Steve Jobs transformed one industry after another

Steve Jobs determined long ago that his imagination, and that of those working under him, far outstripped ours, and so Apple devices were introduced to do things most consumers couldn't conceive of until he demonstrated what was possible.


The iPod, iPhone, iPad and the best of the rest took us in directions we not only didn't know we wanted to go, but sometimes couldn't fully grasp until we got our hands on them, started to play with them and discovered for ourselves, making Jobs' vision our own.


"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them," Jobs once told BusinessWeek magazine.


The question as Apple on Wednesday announced Jobs' death at 56 is less about whether the imagination, engineering skill and aesthetic sense he fostered can continue in his absence. It's whether the company will continue to possess the same culture of confidence that enables it to lead consumer demand rather than simply fulfill it.


Jobs was both a genius and an artist, and he possessed the certainty common to both. And consumers came to recognize that he knew some things about them they themselves didn't yet know. Many Apple products are technical masterpieces pushing boundaries, but they also satisfy inarticulated needs.


Apple didn't invent products so much as improve them, repackage them, smooth out the bumps. Yet there is a reason Apple devotees have particular fervor for the company and its goods, a reason lines will start to form outside Apple stores next week in anticipation of the latest iteration of the iPhone.


Mr. Jobs was considered by many to be the greatest corporate leader of the last half-century, and indeed his numerous successes rank him alongside Ford, Disney and Edison as a giant of American business.
He was a taskmaster who demanded the most from his employees -- often in expletive-laden bursts -- and wasn't afraid to scrap products that didn't meet his expectations.
Under Mr. Jobs, Apple devices helped to change the way consumers buy music, read books and enjoy movies.
Mr. Jobs was literally a child of Silicon Valley. Born out of wedlock in San Francisco, Mr. Jobs was placed for adoption by his birth mother, Joanne Simpson, with the understanding that he be placed with a well-educated family. Simpson initially balked when his adoptive family turned out to be high-school dropout Paul Jobs and his wife, Clara, who never finished college.
When he was 12, Mr. Jobs wrote to William Hewlett, co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Co., seeking parts for a school project. The precocious youth ended up getting a summer job that would fan his love of electronics as well as introduce him to future Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, several years his senior, who worked for HP.
Mr. Jobs' fascination with the electronics industry stood in contrast to his disdain for the educational system.
He dropped out of college after one semester.
He followed his gut back to Silicon Valley.
Through the Homebrew Club, a group of electronics buffs, Mr. Jobs rekindled his earlier friendship with Wozniak, a whiz at electronics design. When Mr. Jobs, ever the salesman, landed a contract to create a new video game, he enlisted Wozniak.
The two ultimately founded Apple and, in 1977, Mr. Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II.
But the restless Mr. Jobs soon lost interest in the nerdy Apple II and instead fell under the spell of an insanely great idea which he would pursue to both his glory and ruin: the Macintosh.
That infatuation began in 1979 when Mr. Jobs visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. There, for the first time, he saw a computer controlled by a mouse.
Mr. Jobs used this graphical user interface as the cornerstone concept of the revered Mac.
The period from 1980 through 1985, when he led the frenzied effort to develop and introduce the Mac, would become the crucible of his career.
The creation of the Mac also propelled Mr. Jobs into two clashes that helped define his career, hardening his animosity with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and setting the stage for his ouster by John Sculley, the former PepsiCo executive chosen to bring adult supervision to Apple.
Mr. Jobs resisted making the Mac more compatible with the increasingly popular IBM PC and seemed oblivious to the slowing of Mac sales after the initial euphoria.
The conflict came to a head in May 1985, when Sculley stripped Mr. Jobs of any operational role inside Apple, prompting him to resign that year.
By 1996, Apple was floundering in Mr. Jobs' absence. He initially returned as an unofficial adviser but soon supplanted CEO Gil Amelio.
He quickly consolidated control and changed Apple's direction, killing off his predecessors' program of licensing the Mac software to several companies that made so-called Mac clones in imitation of Microsoft's Windows.
Mr. Jobs revived the Mac and Apple's fortunes, but the crowning achievements of his encore performance as CEO were the introductions of the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010. They exemplified the elegance, technological daring and marketing genius that typified his creations, and were strategically brilliant to boot, thrusting Apple into new markets where it enjoyed hardware sales and recurring revenue.