Steve Jobs - page 9

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.

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.

An ultra-rare Apple-1, the first computer Apple ever produced as a company, is coming up for auction. And it’s signed by none other than designer and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

This Apple-1, one of only a handful of the computers thought to exist today, has been restored to an operational state. It comes in its original shipping box, making it an even less common specimen. It could be yours for no more than the price of a typical mid-priced American home.

By calling its November product-launch event “One More Thing,” Apple seems to be dropping a hint that history is about to repeat itself.

Way back at Macworld 2006, then-CEO Steve Jobs introduced a MacBook that set a new course for Apple. This came as a “one more thing” addition at the end of his keynote. Something like that might be about to happen again.

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Over the weekend, the first (and arguably best) actor to play James Bond in a movie, Sean Connery, passed away at the age of 90.

Almost immediately, a story began doing the rounds online about the time, in 1998, when Connery told Steve Jobs that he flat-out refused to participate in an Apple ad. Why? Because Jobs was “a computer salesman” and Connery was “f*cking James Bond.”

It’s a great story. It’s also totally untrue.

Tim Cook quoted poet Maya Angelou in a tweet commemorating Steve Jobs on Monday, the ninth anniversary of the Apple co-founder’s death.

“A great soul never dies,” Cook’s message reads. “It brings us together again and again.” Cook also added a personal note: “You’re always with us Steve, your memory connects and inspires us every day.”

Meanwhile, on the Apple website, admirers’ remembrances of Jobs flowed across a tribute page.

Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs had some advice for director Brad Bird when he was making decisions about merchandise on the 2004 movie The Incredibles: “fewer things, better things.”

Bird recalled the advice during a recent online chat with Training Day director Antoine Fuqua (who, incidentally, just had his last movie acquired by Apple). Bird also recalled speaking with Jobs about the Apple Store, around the time the company was busy opening the first ones.

Most Apple fans have heard Steve Jobs’ introduction of the original 1984 Macintosh. But far fewer are familiar with the initial public demonstrations of the NeXT Computer, the first of two NeXT machines Jobs launched during his years outside Apple.

However, 32 years down the line, an audio recording of one such speech, from the Boston Computer Society, has shown up online. Check it out.

The companies they helped found might have been sworn enemies at times, but Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t hate one another. In fact, as the former Microsoft boss admitted on a recent podcast, he was actually jealous of Steve Jobs.

Appearing on the Armchair Expert podcast, Gates told actor and podcast host Dax Shepard that Jobs was a “wizard” when it came to motivating people. “I was a minor wizard so I couldn’t fall under his spells,” Gates said. “But I could see him casting the spells, and then I would look at people and see them mesmerized … I was so jealous.”

Standing up to Steve Jobs wasn’t easy. Alternately a charmer and a tyrant, he was accustomed to winning arguments on just about everything.

But when photographer Doug Menuez found himself on the receiving end of a Jobs tirade, he stood his ground. And the result was not only the best-selling cover of Fortune magazine that year, but a newfound level of respect from Apple’s famous co-founder.

For long-time Apple fans like myself, Tuesday marked the end of an era. Phil Schiller stepped down from his role as VP of worldwide marketing.

Schiller was the last of the OG — a stalwart onstage companion to Steve Jobs, long before it was fashionable to watch Apple keynotes. Schiller was there at all the seminal moments in Apple history, including the launch of iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Back in the day, he and Jobs were a remarkable double act. Jobs would announce the products, and then Schiller would stride in to perform the demos.

Fortunately, Schiller’s not gone for good. In his new role as an Apple Fellow, he will still keep an eye on the App Store and Apple Events. But I wanted to take this opportunity to remember the man, the legend, that is Phil Schiller. Here are the top 10 reasons why I’ll miss him.

Like Steve Jobs? Have approximately $11,000 as a starting bid to pick up some memorabilia to prove as much? Then you could be in the market for a Jobs-autographed October 1989 copy of Fortune magazine autographed by the Apple co-founder.

The magazine, which was signed for one of Jobs’ former chauffeur drivers, is going up for auction this week. And it comes complete with a story of Jobs being, well, Jobs.

