Sunday, October 15, 2006

Steve Jobs

A few weeks ago, I saw Lester carrying a library book and being the inquisitive me, I asked him to let me browse through the book and he graciously agreed. On the cover page was a picture of a balding Steve Jobs. For starters, Steve Jobs is the Apple CEO who started Apple and gave the world Ipod and Itunes. I wanted to know more about him as I have little knowledge about him and I have heard stories about him. From the first sentence, I got hooked onto the book and I asked Lester if I could borrow the book. He asked me to return the book. It was not fated for me to borrow the book later on as I couldn't renew the book through the counter.
Being the compulsive shopper, I decided to buy the book as i felt that I needed to have the book and I have not regretted my purchase ever since. The book talks about Steve Jobs childhood on how he was a loner and he wasn't a people person. Steve Jobs was fascinated with electronics when he was young. He went to one of the most expensive college and dropped out soon as he felt he wasn't getting anything out of it. He started a company, Apple with his engineer friend in a garage and their first product, the Apple 1 was a success for a fledgling company. Soon, Apple 2 was a hit and Macintosh arrived with much fanfare and hype but it failed to live up to its predecessor.
Steve Jobs was stripped of executive powers(boardroom politics to cut a long story short) and he left Apple to start a company named NeXT which did not do well and he purchased Pixar and Pixar collaborated with Disney to produce Toy Story which was a smash hit and Pixar went on to produce hit movies. NeXT was purchased by Apple(talk about irony) and Steve Jobs somehow managed to become Apple CEO and he led Apple to greater success and the rest they say is history.
It's very hard not to admire Steve Jobs as he came back from a setback and established himself at Pixar and though he had limited success with NeXT and Pixar was close to closing down, he managed to lead Pixar to greater heights. Very few people have guts as deep as Jobs to quit college and travel to India and start up a company and to start up another company after becoming redundant at his own company and coming back and rewriting history with his first company. I salute you, Steve!!!

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