Steve Jobs with an iMac computer, 1998.
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In late 1996 Apple, saddled by huge financial losses and on the verge of collapse, hired a new chief executive, semiconductor executive Gilbert Amelio. When Amelio learned that the company, following intense and prolonged research efforts, had failed to develop an acceptable replacement for the Macintoshâs aging operating system (OS), he chose NEXTSTEP, buying Jobsâs company for more than $400 millionâand bringing Jobs back to Apple as a consultant. However, Appleâs board of directors soon became disenchanted with Amelioâs inability to turn the companyâs finances around and in June 1997 requested Appleâs prodigal cofounder to lead the company once again. Jobs quickly forged an alliance with Appleâs erstwhile foe, the Microsoft Corporation, scrapped Amelioâs Mac-clone agreements, and simplified the companyâs product line. He also engineered an award-winning advertising campaign that urged potential customers to âthink differentâ and buy Macintoshes. Just as important is what he did not do: he resisted the temptation to make machines that ran Microsoftâs Windows OS; nor did he, as some urged, spin off Apple as a software-only company. Jobs believed that Apple, as the only major personal computer maker with its own operating system, was in a unique position to innovate.
Innovate he did. In 1998, Jobs introduced the iMac, an egg-shaped, one-piece computer that offered high-speed processing at a relatively modest price and initiated a trend of high-fashion computers. (Subsequent models sported five different bright colours.) By the end of the year, the iMac was the nationâs highest-selling personal computer, and Jobs was able to announce consistent profits for the once-moribund company. The following year, he triumphed once more with the stylish iBook, a laptop computer built with students in mind, and the G4, a desktop computer sufficiently powerful that (so Apple boasted) it could not be exported under certain circumstances because it qualified as a supercomputer. Though Apple did not regain the industry dominance it once had, Steve Jobs had saved his company, and in the process reestablished himself as a master high-technology marketer and visionary.
1998 photo of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple (Apple Computer), which he co-founded in 1976.
Courtesy of Apple
In 2001 Jobs started reinventing Apple for the 21st century. That was the year that Apple introduced iTunes, a computer program for playing music and for converting music to the compact MP3 digital format commonly used in computers and other digital devices. Later the same year, Apple began selling the iPod, a portable MP3 player, which quickly became the market leader. In 2003 Apple began selling downloadable copies of major record company songs in MP3 format over the Internet. By 2006 more than one billion songs and videos had been sold through Appleâs online iTunes Store. In recognition of the growing shift in the companyâs business, Jobs officially changed the name of the company to Apple Inc. on January 9, 2007.
In 2007 Jobs took the company into the telecommunications business with the introduction of the touch-screen iPhone, a mobile telephone with capabilities for playing MP3s and videos and for accessing the Internet. Later that year, Apple introduced the iPod Touch, a portable MP3 and gaming device that included built-in Wi-Fi and an iPhone-like touch screen. Bolstered by the use of the iTunes Store to sell Apple and third-party software, the iPhone and iPod Touch soon boasted more games than any other portable gaming system. Jobs announced in 2008 that future releases of the iPhone and iPod Touch would offer improved game functionality. In an ironic development, Apple, which had not supported game developers in its early years out of fear of its computers not being taken seriously as business machines, was now staking a claim to a greater role in the gaming business to go along with its move into telecommunications.
Steve Jobs introducing the iPad at an Apple event, San Francisco, 2010.
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In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. He put off surgery for about nine months while he tried alternative medicine approaches. In August 2004 he informed Apple employees of the diagnosis and that he had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. (At the time, there was speculation in the media that he had a major reconstructive surgery known as the Whipple operation, but the nature of the 2004 surgery was not disclosed.) Following a short recovery, Jobs returned to running Apple.
Throughout 2008 Jobs lost significant weight, which produced considerable speculation that his cancer was back. Perhaps more than those of any other large corporation, Appleâs stock market shares were tied to the health of its CEO, which led to demands by investors for full disclosure of his healthâespecially as the first reasons given for his weight loss seemed insufficient to explain his sickly appearance. On January 9, 2009, Jobs released a statement that he was suffering from a hormonal imbalance for which he was being treated and that he would continue his corporate duties. Less than a week later, however, he announced that he was taking an immediate leave of absence through the end of June in order to recover his health. Having removed himself, at least temporarily, from the corporate structure, Jobs resumed his previous stance that his health was a private matter and refused to disclose any more details.
In June 2009 the Wall Street Journal reported that Jobs had received a liver transplant several months earlier. Soon afterward, with Jobsâs consent, the Tennessee hospital where the operation had been performed confirmed that the transplant had occurred and explained why he had been prioritized to receive a donor organ. Jobs resumed work on June 29, 2009, fulfilling his pledge to return before the end of June. In January 2011, however, Jobs took another medical leave of absence. In August he resigned as CEO but became chairman. He died two months later.
In 2022 Jobs was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Jeffrey S. Young, Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward (1988), is a somewhat critical biography of Steve Jobs up to the early days of NeXT. Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (2011), is an authorized biography.
Steven Levy, Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (1994), is a brief history of the Macintosh computer and the graphical user interface. Michael S. Malone, Infinite Loop: How the Worldâs Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane (1999), by a veteran Silicon Valley writer, details the corporate history of Apple.
Steven LevyThis article was most recently revised and updated by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
