The smartest man of the last century, evidently — Steve Jobs.

As we keep diving deep into technology and remain consumed in one way or another by Apple, let’s look at how the world’s first 2 trillion dollar company has been able to pull it off.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Inc. in 1976. While Wozniak did not share his journey with Apple throughout, Jobs remained an integral part and is responsible for bringing revolution into people’s lives through Apple.

Beginning signs

Steve Jobs always felt he was special — something his adoptive parents saw too and made him feel likewise.

The fact that Jobs was given up for adoption by his biological parents left him with the feeling of being abandoned. It was assumed that his obsession to be successful and create something legendary was induced from the same feeling. He believed if he became highly successful, his biological parents would regret giving him up.

P.S., We don’t know if that happened. Steve Jobs never came in contact with his biological father(even after knowing who he is). He did connect with his biological mother who was extremely sorry for giving him up.

Following signs

Multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts in personal computers seems to have come through Jobs interest in Calligraphy, which he developed after dropping out of college. He attended the classes that interested him rather than the ones necessary in the curriculum.

P.S., He was allowed by the college dean to stay in and around the campus even when he chose not to finish his course(Which is quite unexpected. Apparently the dean also spotted Jobs to be special and different).

Apple and its uniqueness

Jobs was a control freak and considered himself to be at the intersection of technology and arts. Thus, technology is married to great design and elegance in each Apple product.

Because of the end-to-end control desired by Jobs, all Apple products are completely integrated. The hardware and software is unified to offer the highest quality of user experience.

For a brief period in the 1990’s while Jobs was ousted from his own company, Apple tried licensing its operating system to third parties — which turned out to be a disaster.

After joining Apple back as interim CEO, the first step Jobs took was to discontinue licensing software to third parties, who according to Jobs, made crappy hardware.

P.S., the fact that iOS and macOS isn’t available on any other device but an Apple, drives people to buy Apple devices(even if they are expensive). Jobs was the first to create a luxury segment in technology.

User experience

Apple is so determined to control the user experience that it’s difficult to break into its hardware. When Apple found out that third party repair shops were opening up the iPhone 4, it replaced its screws with a kind that was impossible to open with a commercially available screwdriver.

P.S., that means you have to be dependent on Apple’s services and not just products.

Revolution

Apple literally revolutionized the music industry by introducing the iPod and iTunes — at the time when most record companies and artists were upset with piracy, and services for digital music sucked.

It revolutionized mobile phones by bringing multi-touch screens(at the time when blackberry with keypads was a hit) and mobile internet access. Also became the first to introduce gorilla glass in the history of mobile phones.

P.S., We all know what happened with Blackberrys and what’s continuing to happen with the iPhones.

Company culture

Steve Jobs’s goal was “to not just make great products but to build great companies.” As quoted by him after the Pixar acquisition by Disney.

In order to build a great company, he imbibed a unique culture at both organisations he founded — Apple and Pixar. He went as far as creating Apple University for training new hires on the culture and history of the company.

Main characteristics of the culture are — Top-notch excellence, creativity, innovation, secrecy, moderate combativeness.

P.S., even after his death, the company continues to innovate with excellence and creativity.

Failures and learnings

He did have a few failed attempts with Lisa(At Apple, before Macintosh) and at NeXT(his second company which got acquired by Apple later). Lisa was the first GUI based computer ever. It was not a commercial hit, but inspired the Macintosh that was developed next. The failures did not deter him.

For him, the journey was the reward.

When asked if he wanted to do some market research to see what the consumers wanted, he said “Customer’s don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.”

P.S., if he hadn’t failed, he wouldn’t have known what not to do.

Section for budding entrepreneurs out there-

If you are building something, ask yourself the following:

• Are you building something that can last without and after you?
• Are you building a culture?
• Is innovation important to you?
• Is your primary goal to build a great company or to make a lot of money?