Dublin University’s financial newspaper - SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
Jobs remembered
The mind of a visionary laid bare
BY IAN O’CONNELL Editor
BY ROB FARHAT Contributing Writer
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Steve Jobs dead age 56 World loses visionary
Steve Jobs, arguably the greatest chief executive of all time, lost his battle with cancer late last night. While Jobs fought a rare form of pancreatic cancer, he was deeded the life of Apple and was the foundation of the company’s major success in recent years. The man that gave us the iPod, iPhone, iTunes, the Macintosh series and the iPad is directly responsible for revolutionising the technology industry. Mr Jobs’ death was announced by Apple in a statement late yesterday. Jobs’ battle with cancer led him to resign his post at Apple in August, handing over to current chief executive Tim Cook. Rumour mills anticipating the launch an iPhone 5 were largely frustrated. Instead the iPhone 4S led shares to slide as much as 7 % at certain times of the day.
“Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could — I’m searching for the right word — could, could die.” -Steve Jobs. US President Barack Obama was among the first to pay tribute to the talented innovator. “The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success ›› Steve Jobs: 1956-2011 than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he energy were the source of countless invented,” Mr Obama said. innovations that enrich and improve “Steve’s brilliance, passion and all of our lives. The world is immeas-
A Bad Apple BY OWEN BENNETT Deputy Editor The untimely death of Steve Jobs comes at a time when Apple, the Silicon Giant which Jobs founded and effectively ruled until recently, is facing notable battles and uncertainty. Apple faces challenges on all fronts and many fear that without the cool hand of Steve Jobs at the steering wheel, the outlook is bleek. In recent months, competitors have been lining up, eager to grab a slice of Apple’s pie which Jobs protected so
brilliantly. Google’s Android system is gaining market share, with the ultimate goal of crushing the iphone while Itunes is under attack from Netflix. And just a few weeks ago, Amazon confirmed rumors that it is developing a rival tablet, one capable of competing with and overtaking the seemingly omnipotent ipad. Barak Obama described Jobs as “brave”, “bold” and “talented” and labeled him one of America’s greatest innovators. As such, anyone destined to ever fill Jobs’ shoes would face a momentous challenge. Enter Tim Cook. The man who replaced Jobs just a few weeks ago experienced a baptism of fire this week when he unveiled the updated
version of Jobs’ brainchild, the iphone. Reviews were critical of Cook’s performance, with many analyists claiming he simply does not have the vision and innovative nature of his predecessor to take Apple forward. However, as a result of the current economic crisis, markets are effectively on constant high alert. Any degree of uncertainty or negativity can send share prices into freefall. As such, one need not take much credence from the fall in Apple’s share price on the back of Job’s death. The fundamentals at Apple are still remarkably sound. Tim Cook has proven himself in the position of Chief Operations Officer, and while he may not have the charisma or god like stature of Jobs, he is still an extremely capable CEO. Moreover, the design team Jobs created during his second stint with the tech giant is still, for the most part, intact. Many of those who played key roles in the
urably better because of Steve,” Apple said in a statement announcing his passing.
development of the signature Apple products such as the iPod and the itouch are still heavily involved. Moreover, given the emphasis Apple places on long term strategy and development, many of the Apple products set to be released in the medium term will be very “Jobsian” in nature. It will not be for at least two years before Apple releases a product completely independent of Jobs’ involvement. In that context, while Apple faces an uncertain future, it is by no means down and out. The brand still commands unrivalled consumer loyalty, an observation corroborated by news that Apple customers are set to hold an iphone lit vigil outside the firms’ stores in New York and Shanghai. Jobs legacy will be mighty, with his thinking set to dominate Apple’s corporate philosophy in the coming years.
Steve Jobs’ speeches were the stuff of legend. His Apple keynote addresses – where he unveiled one revolutionary new product after another – were spell-binding and consistently sending Apple’s stocks though the roof. But if there was one Steve Jobs speech that gave an intimate account of how his mind worked, as opposed to what it produced, it was his Stanford University Commencement Address in 2005. The speech starts with an account of Jobs’ background. He was adopted by working class parents, who spent all of their savings on sending him to Reed College. After six months, he dropped out and for the next year and a half, he sneaked into various classes including an advanced calligraphy class, which inspired the “beautiful typography” of the Mac, which “Windows just copied”. This trusting of his gut and doing what he was interested in, as opposed to what was expected of him, was key to his later success. The second part of the speech revolves around his departure from Apple in 1985, when due to differences with the new Apple CEO whom he hired, he was sacked. But Jobs describes this parting of ways as “the best thing that could have ever happened to me”. He went on to found Pixar which is now the most profitable animation studio in film. The final part of the speech focuses on death. “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life”. Every product he created was a labour of love – he made them not to please consumers or the markets, but to please himself. He consistently innovated at rates that no one else in our lifetime has matched. He was a true tech genius, and his absence will undoubtedly be felt in the world of technology for years to come.
06 OCTOBER 2011 SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
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STEVE JOBS SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
THE BULL 06.010.2011
FAMOUS QUOTES “I WAS WORTH OVER $1,000,000 WHEN I WAS 23, AND OVER $10,000,000 WHEN I WAS 24, AND OVER $100,000,000 WHEN I WAS 25, AND IT WASN’T THAT IMPORTANT BECAUSE I NEVER DID IT FOR THE MONEY.”
I’M THE ONLY PERSON I KNOW THAT’S LOST A QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS IN ONE YEAR…. IT’S VERY CHARACTER-BUILDING.”
