Homage to Steve Jobs - A Pioneer of Function and Form
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HOMAGE TO STEVE
JOBS – A PIONEER
OF FUNCTION AND
FORM
computer at CERN – the rst web server on the
Internet - to develop the World Wide Web. Apple’s
buy-out of NeXT in 1996 brought Steve Jobs back
to the company he had co-founded and in which
he served as CEO until shortly before his death.
This meant that a great deal of NeXT technology
subsequently found its way into Apple products,
serving as a foundation for the development of the
MAC OS X operating system, the Apple Store and
the iTunes store.
Before heading back to Apple, Mr. Jobs bought the
ailing computer graphics division of Lucaslm Ltd.,
later renamed Pixar Animation Studios, that went
on to create the world’s rst computer-animated
feature lm,
Toy Story
, which he co-produced. A
slew of box oce hits followed including
A Bug’s
Life
(1998),
Monsters, Inc.
(2001),
Finding Nemo
In a tribute to Mr. Jobs, U.S. President Obama said,
“Steve was among the greatest of American inno-
vators – brave enough to think dierently, bold
enough to believe he could change the world and
talented enough to do it.
A relentless drive to make sophisticated technol-
ogy easy, simple and fun to use was the hallmark
of Steve Jobs’ success. He helped usher in the
era of the personal computer (PC), launching his
company – and the Apple II computer - from his
parents’ garage in the 1970s with his business
partner, Steve Wozniak. Within a decade, Apple
became a serious player in the high-tech arena.
“We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown
from just the two of us in a garage into a US$2 bil-
lion company with over 4,000 employees,” Mr. Jobs
told students at Stanford University in June 2005.
The launch of the Macintosh in 1984 continued to
break new ground at a time when computing was
the realm of a handful of specialists. Its graphical
user interface made it easy to use and possible to
do what no other computer had ever done before.
“The genius of Macintosh is that you don’t have to
be a genius to use it,” a company advertisement
observed.
Undaunted by his departure from Apple in 1985,
a few months later Steve Jobs founded NeXT, a
computer platform development company spe-
cializing in higher education and business markets.
“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out getting red
from Apple was the best thing that could have ever
happened to me. The heaviness of being successful
was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner
again, less sure about everything. It freed me to
enter one of the most creative periods of my life,”
he said.
This proved fortuitous for a number of reasons, not
least the fact that Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT
One of the icons of our age, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc. – the world’s most valuable technology
company
– and of Oscar-winning Pixar Animation Studios, died on October 5, 2011, after a long and cou-
rageous battle with cancer. His quest “to put a dent in the Universe” generated a host of pioneering inno-
vations that have transformed the high-tech business, brought new vigor to the entertainment sector and
improved countless lives. This article explores the extent of Mr. Jobs’genius and his impact on our lives.
Photo: istockphoto / David Paul Morris
Steve Jobs presenting
the ultra-thin laptop
MacBook Air
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