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The foundation of Apple

Steve Jobs was the co-founder and CEO of Apple. He also founded NeXT and was the majority shareholder of Pixar, both of which he was also CEO. Jobs is known as an icon of creativity and entrepreneurship. The prolific author Walter Isaacson released Jobs’ biography in October of 2011. Isaacson describes his major accomplishment as being a “creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.”

Jobs attended Reed College for a short period of time before dropping out in 1972. However, he continued to dabble with classes unofficially and came across a calligraphy course instructed by Robert Palladino. This course ended up being highly influential for Jobs as he attributed it to bringing multiple typefaces to the Mac.

Steve Jobs founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. After a drawn out power struggle Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985. He then founded NeXT in 1985 and also funded the move of Lucasfilm’s Graphics Group to become its own corporation, which became Pixar in 1986. Just over a decade later in 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as they acquired NeXT. His return marked the beginning of a new era of success. He took over as CEO in July of 1997 and continued on until handing the position to Tim Cook on August 24, 2011 after increasing health problems. Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011.

Isaacson describes his major accomplishment as being a “creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.”

Steve Jobs’ criticisms could be useful even if not constructive, says former iPhone lead engineer

We’ve already had some interesting insights from Ken Kocienda, former principal engineer of iPhone software. An exclusive excerpt from his book Creative Selection back in August provided a behind-the-scenes look at the development of the iPhone keyboard.

My colleague Benjamin Mayo also shared several stories from his reading of the book earlier this month. Kocienda is celebrating making the WSJ bestseller list by sharing a new story in the paper …


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‘Creative Selection’ book available now: the creation of the iPhone keyboard, Apple’s design process, and demoing to Steve Jobs

Written by the creator of the original iPhone keyboard, Creative Selection is available now (Amazon, iBooks) and explores Apple’s software development process for the iPhone, iPad and more.

Written by the engineer that made the original iPhone keyboard, this is my favourite book focused on the ‘modern’ Apple era. It covers Apple’s decision-making strategy under Steve Jobs, what it is like to demo for the man himself, a deep dive into how the iPhone keyboard came to be, and much more in between. Read on for my review of some of the book’s best bits.


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Apple product delays have more than doubled under Tim Cook’s watch, says WSJ analysis

Delays between Apple announcing a product and shipping it to customers have more than doubled under Tim Cook’s watch, according to a WSJ analysis.

Of the 70-plus new and updated products launched during Mr. Cook’s tenure, five had a delay between announcement and shipping of three months or more, and nine had delays of between one and three months. Roughly the same number of products were launched during Mr. Jobs’ reign, but only one product was delayed by more than three months.

The averages bear out the paper’s claim, though also illustrate the rather small difference for a typical product launch …


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Newsweek magazine signed ‘I love manufacturing’ by Steve Jobs fetches $50K at auction

A Newsweek magazine signed by Steve Jobs fetched far more than initial expectations at an auction this week. According to a report from CNET, the 1988 magazine was originally expected to go for between $10,000 and $15,000, but ultimately brought in $50,587. Meanwhile, Jobs’ BMW Z8 is predicted to fetch between $300,00 and $400,000 at auction in December…


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Tony Fadell describes competing teams working on different iPhone designs

It scarcely seems possible now that Apple ever considered an iPhone based on a click-wheel iPod, but we actually got to see a surviving prototype earlier this year. Steve Jobs created competing teams to work on different approaches to an iPhone, and ‘father of the iPod’ Tony Fadell has spoken about this in a new interview …


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Tim Cook talks Steve Jobs as Apple’s ‘Constitution,’ HomePod, AR, taxes, Trump, innovation & more

In a wide-ranging interview, Tim Cook has spoken about Steve Jobs‘ DNA as Apple’s ‘Constitution,’ why he thinks HomePod will be a success, wanting to ‘scream’ in excitement about augmented reality, how he thinks taxes should be applied to repatriated overseas earnings, his experience of working with Donald Trump and how he responds to the view that Apple is no longer an innovative company.

His comments are an excerpt from a detailed interview out next week …


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