iPad
The biggest of all was undeniably on January 27, when Steve Jobs finally introduced iPad, Apple’s much-anticipated tablet. There were rumors on an Apple tablet even before there were rumors on an Apple phone, and for good reasons: the labs of Cupertino started working on a tablet years before they worked on iPhone.
I actually started on the tablet first. I had this idea of being able to get rid of the keyboard, type on a multitouch glass display. And I asked our folks, could we come up with a multitouch display? that I could rest my hands on, and actually type on. And about six months later, they called me in and showed me this prototype display. And it was amazing. This is in the early 2000s. And I gave it to one of our other, really brilliant UI folks, and he called me back a few weeks later and he had inertial scrolling working, and a few other things. Now we were thinking about building a phone at that time, and when I saw the rubber band, inertial scrolling and a few of the other things, I thought My God, we could build a phone out of this. And I put the tablet project on the shelf, because the phone was more important. And we took the next several years, and did the iPhone.
Steve Jobs at the D8 Conference, 1 June 2010
Throughout 2009, even before Steve Jobs came back from his medical leave of absence, the Apple rumor mill started spinning again with increasing confidence about an upcoming incredible device, a handheld tablet halfway between a Mac and an iPhone. The rumors went even crazier after Steve Jobs presented a prototype of the device to several major US publishers, who couldn’t help talking about it off the record. The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, one of Steve Jobs’ favorite industry analyst, reported early on that :
It’s better than the average movie experience, when you hold this thing in your hands.
Expectations were high to say the least.
Then, on January 27, Steve Jobs finally took the stage and unveiled iPad to the world. The presentation was bare, almost simplistic, with Steve sitting on a couch and demoing the device for most of his keynote.
iPad disappointed the majority of analysts at the time. It was deemed “a bigger iPod touch”, nothing else. Steve was being mocked for calling it “a magical device” during his keynote, and in Apple advertising too! Yet, once again, the market proved the critics wrong, and iPad turned out an amazing success. Apple sold 7.5 million of them as of September 2010, representing close to 8% of its 2010 fiscal-year revenues (iPods amounted for 13%).
Asked what his feelings about iPad were at the famous All Things D conference in June 2008, Steve Jobs boldly made the following comments :
When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed, on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in urban centers, and America started to move into those urban, then suburban centers, cars got more popular and innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much, started to become paramount in cars. And now, probably [...] one out of every 25 vehicles is a truck, where it used to be 100%... PCs are gonna be like trucks. They’re still gonna be around, they’re still gonna have a lot of value, but they’re gonna be used by one out of x people. [...] And this transformation’s gonna make some people uneasy — people from the PC world, like you and me. It’s gonna make us uneasy, because the PC’s taken us a long ways — it’s brilliant. And we liked to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, I think it’s uncomfortable, for a lot of people [...] So... I think that we’re embarked on that.
Steve Jobs at the D8 Conference, 1 June 2010
It is worth thinking about these comments for a minute. If we assume Steve Jobs is right about this, and almost everyone (but Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer) agrees he is, then he will be a unique case in history of someone who has been instrumental in both creating and putting an end to an industry. Indeed, Apple was a key player in starting of the personal computing revolution in the early 1980s, and there would not have been an Apple without Steve Jobs. But Apple will also likely be the company leading the transition away from the PC, and this time there’s no denying this would not have happened so quickly without the iOS mobile revolution... What other man can be credited for such a huge impact on a multibillion-dollar industry?
Apple’s possible future
2010 has seen Apple’s dominance in the high-tech industry reinforced. The company is the market leader or a dominant player in four huge and growing markets: digital music players (with iPod), digital music distribution (with iTunes), smartphones and mobile apps (with iPhone, iPod touch and the App Store), and tablet PCs (with iPad).
This unique position at the crossroads of the digital revolution, makes the fruit company the subject of many a fantasy. Two trends have constantly re-emerged when speculating on Apple’s future.
The first is its take on the television market. Steve Jobs himself has commented at length on it at D8 (again), saying it was impossible for Apple to enter this market because of its structure. He talked about an insoluble go-to-market impossibility.
Yet only three months later, he introduced a revamped, network-based Apple TV at the traditional September Apple Media Event. The new box is iOS-based and most people think it won’t be long before it runs iOS apps. To speak more generally, it is very likely that, unlike what Steve Jobs has explained, Apple will try very hard to enter and revolutionize this “other” consumer electronics space that is television, and the Living Room in general — following a strategy that was conceived some four years earlier with iPod hi-fi.
