POPA ADRIAN, ANGLO-AMERICAN STUDIES, 2

ND

YEAR

STEVE JOBS AN AMERICAN ICON

Keywords: innovation, dream, fate, perseverance, model, visionary, think different, idealism,
perfectionist, passion, life lessons, youth icon, inventor, charisma, talent, good taste, hippy, inspirational

Steve Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, United States of
America. His biological parents, Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, both
students at that time, gave him up for adoption. He was then adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs,
who raised him in the suburbs of Mountain View and Los Altos. No one thought that living in
these suburbs will influence his entire life. Los Altos was the perfect place for Steve Jobs to get
the taste for technology since this was an area were a lot of tech companies were based.
His first real encounter with technology happened when he was only 12 years old, as he
states in one of his interviews:
I called Bill Hewlett (CEO of Hewlett Packard) when I was twelve years old and
he lived in Palo Alto and his number was still on the phone book and he answered the
phone himself. Yes? Hi, Im Steve Jobs, Im twelve years old. Im a student in high school
and I want to build a frequency counter and I was wondering if you had any spare parts I
could have and he laughed and he gave me the spare parts to build this frequency
counter and gave me a job that summer at Hewlett Packard working on the assembly
line, putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters and I was in
heaven...
The area he grew up in, and its proximity to San Francisco, enabled him to come across
and experience the counterculture movement of that time. He was part of the hippie
movement and adopted a lot from the hippie lifestyle pursuing paths to personal liberation.
This period would influence his mentality towards life and business and would bring him
important experiences as he would later recall:
The time we grew up was a magical time. It was also a very spiritual time in my life.
Definitely taking LSD was one of the most important things in my life. Not the most
important, but right up there.
Steve graduated from Homestead Copertino high school in 1972 along with Steve
Wozniack, his future partner, and applied for college. He went to Reed College in Portland,
Oregon where he quit after only a single semester. He continued though to select and follow
some courses that he considered interesting one of those being the calligraphy one. After

years, it turned out that this particular course had a major impact on the Mackintosh operating
system interface design, as he personally reveals in a speech at the Stanford University:
Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided
to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif
typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations,
about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle
in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a
hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing
the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the
Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on
that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or
proportionally spaced fonts.
In 1974 Steve Jobs returned to California where he worked as a designer for Atari. After
a short while, he met Steve Wozniack which helped him create a game for Atari that is where
they began. They soon started working on their own computer and going to the Homebrew
Computer Club meetings where people were sharing ideas about computers. That is the
moment when Steve Jobs realized a computers possibilities were endless. Not long after, he
managed to get his first contract in which he had to deliver a small number of his computers on
which he worked with Wozniack and others in his home garage. News spread about his
computers and he managed to get other contracts for higher sums of money which enables him
to create Apple; so on April 1st 1976 he becomes the cofounder and CEO of Apple. From that
point on his business expanded very much managing to outrun many important companies in
terms of earnings, which still happens in our days. Apple is more valuable than any other U.S.
tech companies like Microsoft, IBM, Google and Intel.
By 1984, Apple introduced a couple of new models such as Apple II, Apple III and Lisa
three computers that were aiming exclusively for the business and research class. 1984 is the
year when Apple reached its peak of the decade by presenting Mackintosh 128k - a new
computer that was aimed for personal home use. What made Mackintosh 128k such a success

was the target customer, the price, the new interface and the advertisements. The ad for this
computer was built around the idea of George Orwells 1984 novel and became legendary.
Then came 1985, the year when Steve Jobs was fired from his own company by the
people he put in charge because his visions where different from theirs. From that point on
Apple begun to slowly collapse. Fortunately, Steve Jobs did not give up his dreams and visions
and continued what he started at Apple. In this sense he created a new company with a
suggestive name: NeXT. He did not stop here though; he founded Pixar a computer animation
film studio that was based on the former Graphics Group of Lucas Film studios. Both NeXT and
Pixar grew exponentially in the following years and gained appreciation at many levels.
After about ten years since he left Apple, Steve Jobs was offered to come back to the
company he founded and be her CEO again. The offer came in a period when the technological
giant was crossing a difficult time. His return home meant Apples comeback on the market
and from then on Apple evolved immensely the year was 1997.
Steve Jobs vision outreached the technological expectations of its time. His creative
genius led to the creation of products that were ahead of their time, products that would
revolutionize technology and change history. Starting with the early 2000s, Apple has
constantly come up with famous products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad that are still
successful.
Steve Jobs continued his visionary journey until 5th October 2011 when he died of
complications due to cancer.

WHY IS STEVE JOBS AN ICON?

If you would ask me to describe Steve Jobs, all I will have to do is look at his products,
and that is because he invested his heart in everything he worked on. Every single Apple
product has a trace of Steve in it and in some particular form. Just by looking at a MacBook,
iPod, iPhone or iPad you can see perfectionism, innovation, vision, passion and talent. In fact,
this is what Steve Jobs was: a perfectionist, an innovator, a visionary, a passionate and talented
man. That is why a huge number of people appreciate his products. If we were to take Halls
theory as reference, we would find out more about why Steve Jobs can be considered an icon.
First of all, he was capable to generate strong responses; people identify with it, or
against it, and the differences often reflect generational distinctions. Due to the fact that his
products were way ahead of their time, he managed to get the admiration mostly from the
young public which is attracted by everything that is futuristic. His vision on how technology
can be integrated in someones life has been embraced by many. He managed to create a new
lifestyle in which people can be constantly connected to other people, news, media and so on
through the help of iPhones and iPods a lifestyle which is more real and present than ever.
Second of all, Steve Jobs certainly stands for a group of related things and values. As
you may notice, he was no ordinary business man; all he did had a philosophical side behind it.
More than that, he started out as being a hippy and he did not even finished college, yet he
managed to create an empire. He was the type that wanted more and could not commit to the
patterns of society:
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and you're life is
just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have
a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be
much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life
was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can
influence it Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
More than that, he was the type that could not fit in - that is why, for instance, he got
fired from his own company were he could not fit in anymore. His free creative spirit became a

symbol for many people who could not accept to be limited by society and its rules and
systems. This is why, for instance, many managed to become successful without finishing a
school (Mark Zuckerberg Facebook CEO, Bill Gates Microsoft CEO and many others):
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in
the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they
have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or
vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change
things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy
ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change
the world, are the ones who do.
Another thing to be considered is that what made Jobs to become an icon has roots in
historical sources and it reflects events or forces of its time. Steve Jobs remarkable qualities
have sprung in a time when technology and science started to boom. More than this, he
participated in the process of developing computer science from which the entire world
benefits today.
Last, but not least, it is considered that an icon is usually successful in commerce: every
advertising campaign, every corporation, hopes to become the next Mickey Mouse, the next
Las Vegas, the next Golden Arches. In this case, there is no doubt that every tech company
hopes to become the next Apple and this is because Steve Jobs was behind all the successful
moves made by his company.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Interviews and Documentaries:
Steve Jobs Documentary - Billion Dollar Hippy BBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-RPQ6eaDm4
Steve Jobs - Disruptive Innovation Documentary - One Last thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnoeSvHAJ9I
Steve Jobs Documentary: In His Own Words
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI9hVaqGbDY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_fSdN6cY2U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZyUlHtxoBs
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/653020-when-you-grow-up-you-tend-to-get-told-that

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/924-here-s-to-the-crazy-ones-the-misfits-therebels-the
Stanford Speech transcript:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
Movies:
Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/
Jobs (2013)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2357129/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2