Apple, the second most valuable company in the world with a market capitalization of over 3.6 trillion dollars, will celebrate 50 years in a few days.
The company was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple I personal computer. The company started out of Jobs’ parents’ home in Palo Alto and became a multibillion-dollar behemoth that shaped modern consumer technology.
While Jobs’ work on consumer electronics was revolutionary and laid the groundwork for modern technological thinking on the subject, his views on dissent are equally important and carry considerable weight.
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Quote of the day from Steve Jobs
“Here’s to the crazies. The misfits. The rebels. The rioters. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They don’t like rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, celebrate them or vilify them. The only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because those crazy people can change them forward, we see. brilliant because people who are crazy enough to think, that they can change the world, they are the ones who do.”
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What does the Steve Jobs quote mean?
Steve Jobs’ legacy in technology is often associated with the phrase “Think Different” – a slogan coined for Apple’s famous advertising campaign – which is often quoted to celebrate those who challenge the conventional.
Traversing the early landscape of Silicon Valley, Jobs came face-to-face with the rigid bureaucratic mindset of the computer industry, especially at the older tech giants.
Coming from a background influenced by 1960s counterculture and Zen Buddhism, Jobs was frustrated by the lack of imagination and aesthetic sense he saw in the industry. His observations during his early career strongly influenced his worldview, making him realize that technological stagnation was not the result of a lack of ability, but the result of uninspired corporate institutions run by cautious men.
In the above quote, Jobs unequivocally states that “rules” and the “status quo” cannot be defended at the expense of human progress: if society stagnates, lacks imagination, or holds back because of how our industries, educational systems, and social frameworks work, then the “misfits” who break them should be celebrated.
Jobs’ words here represent an argument that society must place absolute value on the very rebels and troublemakers it often tries to suppress.
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Who was Steve Jobs?
Before Jobs, most people believed that computers were purely utilitarian business tools designed just as they were then—complex and out of reach for the average person.
Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955 and grew up in the epicenter of the emerging electronics boom that would eventually become Silicon Valley.
Alongside his friend Steve Wozniak, Jobs co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 from his parents’ garage. While Wozniak provided the technical expertise, it was Jobs who had the foresight to package otherwise intimidating computers into intuitive, consumer-friendly devices, culminating in the landmark release of the Macintosh in 1984, which introduced the graphical user interface to the masses.
However, Jobs’ uncompromising nature and erratic leadership style led to his infamous ouster from Apple in 1985. Freed from corporate bureaucracy, Jobs spent his exile venturing into new territories, funding the computer graphics division that became Pixar Animation Studios, and founding NeXT. His eventual return to struggling Apple in 1997 set the stage for one of the biggest corporate turnarounds in modern history.
Over the next decade and a half, Jobs orchestrated a series of successful innovations—including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad—that redefined global industries, from telecommunications to digital music.
He fundamentally challenged the conventional norms of his time and introduced a revolutionary new idea: that technology and the liberal arts are intimately connected, and that personal devices must be designed with an uncompromising focus on aesthetics and user experience to truly empower individuals and change the world.