Update July 31, 2020: The copy of Fortune that Steve Jobs reluctantly signed for his chauffeur sold for $16,638 on Thursday, significantly above the minimum bid.

As a result of coronavirus-induced lockdowns, the way we work has changed dramatically in 2020. Plenty of employees and businesses are now talking seriously about remote working and whether it represents a viable path forward for reimagining employment.

It turns out that Steve Jobs was talking about this exact topic 30 years ago. No, Jobs didn’t foresee COVID-19. But an old interview clips unearthed by journalist Jon Erlichman shares Jobs’ thoughts on the way technology can transform the way that you and I work.

Check it out.

Michael Hawley, the man who helped Steve Jobs write his famous 2005 Stanford commencement address, has died as a result of cancer at the age of 58.

Hawley, who shared a house with Jobs at one time and worked with him at NeXT, was a polymath and pioneer in his own right. At NeXT, he created one of the world’s first digital libraries. He also helped conceive of the Internet of Things, worked at MIT’s world-famous Media Lab, was scientific director for one of the first major scientific expeditions on Everest in 1998, and was an accomplished piano player and organist.

Lately, all kinds of stories have circulated online about TV host Ellen DeGeneres not exactly being the nicest person in Hollywood. But one mentioned in a recent New York Post article had an Apple tie-in.

According to the article, Ellen once phoned up none other than Steve Jobs himself to complain that the font size was too small on the iPhone after she lost her glasses and was unable to read the screen.

Rapper 50 Cent claims that he personally pitched Steve Jobs on paying him $150,000 to promote the iPod in his 2003 music video for the hit song “P.I.M.P.”

“You think you could sell an iPod? I could sell an iPod,” 50 recalled telling Jobs in a recent interview. “Jimmy [Iovine] will tell you, in that 10 minutes that I sat there, I got [Jobs] to give me $150,000. [It was] the first time Apple did product placement in anything, any music video.”

Steve Jobs is coming to the radio. Through the medium of song, that is!

With theaters closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Seattle Opera plans to treat listeners to some much-needed opera by broadcasting some of its past performances on the radio (and streaming them online). Apple fans might want to tune in for Grammy-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, which tells the story of Apple’s iconic late co-founder and CEO.

Zoom calls have exploded during the current coronavirus lockdown. But if you’ve already exhausted the possibilities of different angles and backdrops for your video calls, why not try being a different person entirely? You know, like former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs.

At least, that’s the tech demo/experiment created by coders Ali Aliev and Karim Iskakov. They’ve developed an Animoji or Memoji-style tool called Avatarify that lets users superimpose a real-time mask onto themselves during video calls.

The San Francisco Opera company said Tuesday that it is scrapping its entire summer season — including its premiere of a critically acclaimed opera about the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The classical Grammy Award-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs had been scheduled to run June 20 through July 3. But like Apple’s canceled keynote last month, it will now no longer take place as planned.

Ed Catmull and Dr. Pat Hanrahan, who created the 3D computer graphic breakthroughs that led to Pixar, have been awarded this year’s Turing Award, it was announced Wednesday.

The award, which is often called the Nobel Prize of computing, carries a $1 million prize.

Jerry Manock is one of the great unsung heroes of Apple design. As the father of Apple’s Industrial Design Group, Manock made an indelible contribution to the company’s long line of hit products.

He may not be a household name like Jony Ive, but, starting with the Apple II, Manock played a massive role in making the company what it is today. In an exclusive interview with Cult of Mac, the 76-year-old industrial designer recounts many colorful stories about Cupertino’s past — including one that shows even Steve Jobs got nostalgic.

While the iPad was arguably the purest distillation of Steve Jobs’ computing philosophy, even dyed-in-the-wool Apple fans don’t know everything about the revolutionary tablet.

Whether you’re an Apple newbie who’s just learning the differences between the iPad Air and the iPad Pro or a longtime fan who calls Cupertino products by their code names, there’s always a bit more to find out.

Here are 10 things you (probably) don’t know about the iPad.