Who Was Steve Jobs? (3 page)

Apple Computers officially went into business on April Fools’ Day 1976. Steve was living with his girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, who was an artist. The new company’s “office” was Steve’s parents’ garage. All the work was done there. They planned to sell Woz’s circuit boards to people who wanted to build their own home computers.

They built a sample computer with Woz’s circuit board to show how it worked. They called the computer the Apple.

Why did they pick that name?

Well, Steve ate a lot of fruit, sometimes nothing but fruit. He thought the apple was the best fruit of all. It was perfect, just like he wanted his computer to be.

They showed the computer with Woz’s circuit board to the owner of a local electronics store. He said, “I can’t see stocking just circuit boards. Not that many people know how to put together a whole computer. But if you could sell me computers like this one, I think people would buy them.”

The store owner offered Steve twenty-five thousand dollars for fifty Apple computers. He’d pay in cash when he had the machines.

“Deal,” said Steve, even though making so many computers would cost a lot of money— money they didn’t have.

But Steve came up with an idea. He went to an electronic supply store. He persuaded the store
to give him the parts to make the computers. Steve couldn’t pay for the parts right then. But he promised to pay the store back later.

Steve was awfully good at persuading people to do what he asked. The store said yes.

Each Apple computer cost two hundred twenty dollars to make. Each Apple computer was sold to
the electronics store for five hundred dollars. So even after Steve and Woz paid back the electronic supply store, they made a very big profit.

If most people today saw that Apple computer, they would be stunned. It didn’t come with a keyboard, monitor, or case. Steve and Woz knew they could do better. What if they made a computer that came with everything, so a person could just take it out of the box and use it right away? Steve bet they could sell a lot. He and Woz got to work on making such a computer—the Apple II.

Woz and Steve had big dreams for the Apple II. Woz wanted it to have color, sound, and sharp, crisp graphics. Steve wanted it to accept floppy disks that could store extra information. He wanted to encase the computer in molded plastic. At the time, plastic was much more expensive than metal or wood. But Steve thought plastic looked cool and modern. And how a computer looked was important. If it looked good, people would want it.

Steve found an investor who gave them enough money to finish the Apple II in time for a computer fair in San Francisco. They took models to display at the fair. There was a lot that was new and different about the Apple II.

While Woz was working on the computer, Steve hired a designer to come up with a new logo. A logo is a picture that stands for a company. A good logo helps people remember the company. For instance, General Electric’s logo is a lightbulb. Steve wanted an apple to represent Apple. Apple’s apple logo looked fun; it was rainbow colored and had a bite taken out of it.

Woz and Steve’s hard work paid off. People visiting the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 passed many displays of bulky computers that looked like high school science projects. Then they saw the Apple II. Here was a computer that
featured color, clear graphics, and sound. For years afterward, every other computer company would copy it.

All the technological improvements were the work of Steve Wozniak. But Steve Jobs’s design ideas were just as important. He had learned from his dad to insist on perfection. Even wires inside the computer, wires that nobody could see, had to be perfectly straight. This was the way Steve’s dad built machines, and Steve would, too. Everything had to look simple and beautiful.

By 1978, Apple was making money. The company grew quickly. Steve wanted all Apple products to run smoothly. But working with Steve was not easy. Small mistakes made him angry. Sometimes Steve yelled at his employees—even
making them cry. And if he didn’t get what he wanted, he often burst into tears himself. Employees tried to please Steve. But often Steve couldn’t explain what he wanted. He simply said, “I’ll know it when I see it.”

In 1979, Apple started to make a new home computer that used a mouse. The company hired thousands of employees. Steve worked long hours, and he expected his employees to work hard, too. He was so devoted to Apple that he didn’t have time for anything else. His girlfriend, Chrisann, had a daughter, Lisa, on May 17, 1978. Steve refused to have anything to do with his baby. He had no interest in a family.

In 1980, Steve Jobs became the youngest person in history to make
Fortune
magazine’s list of top Americans in business. He was twenty-five years old, and he was a millionaire.

Then in 1981, something terrible happened. Woz’s private plane crashed. It took months for Woz to recuperate. He never returned to work for Apple full-time.