Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011. Ten years later, Apple’s current CEO Tim Cook sent a memo to all employees about his former boss and friend. In it, he says that Jobs’ passion to change the world for the better lives on in the company.
While Steve Jobs died 10 years ago today, he lives on as a way to criticize Apple’s current management.
In some people’s misguided memories, Jobs did no wrong. Ever. And members of this reality-challenged group — let’s call it the Church of Steve Jobs — frequently post comments on social media like, “Apple would be so much better if Steve Jobs were still in charge.”
But in reality, Jobs made plenty of mistakes. Here are some of his worst foul-ups.
Ten years after Steve Jobs’ death on this day in 2011, Apple is thriving when many predicted it wouldn’t.
Go back and look at articles published in the wake of his death, and it’s all gloom, gloom, gloom. But a decade on, the company is worth more than $2 trillion, revenues have nearly tripled, the stock is up more than 1,000%, and there’s no end in sight.
Apple’s success has many fathers of course, but one big one is that Jobs’ personality has been deeply embedded into the company and how it does things. It’s called “the routinization of charisma,” and it helps explains why Apple continues to prosper.
Apple today commemorates its co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs ten years after he passed away from pancreatic cancer. The company’s homepage has been adorned with images of Jobs throughout his years at Apple, as well as an official film and a statement from the Jobs family.
“We miss him profoundly,” the statement reads. “We were blessed to have him as a husband and father.”
An old, spiral-bound, somewhat stained Apple II computer manual from 1980 went under the hammer at auction the other day. When all was said and done, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay had the winning bid for the thing — $787,484.
Rumors circulating way back in 2011 said Apple was planning an iPhone nano, its first budget iOS device. The handset didn’t come out for years and it used a different name, but new evidence proves the early leaks were 100% accurate.
A job application filled out by 18-year-old Steve Jobs in 1973 has sold for $343,000 — and, based on its history, that may actually be a pretty good deal.
The rare paper document, possibly the only job application Apple’s late co-founder and CEO filled in in his life, has proven to be a pretty great investment over the years. This time, it was accompanied by an NFT sale for the same document, which pulled in around $23,000.
Long before there was the iPhone, users in France had another connected device with which they could do everything from check movie listings or the weather to chatting with other users or booking vacations: The Minitel.
Pre-dating the World Wide Web by several years, the Minitel was a French videotex online service that could be accessed through the phone line. It was used by tens of millions of people in France. Among those who gave it a go? None other than Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — who once got a unit sent to the U.S. so he could put it through its paces.
We’ll soon find out how the ongoing fascination with Steve Jobs will combine with the new fascination for NFTs. A handwritten job application the Apple cofounder filled out in 1973 is going up for auction both as a physical document and as a Non-Fungible Token.
Rapper Soulja Boy, best known for his 2007 viral hit “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” has another claim to fame as well: According to the 30-year-old rapper, Steve Jobs visited him on the set of his first music video and brought him the first iPhone.
At least, that’s the story Soulja Boy shared in a clip from an upcoming podcast interview for Million Dollaz Worth of Game. “I was the first rapper with the iPhone,” Soulja Boy says. “It was ‘Crank That’ video shoot 2007. Steve Jobs and the Apple team came. I was in the swimming pool, doing the instructional dance. Showing the people how to do the dance … They came, they brought me the iPhone.”
Designer Antonio De Rosa has released another set of conceptual renderings for a possible Apple product. This time he’s picturing a retro-cool take on the much-anticipated Apple Glass augmented reality eyeglasses many expect to see come out this year.
As CEOs of Apple, both Tim Cook and his predecessor Steve Jobs pride or, in Jobs’ case, prided themselves on the ability to say “no” to ideas. For obvious reasons, most of the time the world never gets to hear what those shot-down ideas actually were.
However, emails disclosed as part of the discovery for the Epic vs. Apple trial, now adjourned, shows one of the ideas that was talked about internally — but ultimately abandoned. That ideas was for a 15-inch MacBook Air, discussed as far back as 2007, the year before Apple debuted its ultra-thin notebook.
Former president Trump’s plan to create a National Garden of American Heroes has been cancelled by the Biden Administration. It would have created an open-air space with statues of a wide variety of Americans, including Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Trump created the garden by executive order, and President Biden completely cancelled it Friday with another executive order. No reason was given.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is one of hundreds of people who’ll have a statue in the National Garden of American Heroes that President Trump ordered be created.
The list includes a wide variety of men and women from history, including politicians, generals, explorers, inventors, writers, actors and more.
Disagreements between Apple and Facebook have made headlines recently, but bad blood between the two companies dates back decades. In 2011, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs even called the social-networking service “Fecebooks.”
April 29, 1997: Steve Jobs’ friend Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, calls off his bid to take over Apple.
Ellison’s plan is to reinstall Jobs, who is then just an adviser to Apple CEO Gil Amelio, as the company’s chief executive. He also wants to take Apple private again.
Apple came up short at Sunday night’s Oscars, losing its Best Animated Feature nomination (for the great animated movie Wolfwalkers) to Pixar’s Soul.
