Steve Jobs and The Garden of Apples
Steve Jobs and The Garden of Apples
From college drop-out to billionaire. Discover Steve Job’s story and how he ended up founding Apple.
Steven Paul Jobs was born on 24 February 1955 in California. The Jobs family adopted him when he was a few months old.
When he was 13, he called Bill Hewlett, cofounder of HP, for some spare parts and ended up with a summer job. That is where he met Steve Wozniak, who at that time was working there.
Later on the two collaborated to sell ‘Blue Boxes’. These were devices that enabled people to make long-distance phone calls at no cost.
After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College, but he did not see the value in spending his parents’ life savings on this education, and dropped out. This gave him the time to attend courses that he was interested in, such as a calligraphy class.
However, this was a tough time for Jobs. He led a minimalist life, and recounted in his speeches how he would collect soda bottles to earn money and get free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.
Perhaps this was the reason behind what he did next:
After returning home and joining Atari, which offered a $100 chip reduction bonus, he collaborated with Wozniak on the project, promising to split earnings. However, he misled Wozniak about the bonus, claiming they earned $700 instead of the actual $5,000, a truth Wozniak learned a decade later.
This was followed by another venture we all know — a small company called Apple Computer Co. They funded it by selling Jobs’ car and Wozniak’s calculator. They initially only wanted to sell components, however their first client wanted a complete computer and placed an order for 50 of them.
One year later, the two unveiled Apple II, which sold 5 million times. Then the company went public and reached a $1.2 billion valuation by the end of the first trading day.
The two made history again with the release of the Macintosh, which changed how people viewed computers. Suddenly they were no longer instruments for work, but creative tools.
After many disagreements with the company board, Jobs left and started NeXt and Pixar. NeXt ended up being acquired by Apple and Pixar by Disney.
Once Jobs returned, he introduced groundbreaking products like the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, MacBook, and iPad.
His health struggles culminated in his resignation as Apple's CEO in August 2011, followed by his passing on October 5, 2011.
One Lesson from Steve Jobs
Follow your intuition.
Steve’s journey was not straight.
He was put up for adoption. He dropped out of college. He did not know what he wanted to do in life.
But one thing is certain.
He always followed his intuition. This led him to partner with people that shared his passions. It led him to that calligraphy class that later became the reason why Apple’s products are so beautiful.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later. You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.
Steve Jobs @ Stanford University, 2005.
Until next Friday,
The Chronicler
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