Telecommunications Workers and 20th Century US Labor History Course - Term Paper Example

Telecommunications Workers and 20th Century US Labor History Course The man who revolutionized the world of telecommunications, the man who changed the way we perceive our world, Steve Jobs, was born on 24/3/1955 to Wisconsin University graduates who gave the child up for adoption. Since childhood, Steve was a very smart kid but did not have the right direction to pursue his ideas. He experimented on many different careers before finally he began working with Apple Computers in the Job’s family garage with Stephen Wozinak. The revolutionary products of Apple include the iPad, iPhone, and the iPod which are the pioneers in modern technology (Isaacson, 2011). Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs as an infant and was named Steven Paul Jobs. His foster dad, Paul, was a machinist and Coast Guard veteran and Clara was an accountant. Their home was in the Mountain View inside the Silicon Valley of California. As a boy, Steve had an interest for electronics as he and his dad would work on electronic products in their garage. Paul Jobs showed Steve how to reconstruct and take part in electronics, a hobby that grew to create persistence, confidence and mechanical powers and desire to achieve in Steve as a kid (Isaacson, 2011). Steve Jobs was always a clever man with inventive thinking, but his youth was enigmatic by formal schooling. In the elementary school, the teacher bribed him into studying because he was a prankster. Steve Jobs was an intellectual student and administrators wanted him to skip middle school and head to high school but his parents declined this proposal. In high school, most of Steve’s free time was spent at Hewlett-Packard. At HP, his friendship grew with Steve Wozniak, his computer assistance and teacher. Wozniak was an excellent computer engineer and so he and Steve became close friends (Isaacson, 2011). After Steve got done with high school, he went to Reed College situated in Portland, Oregon. Steve did not have the right direction to go on and lacked interest in college. Within the next six months, he was out of college and within the next eighteen months, he kept dropping all the creative classes. In a later interview, Jobs recalled that there was a course in calligraphy which increased his interest in typography. Steve became a video game designer in 1974 as he began working with Atari. After several months, he got out of Atari and went to search for spiritual enlightenment in India. He travelled the whole continent and experimented with several psychedelic drugs. When he was of twenty one years of age in 1976, Wozniak and hi began the Apple Computers. Apple Computers began in the family garage of Jobs, and this endeavor was funded when Wozniak sold his scientific calculator and Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus. Now when they had to come up with a name for Apple, they weren’t sure what to do. So, Steve just came up with Apple when they couldn’t find anything better (NeXt Computers). Both the friends needed help to fund their new entrepreneur and they sought assistance by Ron Wayne, Atari colleagues of Steve. Wayne did the basic paperwork for the company to began a corporation and also came up with the first logo of the company. Wayne got 10% shares in the company and Woz and Steve split the rest in half among themselves. The first order of Apple came from Paul Terel, a Homebrew Member who was coming up with a new shop called Byte Shop in the Mountain View and recognized Steve’s idea that there was high demand for fully-built computers like Apple. So he ordered fifty Apple Computers, one for $500 each which was a huge order for an infant company like Apple. Both friends began to put parts together in Job’s garage and took help from Patti, Steve’s sister and Dan Kottke, his friend from Reed. Each computer cost them around $220 and Terrelw as buying it for $500 (Goldsworthy, 2012). Steve and Woz also wanted to sell their computers on their own. They came up with an initial price of $666.66 and went to show all Homebrew folks in 1976 but they weren’t interested. Then they went from shop to shop trying to sell their computers and they did sell couples of hundreds. This was the beginning of Apple Computers who bought founder Rayne for just $800 and began the company together on 1st April, 1976 (Goldsworthy, 2012). This was the start of Apple Computer. Steve and Woz had bought the other co-founder Ron Wayne out for $800, and incorporated the company on April 1, 1976. After the success of Apple I and Apple II, several other products of Apple went through remarkable flaws