The career of Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been punctuated by so much drama, so many triumphs and tragedies, it has taken on an almost-mythical quality. Now, the leader that rabid Apple fans see as the white knight of the technology world has set off on another mythical quest to slay a new dragon.
So, it seems appropriate to look back on the sometimes-thorny path Jobs has taken, as well as the four dragons that he has slain. And, of course, we’ll look at the new dragon that Jobs is hunting.
The myth of Steve
Jobs burst on the scene in the late 1970s as the boy leader who became the evangelist of the personal computer revolution. In 1984, he led the team at Apple that brought the graphical user interface to the masses with the Macintosh.
Then, just as quickly as he had burst upon the business world, his world imploded. In a failed struggle for power and control at Apple, he got kicked out of his own company in 1985 and went into exile. He was a rich has-been by the age of 30.
Over the following decade, his next two companies — NeXT Computer (which he founded) and Pixar Animation (which he bought from George Lucas) - quietly made some important breakthroughs in computing but struggled financially and started bleeding away the $100 million fortune that Jobs had made at Apple.
Jobs launched a coup to reclaim his white knight status in the mid-1990s. His first bit of redemption came with Pixar in 1995 when Toy Story became the highest grossing animated feature of all time and Pixar rode that acclaim to a very successful IPO, orchestrated by Jobs himself. Once the IPO launched, it instantly turned Jobs into a billionaire.
His next bit of redemption was even sweeter. At the end of 1996, a badly-struggling Apple decided to purchase NeXT to help reinvent itself as a technology innovator. Jobs initially joined Apple as an advisor as part of the NeXT deal, but he quickly convinced the Apple board to get rid of its leader, Gil Amelio. As a result, Jobs was thrust into the role of “interim CEO” and company savior.
What happened next was a series of conquests that far exceeded anyone’s expectations and returned Apple to the role of technology superpower. These conquests also anointed Steve Jobs with the reputation of being a mix between warrior and magician.
Dragon #1: The Macintosh
When Jobs returned, Apple was in such bad shape that he wasn’t even sure it was salvageable - and industry analysts shared his skepticism. The company’s finances were in the toilet, the product roadmap was a mess, and the Apple brand itself had lost most of its former luster. Something dramatic was needed to save Apple from being bought out in a fire sale or simply fading into oblivion.
Jobs launched a two-part strategy to reinvigorate Apple. He started with the Think Different ad campaign, which associated the Apple brand with creative thinkers and revolutionaries. It was a huge hit, winning awards, drawing consumer interest, and generating tons of media buzz. But, above all, it set the stage for the rebirth of the Macintosh.
While the Think Different ads were making people feel cooler about the fruity computer maker, Jobs also refocused Apple’s product and engineering teams on developing the company’s next great product.
By the late 1990s computer sales were spiking due to the new killer app: the Internet. Lots of people were buying their first computers just to “get online.” Apple latched on to this trend with a computer that was designed to make connecting to the Internet as easy as taking the computer out of the box and plugging in two cords. Jobs and Co. even named it after the Internet - the iMac.
The iMac was a throwback to the original Mac in that it was an integrated all-in-one system, but it also included a unique new design with a translucent blue and white plastic case that allowed you to see the electronics and circuit boards inside. In the world of beige computers at the time, the iMac was extremely stylish. The launch of the iMac in 1998 (combined with the similarly-styled iBook and Power Mac G4 in 1999) drove a huge spike in Mac sales - at one point the iMac was even the single best-selling computer model in the world.
The Mac was back.
Dragon #2: The iPod
One of the things Apple had occasionally done to increase the appeal of the Macintosh platform was to build its own applications to match the style of the Mac and show off its capabilities. With the Mac’s revival and the launch the new Mac OS X operating system in 2001, Apple resurrected the strategy of making some of its own software apps.
One of the apps that it decided to build was a software jukebox so that users could copy music CDs to their Macs and manage all of their music digitally. This was part of Jobs’ strategy of turning Apple into a digital lifestyle brand and the Mac into a personal media hub.
In the process of making the software that would become iTunes, the Apple team also decided to make it compatible with some of the new MP3 players that allowed users to carry some of their songs in the digital equivalent of a Sony Walkman. However, after looking at the various MP3 players, Apple decided that all of them were crap and decided to design its own player instead. That’s when the iPod was born.
The first iPod launched on October 23, 2001 with 5GB of storage and the promise of “1,000 songs in your pocket.” Initially, it was only compatible with Macs and Apple viewed it as an accessory to help increase the appeal of the Mac. But, Jobs quickly realized that the iPod had much broader appeal, and much bigger sales potential.
In 2003, Apple ported iTunes to Windows and sales of the iPod skyrocketed. By the end of 2004, Apple had sold over 8 million iPods and was the dominate force in the digital music player market. Despite this dominance, and the fact that Jobs had convinced the music industry to sell its songs through the iTunes store, there were still a lot of doubts at that point about whether Apple would continue to own this market. With new players coming from Sony, Rio, Creative, Dell, and (eventually) Microsoft, a lot of analysts expected Apple to fade into a niche player, just as it had done in the computer business. It never happened.
By 2009, the iPod accounted for over 70% market share in the digital music player business.
