod and iTunes Music Store.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, collects the Grammy on behalf of Jobs’ family and “everyone at Apple.”

February 9, 1993: NeXT Inc., the company Steve Jobs founded after being pushed out of Apple, quits making computers. The company changes its name to NeXT Software and focuses its efforts entirely on producing code for other platforms.

In a mass layoff, 330 of NeXT’s 500 employees lose their jobs in an event known internally as “Black Tuesday.” Cruelly, many people hear of their fate on the radio.

February 8, 2010: Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly flips out over a tweet sent from an iPad by an editor at The Wall Street Journal.

The reason? Apple showed the iPad to top staffers at the news outlet months ahead of its official release. While Jobs already unveiled the device to the public a couple of weeks before, the suggestion that people outside Apple gained early access to the tablet apparently upset him.

The iPad tweet quickly disappears.

February 4, 2008: Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly considers buying the search engine Yahoo. Apple is one of several interested companies, following reports that Microsoft offered $44.6 billion for the web portal the previous week.

Nothing ultimately comes of it, but Apple’s interest is later confirmed in an authorized biography of Jobs.

How much would you pay for a check signed by both Apple co-founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak? Factor in that it is Apple check No. 1. Got a figure in mind? Now double it. Your guess is probably still less than a collector paid for that item in a recent auction.

It went for a stonking $2.4 million — believed to be the highest price ever paid for a signed check at public auction.

January 28, 1978: Apple Computer occupies Bandley 1, its first custom-built office, giving the company a bespoke business center to house its growing operations in Cupertino, California.

A full 15 years before 1 Infinite Loop, and almost four decades before Apple Park’s stunning “spaceship” HQ  landed, 10260 Bandley Drive in Cupertino becomes the first purpose-built, permanent headquarters for the newly founded company.

January 27, 2010: After months of rumors and speculation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs publicly shows off the iPad for the first time. Aside from the name, which some people joke sounds like a female sanitary product, the first-generation iPad immediately earns critical acclaim.

“The last time there was this much excitement over a tablet, it had some commandments written on it,” The Wall Street Journal quips.

When it goes on sale a few months later, the first-gen iPad quickly becomes Apple’s fastest-selling new product ever.

January 24, 1984: Apple ships its first Mac, the mighty Macintosh 128K.

Bringing a mouse and graphical user interface to the masses, and heralded by an acclaimed Super Bowl commercial that’s still talked about today, the first-gen Mac will quickly become one of the most important personal computers ever released.

The fact that Google Gemini will power the revamped Siri is drawing criticism from people convinced that Apple should have developed its own AI in-house to bring the voice assistant up to speed.

Some of the critics seem to think Apple always made its own software before now. Therefore they regard the deal with Google as a major policy shift — and a sign of weakness that would horrify Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

No. Just … no. These critics will be shocked to learn that many Apple products are built on top of tech developed outside the company … and often, it was Steve Jobs who did it!

January 15, 2008: Apple CEO Steve Jobs shows off the first MacBook Air at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, calling the revolutionary computer the “world’s thinnest notebook.”

The 13.3-inch laptop measures only 0.76 inches at its thickest point and 0.16 inches at its tapered thinnest. It also boasts a unibody aluminum design, thanks to an Apple engineering breakthrough that allows the crafting of a complicated computer case from a single block of finely machined metal.

In a brilliant piece of showmanship during the MacBook Air launch, Jobs pulls the super-slim laptop out of a standard interoffice envelope. (You can watch his keynote introducing the MacBook Air below.)

January 14, 2009: Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ cancer worsens to the point that he takes a medical leave from leading the company.

Despite his illness, Jobs remains reluctant to take the time off. When he does, he keeps quiet about the severity of the situation. He calls “the curiosity over my personal health” a distraction caused by prying bloggers and reporters. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that his health problems “are more complex than I originally thought.”

January 13, 2000: Steve Jobs’ longtime frenemy Bill Gates quits as Microsoft CEO, stepping down just a month after his company’s stock hit its all-time high.

The news coincides with a turning point in the long-running battle between the two tech powerhouses. Microsoft begins a long decline from its previous dominance, while Apple continues its rise to the top.

This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: Did the world just get its first glimpse at the folding iPhone’s screen? And how the heck does anybody bend glass?!?