in designs leading to consumer disappointment and recalls. The sales of Apple declined as compared to IBM, and again Apple had to compete with IBM’s world of PC. When Apple came up with Macintosh in 1984, it focused on the lavish lifestyle of creativeness, youthfulness, and romance but was overtaken by the performance of IBM’s PC. Macintosh was still not up to the standards of IBM. Now, people at Apple began to believe that Steve Jobs was more harm to Apple than benefit and they began to kick him out of Apple (Goldsworthy, 2012). Steve Jobs couldn’t take the resentment anymore and so he resigned as the CEO of Apple to come up with his own company of software and hardware known as NeXT, Inc. During the same year, Steve Jobs bought an animation company called Pixar Animation Studios from George Lucas. Steve Jobs with his amazing management skills find it profitable to invest $50 million in Pixar and then Pixar produced movies such as Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and The Incredibles. The films earned $4 billion. In 2006, Steve Jobs have the largest shares in Disney as Disney amalgamated with Pixar Studios (NeXt Computers) Steve Jobs with his talents, developed many specialized products while at NeXT, Inc. But, Apple purchased the company for $429 million. This was the time for Jobs return to Apple as Apple needed him and he needed Apple. He came back to the post of CEO of Apple. As Steve Jobs was the reason for the success of Apple in the 1970s, he was bringing Apple back to the same position in 1990s. A new management team, and many modified options, Apple was back to its normal position. His clever products included efficient branding campaigns, iMac, and unique designs that grabbed consumers towards it (Goldsworthy, 2012). But, in 2003, Steve Jobs was devastated to discover a form of pancreatic cancer, called neuroendocrine tumor, in himself. It was curable but Steve Jobs went for Eastern treatment options to control his pescovegetarian diet rather than surgery. He postponed the surgery for a total of nine months. This made the Board of Directors at Apple conscious as what to do. They were concerned if shareholders would invest out because of his illness. But Steve Jobs took over their disclosure and got a surgery in 2004 to get rid of pancreatic tumor. He was back on track and did not say much about his health anymore (Goldsworthy, 2012). In 2009, Steve Jobs began to lose weight again which raised concerns about his health. People got worried about his health and he had to do a liver transplant. He was having a hormonal imbalance, and he came up with a keynote Apple event on 9th September, 2009. Despite his popularity, his charisma for management and work made him never disclosed his personal life. He had a daughter from his girlfriend, Chrisann. As a teenager, his daughter came up to live with her father. Then in 1990s, Steve Jobs married Laurene Powel lon March 18, 1991 and after that lived together with their three children (Goldsworthy, 2012). With Steve’s innovative mind and charisma, Apple came up with revolutionary products such as iPod, iPhone, and Macbook Air, all of them had the latest technology associated with them. Soon after that, Apple came up with a new product which took over all of the profits of the competitors. S2007 marked the success year for Apple with best statists and stocks sold for $1999.99 a share and give the company an astounding profit of $1.58 billion, and also zero debt and about $18 billion dollars in the bank (Goldsworthy, 2012). Also, iTunes was the second best retailer in music industry in America’s history as compared to Wal-Mart. Steve Jobs spread his wings everywhere. More than half of the revenue of Apple came from iPod and iTunes sales as six billion songs were downloaded and 200million iPods were sold. For these and some other reasons, Apple become America’s Number 1 Most Liked Companies and also Number 1 of the 500 Fortune Companies to invest in (Goldsworthy, 2012). Steve Jobs and Wozniak are said to have revolutionized the world of computers by using the technology to make cheaper, new, interactive, smaller, and reachable items to all consumers. The friendly computers they came up with were only $666.66 each! Apple with the innovative mind and leadership qualities of Steve Jobs did bring a revolution to the world of telecommunications (Goldsworthy, 2012). References Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print. Goldsworthy, Steve. Steve Jobs. New York, NY: AV² by Weigl, 2012. Print. "STEVE JOBS ORAL HISTORY." NeXt Computers. RAM INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES, 20 April 1995. Web. 3 Oct 2012. . Read More