As brilliant as it was (and Cult of Mac‘s resident reviewer hailed it as the best animated flick of the year) Wolfwalkers was very much a long shot. This would have been Apple TV+’s first Oscar. Instead, it was scuppered by Pixar winning its 11th (!!) award in the Best Animated Feature category.
Steve Jobs didn’t turn off his phone often. But if he did, it probably meant that he was in Jony Ive’s Industrial Design department, where Jobs relaxed by scouring prototypes of future Apple products.
That’s according to Jobs’ former assistant, Naz Beheshti, in a new book titled Pause. Breathe. Choose: Become the CEO of Your Well-Being. While the book focuses mainly on Beheshti’s practice as a wellness coach, it includes a few memories of her time at Apple. Including how Apple staffers would go into meltdown when they couldn’t reach Jobs — and how they eventually figured out where this meant he was.
Today marks 45 years since a little outfit called the Apple Computer Company was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Apple set out to build and sell personal computers. Since then, it’s risen from a hobbyist startup to a tech giant valued at more than $2 trillion.
In the last four and a half decades, Apple changed the tech world in all kinds of ways — some big, some small. Here, in no particular order, are 45 of the most notable ways Apple put a ding in the universe.
Over a platter of sushi, Steve Jobs once bragged to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that Apple had created the greatest Windows application ever built. The Apple co-founder then suggested, in a roundabout way, that the software could kill a major stream of revenue for Amazon.
Jobs was referring to iTunes for Windows, which Apple introduced in October 2003 (and which Jobs later referred to as the equivalent of “giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.”) Bezos got a look at iTunes for Windows before the rest of the world did. And he also endured a typically Jobsian dig about CDs and Amazon’s future.
The fascination with Steve Jobs continues on a decade after he passed away. A handwritten job application the Apple cofounder filled out in 1973 sold on Thursday for $221,747 (£162,000). That’s far more than it went for three years ago.
OS X, the most important piece of software in Apple history, turns 20 today.
Going on sale in its full, public version on March 24, 2001, Mac OS X 10.0 — code-named Cheetah, the first of many cat-themed names — transformed Apple’s operating system forever. It brought user interface enhancements that persist to this day, as well as technological advances that form the backbone of Apple’s current operating systems. In fact, OS X paved the way for today’s post-PC devices, from the iPhone and Apple Watch to HomePod and Apple TV. If you’d like to know more about Apple’s operating system evolution, check out this deep dive into its history.
While Apple eventually ditched the “OS X” branding for “macOS,” and switched from naming Mac software after big cats to California locations in 2013, Cheetah’s impact continues to be felt two decades after its introduction.
Tim Cook has tweeted about Steve Jobs on what would have been his former boss’s 66th birthday. Jobs passed away 10 years ago this year, the same period of time that Cook has now been running Apple.
“Celebrating Steve on what would have been his 66th birthday,” Cook wrote. “Especially in a year where so much kept us apart, technology brought us together in limitless ways. That’s a testament to Steve’s life and the legacy he left, which continue to inspire me every day.”
Long before Tim Cook brought his operations wizardry to Apple, Del Yocam lent his logistical prowess to Cupertino. Apple’s first chief operating officer, he helped transform the company from a chaotic, scrappy startup into a streamlined manufacturing powerhouse.
He also served as an early mentor to Steve Jobs, the young Apple co-founder who sometimes seemed out of his depth in 1979.
“When I first got to know him, he was lost,” Yocam told Cult of Mac. “He was no longer involved in the Apple II and no one wanted him around, especially management. He didn’t care about money at that time. He was like an orphan, living away from home.”
In many ways, Yocam was the proto-Tim Cook, a manufacturing and operations specialist who helped transform a dysfunctional startup into a massive, moneymaking leader of the early PC industry. He also helped take the rapidly growing company international.
Yocam deserves more credit for helping build Apple than history has so far accorded him. He was one of the main players at a crucial point in Cupertino’s history.
Yocam, now 76, recently talked with Cult of Mac about Apple’s early days. In this exclusive interview, he discusses his friendship and working relationship with Jobs, Apple’s challenging, fascinating, and sometimes malodorous co-founder.
He also reveals new details about Jobs’ tearful ouster from Apple — and how Jobs later offered him an amazing job, only to revoke it at the last moment.
Steve Jobs didn’t have to fill in a whole lot of job applications during his life. After founding Apple Computer at 21, Jobs’ name was well enough known that he didn’t have to mail off too many resumes and cover letters. Or have reasons to send them out.
However, one of the rare applications Jobs did complete is coming up for auction. It’s a great piece of memorabilia, even if it will likely set you back a whole lot more than Steve would have ever earned in the role.
One of the things that always surprised me was how, compared to some of his Silicon Valley peers, Steve Jobs’ net worth during his life paled in comparison to some of his contemporaries.
When Jobs died in late 2011, his net worth was reported as being $10.2 billion. That’s an enormous amount of money, but it was a drop in the ocean next to Bill Gates’ $56 billion that year, and less than Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s $19.8 billion apiece, Michael Dell’s $14.6 billion, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s $13.5 billion.
Had Jobs had the same share arrangement today, however, it would be a very different story.