No more Jobs BY DAMIEN CARR Managing Director On my walk home from MadHaus @ The Academy last night I reflected on the news I had inadvertently heard just two hours earlier. Casually conversing with my mates I heard ‘jobs’ and ‘dead’ in a conversation next to me. Presuming it was some first years simply personifying the word ‘jobs’ and expanding on the already endless talk of recession I had no intention of getting involved. Then the cogs in my brain began to turn. Steve Jobs had recently resigned from Apple for medical reasons. Could the greatest innovator of our time be no longer with us? Surely it was simply first year using common economic knowledge to unsuccessfully woo the opposite sex? I pulled out my blackberry, opened my Reuter application, and literally stood still. The fresher was not failing the age old art of picking up girls – he was telling of breaking
news brought to him by his twitter account. Steve Jobs had passed away. The world as we knew it had changed. My walk home through the deserted streets of Dublin was a sombre one. I looked back to the Christmas of 2005. My cousins and I marvelled at the latest gadget by Steve Jobs. An mp3 player that manipulated
“BOLD ENOUGH TO BELIEVE HE COULD CHANGE THE WORLD” molecules of less than about 100 nanometers in size (One nanometer is one billionth of a meter). We argued its faults, branded it as a gimmick and vowed to never waste money on such an piece of technology. A little over a year later we all supported the Nano, in fact most of us had asked for one that Christmas. Steve Jobs founded apple in 1976. A middle class hippy computer
“BEING THE RICHEST MAN IN THE CEMETERY DOESN’T MATTER TO ME … GOING TO BED AT NIGHT SAYING WE’VE DONE SOMETHING WONDERFUL… THAT’S WHAT MATTERS TO ME.”
“I DIDN’T SEE IT THEN, BUT IT TURNED OUT THAT GETTING FIRED FROM APPLE WAS THE BEST THING THAT COULD HAVE EVER HAPPENED TO ME ... IT FREED ME TO ENTER ONE OF THE MOST CREATIVE PERIODS OF MY LIFE.”
“THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH MICROSOFT IS THEY JUST HAVE NO TASTE. THEY HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO TASTE. AND I DON’T MEAN THAT IN A SMALL WAY, I MEAN THAT IN A BIG WAY...”
genius he wasn’t given a chance. Just 35 years later he leaves the world with a legacy most could only dream of. By 2009 over 220 million people used the ipod, as I write this article I’m listening to itunes on my computer [albeit not a mac], the fresher who inadvertently broke the news to me had an iphone – irony at its best. President Obama led tributes to the Apple co-founder stating: “Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it,”. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and other industry leaders also paid tributes to the man described as a “true visionary”. That visionary will not be forgotten anytime soon. His legacy will, of course, live on. As for the fact that most people will hear of his untimely passing on devices he himself invented … well that just says it all. We lost an icon, Apple lost a leader, and the Jobs family lost Steve. As I finish this article I shut down my computer and close the software that partly helped Steve Jobs to amass a fortune of $8.3 billion. R.I.P. Steven Jobs. ›› The homepage of apple.om shortly after the annpoucement of Job’s death.
Jobs Done BY LORCAN CLARKE Contributing Writer Once upon a time, ‘Apple’ was the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, written at the start of a sentence. During that same precise period, ‘Jobs’ was the plural of a paid position of regular employment. It still pretty much always means that but the point of this opening paragraph is that Steve Jobs and the Apple brand used to not exist and are now really famous. Less than a month ago Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, triggering a 5% fall in the share price. The fall would have been steeper had the market not known of his bad health for years and thus inevitable resignation at some point. Indeed, Apple shares will invariably take another big hit this week on the back of Jobs’ death.. This man has arguably been the greatest business leader of the postwar era, from co-founding Apple to
making it one of the world’s most influential corporations. That is to say nothing of his innovative genius in designing and developing the Apple II Series and Macintosh. He is listed as either primary inventor or coinventor in 338 US patents. It reads like the plot of a movie: Middle-class hippie kid with no college education builds a computer empire and becomes a multimillionaire, has a huge ego and gets fired from his own company before coming back a decade later to save day. If you like your heroes to have warts, you won’t be disappointed. Famous for his demanding and aggres-
sive personality, a former colleague once said he “would have made an excellent King of France”. Jobs has come under fire in the past for eliminating all Apple’s philanthropic activity when he regained control in 1997. In that sense, comparing him to Bill Gates is like comparing puns and oranges. When criticised for Apple’s poor recycling programs he used the Annual Meeting to lash out at environmentalists. In the early years of Apple, employees described Jobs as erratic and temperamental. Following a power struggle in 1985, Jobs was fired by Mike Sculley, whom he had poached from Pepsi seven years earlier to be CEO. He later described this as the best thing that ever happened
to him, saying “It freed me to enter
“THIS MAN HAS ARGUABLY BEEN THE GREATEST BUSINESS LEADER OF THE POSTWAR ERA, FROM COFOUNDING APPLE TO MAKING IT ONE OF THE WORLDS MOST INFLUENTIAL CORPORATIONS” one of the most creative periods of
my life.” Jobs then founded NeXT Computer which was a considerable success. In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) and went on to produce the Toy Story trilogy and six Academy Award-winning animated features. Pixar was eventually bought out by Disney in 2006 in an all-stock transaction, making Jobs is the single biggest Disney shareholder. Upon his return to Apple, Jobs brought a huge increase in sales through the introduction of the iMac and also boosted profitability by terminating a number of weak projects. He has since guided Apple to success in the industries of personal computers, music and phones, through a relentless focus on design and functionality. Sadly, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004, Jobs was forced to step back from his commitments with Apple, enduring several leaves of absense to battle through his illness. The premature death of this great innovator is a seismic loss to Silicon Valley and leaves a void the tech industry will struggle to fill.