People who inspired Steve Jobs
Just as Steve Jobs inspired others, there were people who served as inspiration for Apple's co-founder and visionary. Take a look at some of his influences.
Just as Steve Jobs inspired others, there were people who served as inspiration for Apple's co-founder and visionary. Take a look at some of his influences.
Just as Steve Jobs inspired others, there were people who served as inspiration for Apple's co-founder and visionary. Take a look at some of his influences.
One of the most obvious influences were The Beatles, four of Jobs' heroes who also once sued Jobs' fledgling computer company over trademark issues with Apple Records and whose catalog was once elusive for iTunes.
Jobs once said the Fab Four was his model for business, saying "They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people."
In a 2010 interview, ex-Apple CEO John Sculley offered a glimpse at some of Jobs' heroes, including Edwin Land, the co-founder of Polaroid ...
... Ross Perot, whom Sculley said Jobs admired because he was a "systems thinker" who "believed in big ideas; change the world ideas," and ...
... Akio Morita, who who "built Sony and did it with great products -- Steve is a products person," as Sculley said.
Jobs also named Thomas Edison among his heroes. He cited Edison's "own the whole chain model" when Apple rolled out the iPhone and iTunes.
He similarly expressed admiration for Henry Ford and other business innovators, including the likes of ...
... George Lucas and ...
... Walt Disney. In a 1996 interview Jobs said he hoped to mirror the success of Walt Disney: "Computers are commodities with a six-month shelf life. Classics like 'Snow White' and 'Fantasia' are passed from generation to generation."
Impressed by a young Jobs after he wrote him seeking parts for a class project, William Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, offered him a summer internship.
A Democratic donor, Jobs also became good friends with President Bill Clinton, letting him stay in his home in Woodside, Calif., dining with the president and staying in the White House's Lincoln Bedroom.
During his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, Jobs professed love for a quote from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, saying, "There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will."
In the unauthorized biography, "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs," author Alan Deutschman quotes a college friend of Jobs as saying Jobs once dated Joan Baez because of his admiration for Bob Dylan, who once was Baez's lover as well.