Also on the Cult of Mac podcast:

• Plastering the iPhone 17’s camera plateau with tiny stickers is a thing.
• A new auction lets you bid on some truly bizarre Steve Jobs artifacts, and we’re generally amazed. Will people pay for Jobs’ old 8-tracks and bow ties?
• Special guest (and frequent Cult of Mac contributor) Graham Bower explains how he vibe-coded his new strength-training app, Reps & Sets 26. It’s an inspirational tale!
• And finally, we pay tribute to the best Apple setups we saw last year.

Listen to this week’s episode of the Cult of Mac podcast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video, embedded below.

And, as a reminder, you can still hear our friend and colleague Erfon Elijah on The CultCast.

January 10, 2006: Steve Jobs unveils the original 15-inch MacBook Pro, Apple’s thinnest, fastest and lightest laptop yet.

Building on the previous PowerBook G4 laptop, the new laptop adds dual-core Intel processors for the first time. The MacBook Pro immediately makes waves in the tech community. And did we mention its awesome MagSafe connector?

January 9, 2007: Apple CEO Steve Jobs gives the world its first look at the iPhone onstage during the Macworld conference in San Francisco. The initial reaction to that first iPhone demo is mixed. But Jobs is confident that Apple has created a product that people want — even if they don’t know it yet.

The palm-size device combines an iPod, a phone and a PDA. The iPhone unveiling excites many Apple fans but critics remain skeptical.

January 8, 2004: The clumsily named iPod+HP, a Hewlett-Packard-branded iPod, debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Shown off by Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the prototype device is blue, the color used for HP’s branding. By the time it arrives on the market later that year, however, the digital music player is the same shade of white as the regular iPod. The device doesn’t hang around for long, either.

January 7, 1997: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak returns to the company to participate in an advisory role, reuniting with Steve Jobs onstage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Woz’s homecoming is revealed at the end of the Macworld conference. With Jobs’ recent return to Apple (thanks to the NeXT acquisition), it marks the first time the two co-founders have been at Apple together since 1983. It’s a great way to celebrate Apple’s 20th anniversary. Unfortunately, the reunion won’t last.

How would you like to own a ribbon cable once owned by Steve Jobs? Or how about a heat sink? What about his boyhood collection of bow ties?

These are just three of about 200 items associated with the Apple co-founder currently being auctioned online to celebrate Apple’s 50th anniversary.

Entitled “Steve Jobs & the Computer Revolution: The Apple 50th Anniversary Auction,” the collection of weird auction stuff is more interesting than usual. It provides a glimpse inside Jobs’ childhood home and the legendary Silicon Valley garage where Apple was born. There’s also Apple’s very first check, expected to go for a cool half million.

January 3, 1977: Apple Computer Co. is officially incorporated, with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak listed as co-founders. The Apple incorporation leaves out third founder Ron Wayne — who initially invested in the company — because he sold back his stake in Apple for $800.

The funding and expertise needed to turn Apple into a corporation is provided by a man named Mike Markkula, who becomes an important figure in the company’s history.

December 30, 1999: Microsoft hits the height of its 1990s dominance and begins its early-2000s decline, clearing a gap at the top for Apple.

After hitting an all-time high of $53.60, Microsoft stock starts to fall. Less than a year later, MSFT shares will fall more than 60% in value to $20.

December 29, 1999: Apple starts shipping its unfathomably large 22-inch Cinema Display, the biggest LCD computer display available anywhere,

Apple’s all-digital flat panel is a far cry from the bulky cathode ray tube monitor of the original iMac, which took the world by storm the previous year. The Cinema Display is also Apple’s first widescreen display — and the first to sport a digital video interface.

December 28, 2006: As the rest of the country enjoys a much-deserved holiday, Apple gets embroiled in a stock option “backdating” scandal.

The news, centered on the dubious awarding of stock options to CEO Steve Jobs, prompts Apple’s share price to fall. Some people even suggest Jobs might need to step down as Apple’s leader. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen.

December 27, 2010: Almost four months after the second-gen Apple TV’s debut, Cupertino says it has sold 1 million of the streaming video devices.

The news shows that Apple’s set-top box is gaining momentum. However, Apple’s PR move — which included a preemptive press release issued on December 21 that said Apple “expects sales of its new Apple TV to top one million units later this week” — is also a low-blow shot at competitor Roku, which recently said it planned to hit the 1 million unit mark by the end of 2010.

December 26, 1982: Time magazine names the personal computer its “Man of the Year.”

It’s the first time a nonhuman entity wins the award, which was created in 1927. The award devastates Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — because he thought the accolade would go to him.