note:footnotes available in attached version
Journalism 791 – Fall 2005
Biography – Steve Jobs & the iPod
Marti Howell
Steve lie on his bed, staring hard at the ceiling. He
knew full well what “assassination” meant, even though
he was only eight years old.
He had found out on his way home from school. He was
sad that President John F. Kennedy was dead – like all
the grownups were – but there was something else and
Steve thought of that as he stared at the light
fixture in the ceiling of his Mountain View,
California bedroom.
What would things be like without President Kennedy,
he thought. Would the communists take over the world,
he wondered. Steve remembered vividly the Cuban
Missile Crisis the year before and how frightened he
had been He was frightened now. He was frightened
because Steve Jobs was always thinking about the
future.
The sun was setting over the valley and Steve decided
he better get down to his neighbor Mr. Lang’s house
before his mother told him it was too dark to go out.
Maybe he could learn to take apart a clock radio and
put it back together before the Russians landed, he
thought as he put on his jacket.
----------------------------------------------
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple computers and Pixar
entertainment, is now far removed from that crisp
November afternoon, but he is the same inquisitive
boy.
Jobs made reality the dream of the average American
with his own personal computer. He watched Silicon
Valley erupt with computer chips in the wake of his
vision. He won critical acclaim for his innovative
full-length animation work. He became a
multi-millionaire.
Steve Jobs does not have to work anymore.
However, in some respects, Steve Jobs never stopped
being eight years old. He is still curious. He is
still driven by his ideas for a brighter future. He
still wants to know how things work.
With the iPod “Nano” hitting shelves this month, Jobs
has improved on one of his most fabulous inventions.
The iPod MP3 player was introduced in November of
2001. Since then it has been updated twice and sold
more than 1.5 million units. It now exceeds sales of
any other Apple device on the market. It also tops the
market in MP3 player sales.
Now Jobs has the Nano.
The new iPod Nano features 2GB or 4GB storage
capacity. The two models hold 500 and 1,000 songs and
can play for up to fourteen hours before the battery
must be charged. Starting at $199, the iPod Nano is
reasonably priced.
The Nano can also hold photos, podcasts and
audiobooks. The size of a couple of credit cards
pasted together, the Nano is also the smallest MP3
player to date.
The Nano is just the latest in the long line of
inventions from the mind of Steve Jobs. Jobs
introduced the Apple I in 1976. It was the first
single-board computer with onboard read-only memory
(ROM). The next year, he introduced the first
mass-marketed personal computer – the Apple II.
Jobs is more than an inventor though. He is a
visionary. When the Apple II came out, Jobs invited
programmers to create programs for it. The result was
more than 16,000 programs that ranged from computer
games to agricultural budget programs.
Jobs has always maintained that it is people who make
innovations happen. And he has never been shy about
sharing the spotlight.
“I was lucky to get into computers when it was a very
young and idealistic industry,” Jobs once said. “There
weren’t many degrees in computer science, so people in
computers were brilliant people from mathematics,
physics, music, zoology, whatever.
“I have found, not just in software but in everything
I’ve done, it really pays to go after the best people
in the world.”
The iPod Nano will change the way people listen to
music. For Jobs, it is just another step on the path
to his future.
“The personal computer was created by the hardware
revolution of the 1970s,” Jobs told Fortune magazine.
“The next change will come from a software
revolution.”
-30-
