The first picture of Steve Jobs out and about in his home town of Palo Alto in the USA has emerged following his resignation from the CEO role at Apple.
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| Apple Chairman Steve Jobs pictured with a friend in Palo Alto, California. Picture: Scope / PacificCoastNews.com See story at news.com.au |
The resignation, the most discussed in corporate history has sent shock waves through the IT community with questions now being raised as to whether Apple will retain the same competitive edge as it has under Jobs.
The Guardian newspaper in the UK said that if all the “Whither Apple without Jobs?” articles were laid end to end, they would cover quite a distance – but they never reached a conclusion.
I first met Steve Jobs at Seybold, a graphic design show in the USA, and later at Macworld. He was a humble man who after nearly running me down outside of the front of the Moscone Centre in San Francisco, when he came round a corner in his Porsche too fast and promptly apologised.
Pulling up outside the location where Macworld was being held he asked me to walk with him as he rushed to give a keynote presentation. I later got a very short interview with him.
Ironically it was the same event when Bill Gates appeared via satellite agreeing to invest US$150 million in Apple to develop and ship future versions of its Microsoft Office after Corel had offered Apple a new version of Word Perfect written for Linux and UNIX users.
Jobs had just returned to Apple after the PC Company bought NeXT, the computer workstation company Jobs started after being ousted by the Apple board in 1985.
By acquiring NeXT, Apple got two things: the operating system that became OS X, the software that underpinns everything Apple has made since; and Jobs as “interim CEO” at a salary of $1 a year. But it was still a corporate minnow: a BMW to Microsoft’s Ford. Fifteen years later, Apple had become the most valuable company in the world.
It was the greatest comeback since Lazarus and the rest is history.