Another controversial issue is that of Apple’s relation toward its new arch-rival, Google. This relation is controversial because for several years, Google was not an enemy, but an ally in the war against the behemoth of Redmond, Microsoft. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt even sat on Apple’s board of directors for three whole years, from 2006 to 2009. But it’s no wonder he left in 2009: by entering the smartphone market with its Android mobile OS (and its own app store!), Google had become a direct competitor of Apple. This conflict of interest was as good a reason for him to leave, as Steve Jobs’ shrinking tolerance for what he felt was a plain and simple betrayal.
Google’s increasing market share in the smartphone market led many observers to think that the scenario of the 1990s was being played again. Google, in the role previously played by Microsoft, was going to crush the industry innovator, Apple and its closed system, by licensing its “open” software to a myriad of different hardware companies... Steve Jobs supposedly had not learned from his own mistakes, and was going down the wrong path again because of his stubbornness. Of course it’s far too early to judge if this opinion is justified or not, but it’s fair to say that the fight between Apple and Google will be interesting to watch in the coming decade.
Has Steve changed?
Finally, an old debate about Steve’s personality has also re-emerged in 2010: has he changed? Although some of his traits, such as his propensity to take the spotlight then and again to unveil insanely great products to the world, have not changed... People have noticed two minor evolutions in his public persona.
The first is his increasing habit of communicating by writing emails to customers. He has been known to do so for years, and he is famous for reading a ton of them, but never before 2010 had he replied to so many of them, so often. Usually, he has used them to publicly respond to hot issues about Apple or to spread rumors himself. Some even pretend he has theorized this method, which is in essence a new way for CEOs to deal with PR, bypassing the traditional press.
Another change is more profound, and has to do with his implication on charity issues. Steve’s reputation in Silicon Valley was not very positive on this particular topic, as he was often dismissed for basically being stingy. Yet, in addition to large donations to charities, he spoke publicly twice for the defense of organ donations in 2010, and even played a critical role in the creation of the nations’ first organ donor registry in October 2010. This was obviously a praiseworthy side effect of the liver transplant that had saved his life one year earlier.
Steve Jobs hugs Barbara Ralston of Stanford Hospital during a ceremony to create the nation's first organ donors registry on Oct. 5, 2010
Conclusion
So here’s where we are today. Apple, on the verge of bankruptcy a decade ago, is now one of the most powerful and influential high-tech company in the world. It is the most innovative brand in the computer industry, a leader in the music and phone businesses, and a likely consumer electronics powerhouse for decades to come. As for Pixar, it is the single most successful movie studio in the history of Hollywood, having yet to release a dud after more than twenty years of existence. It has defined the future of animation and is now at the center of this industry after it s merger with Disney. The founder of both these companies, Steve Jobs is now routinely voted one of the world’s most important business leaders, after having been called a one-time fluke for years.
Now that we have followed together the most important events in Steve’s life — especially his career of course — it is time to step back and try and look at the big picture.
I am going to get personal here: it is hard for me to put into words how much admiration and huge respect I have for Steve Jobs, and how much inspiration I draw from him. Let’s face it, business history has seen many another genius entrepreneur, inspirational leader, or industry visionary. But among them, who has had as big an impact as Steve Jobs on the rest of humanity? Who has faced greater glory and worse shames, all in one life? Here we are talking about a man who has dedicated his life to giving the power of technology to the masses. He has democratized computers with the Apple II. He has made them human and even friendly with Macintosh. He has almost single-handedly made possible the desktop publishing revolution. Here is a man whose company, Apple, is so innovative its products inspire the whole high-tech world, whose corporate culture is so powerful, it has millions of fans worldwide whose following is akin to that of a cult. Here is a man who has changed the way we all listen to music with iPod, who has shaken the music business with iTunes and the phone business with iPhone. Here is a man without whom 3D animation might have never taken off, or certainly would not have taken off the way it did thanks to Pixar. Here is a man who has made millions of lives so much easier by making technology seamless, intuitive, exciting and beautiful, instead of complicated, arcane, dull and ugly.
The question remains open to me: which business figure can claim so many achievements? Whose influence has been greater? That’s why I struggled for so long to find appropriate words to summarize the essence of Steve Jobs, a genius, but also a man, an icon with flaws, full of paradoxes, a visionary who has sometimes proven dead wrong. I thought hard — until I realized Steve himself had found these words. So let me conclude with the voice from Apple’s Think Different commercial:
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