In his youth, Apple founder Steve Jobs did not conform to the computer nerd stereotype.
A folk-music fan who drove a VW Camper van and dated Joan Baez, Jobs also possessed a burning passion for technology. He was destined to bring computers, which in the early seventies were only used by the government and large corporations, into the homes of the masses.
Born and raised in Silicon Valley, California the teenage Jobs indulged his interest in electronics with a summer job at Hewlett-Packard. There he met his friend Steven Wozniak, with whom he would later make the first ready-made personal computer.
After high school Jobs helped design video games for Atari Inc, and then sought spiritual enlightenment travelling around India and in a Californian commune.
Jobs successfully challenged the axiom that computers, traditionally identified with geekdom, were purely functional, as Apple's aesthetically stylish products became must-have items for the skinny-jeans wearing classes
Returning in 1975 with a Zen-like resolve, Jobs persuaded Wozniak to leave his job at Hewlett-Packard and help him build computers. A year later Apple Computers was born and Jobs and Wozniak soon set up a production line, selling Apple1 computers at the sinister price of $666 each. But it was the release of the Apple II, as the first mass marketed home computer, which really revolutionised the industry when it came out in 1977.
Jobs grasped the significance of the graphic interface system that had been developed at the Stanford Research Institute and made it the modus operandi of his Apple Macintoshes. The system, and the ‘mouse’ hardware without which operating the system was almost impossible, became the standard operating system for the industry.
In 1985 Jobs was ousted from Apple over disagreements with colleagues. He set up a hardware company, NeXT, and bought the Graphics Group, which was later to become Pixar, the computer animation studios behind the kids classic Toy Story.
The NeXT workstation Jobs created did not fare well commercially due to its prohibitive cost, but it did pioneer a number of important technologies. In 1997 Jobs returned as an unpaid advisor to the familiar bosom of Apple and later became CEO, a role he stepped down from earlier in 2011 as his health deteriorated.
The company he left behind had led the way in definining the new computing paradigm, as the desktop PC began to look unwieldy in the age of the internet and mobile communication. More than 25 million iPads have been sold worldwide since the PC tablet's launch in April 2010, while the iPhone has notched more than 110 million sales.
Having eclipsed Microsoft, which had itself left a Job-less Apple trailing in its wake during the 1980s, Apple is now even wealthier than than the world's richest country, the US.
But Jobs transformed more than just the tech giant; it's not hyperbole to say he singlehandedly dictated how computing devices would be used in the post-desktop age. He also successfully challenged the axiom that computers, traditionally identified with geekdom, were purely functional, as Apple's aesthetically stylish products became must-have items for the skinny-jeans wearing classes.
Apple coped badly without Jobs the first time round. If it's to maintain it's awesome momentum this time, it must retain the values of its visionary founder.
