Apple Computer Company. Without Steve Jobs, it would not exist. Steve Wozniac wanted to give away what he built to his friends for free. He would never have built a company. Never. It would not have happened. Steve Jobs designed and built Apple Computer from scratch.
The GUI based computer at Apple. Prior to Steve Jobs insisting on it, the Lisa was going to be a Command Line based computer, but he, and only he, forced the change to a GUI, mouse driven design, and he negotiated the deal to bring the LISA engineering team to Xerox PARC where he drove the agenda of what he wanted, in a computer. That was the driving force. Watch this video interview from about 30 to 36 minutes in for the perspective of one of the XEROX Engineers who was at PARC when Steve Jobs came calling with his team.
Computerized use of Calligraphic Fonts in Computing and typesetting. Steve Jobs insisted that the fonts in Macintosh computers must be excellent and would not sign off on them until they were the best that could be. . . having studied calligraphy he understood fonts and typefaces as no other computer engineer did and as a result we have desktop publishing and WYSIWYG displays and printing, something that did not reach the Microsoft world until many years after the Mac had it because of Steve Jobs innovation in making it integral to the GUI. To do it, he required the screen had to have square pixels. . . not rectangular. That was Jobs, and required lots of engineering to make it happen. His innovation. He also made the page the metaphor for the screen. . . because that is what people worked with. Again, Steve.
NeXT Computer Company. NeXT computer company would never have existed without Steve Jobs. . . he designed and created this company from scratch and the inspiration for the design of computer was Steve Jobs', no one else's. It followed the concepts and precepts of what he could not do with the Macintosh.
PIXAR PIXAR would not be what it is today without Steve's input. . . it was going down the tubes. No, he did not found it, but he re-vitalized it. . .
Apple Computer post 1998 EVERY product had Steve's imprimatur before it could be manufactured . . . and it had to meet his exacting standards or it did not get made. Or even green lighted to be started as a consumer product. That is a talent beyond value for a company to know what NOT to make. Few companies have that talent and waste a lot of resources making unnecessary products that simply don't sell. Apple had few flops under Steve Jobs because of his ability to know what would be the next thing that would be needed in the market place.
You damn Steve Jobs because you don't know what a man like Steve Jobs can do. . . because you really don't understand what "innovation" or "design" entails. IT is not sitting down at a drawing board and drawing a design, or inventing a circuit, or even coming up with a cool look. . . it is often finding and directing the talent around you and controlling what they come up with and assembling their collective efforts into a cohesive whole, making everything come together into an esthetic, working, operational and profitable product that CAN be manufactured in a reasonable time line, in sufficient quantities for a reasonable cost that can be sold in sufficient quantities to keep the company in the black. . . and do it consistently with wonderful products that the PUBLIC loves! Steve was a brilliant genius at doing all of that!
Very good summary. Thank you. Mr. Jobs was a genius who knew what he wanted but lacked social skills. I read Gil Amelio’s “On the Firing Line” twice.
It is correct to say that designers use Mac’s. I remember in the late 1990’s how Macs worked smoothly while Windows was crashing weekly.
Instead of buying the APPLE IIC I should have bought Apple stock.