Steve Jobs

The fact that Google Gemini will power the revamped Siri is drawing criticism from people convinced that Apple should have developed its own AI in-house to bring the voice assistant up to speed.

Some of the critics seem to think Apple always made its own software before now. Therefore they regard the deal with Google as a major policy shift — and a sign of weakness that would horrify Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

No. Just … no. These critics will be shocked to learn that many Apple products are built on top of tech developed outside the company … and often, it was Steve Jobs who did it!

January 15, 2008: Apple CEO Steve Jobs shows off the first MacBook Air at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, calling the revolutionary computer the “world’s thinnest notebook.”

The 13.3-inch laptop measures only 0.76 inches at its thickest point and 0.16 inches at its tapered thinnest. It also boasts a unibody aluminum design, thanks to an Apple engineering breakthrough that allows the crafting of a complicated computer case from a single block of finely machined metal.

In a brilliant piece of showmanship during the MacBook Air launch, Jobs pulls the super-slim laptop out of a standard interoffice envelope. (You can watch his keynote introducing the MacBook Air below.)

January 14, 2009: Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ cancer worsens to the point that he takes a medical leave from leading the company.

Despite his illness, Jobs remains reluctant to take the time off. When he does, he keeps quiet about the severity of the situation. He calls “the curiosity over my personal health” a distraction caused by prying bloggers and reporters. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that his health problems “are more complex than I originally thought.”

January 13, 2000: Steve Jobs’ longtime frenemy Bill Gates quits as Microsoft CEO, stepping down just a month after his company’s stock hit its all-time high.

The news coincides with a turning point in the long-running battle between the two tech powerhouses. Microsoft begins a long decline from its previous dominance, while Apple continues its rise to the top.

This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: Did the world just get its first glimpse at the folding iPhone’s screen? And how the heck does anybody bend glass?!?

Also on the Cult of Mac podcast:

• Plastering the iPhone 17’s camera plateau with tiny stickers is a thing.
• A new auction lets you bid on some truly bizarre Steve Jobs artifacts, and we’re generally amazed. Will people pay for Jobs’ old 8-tracks and bow ties?
• Special guest (and frequent Cult of Mac contributor) Graham Bower explains how he vibe-coded his new strength-training app, Reps & Sets 26. It’s an inspirational tale!
• And finally, we pay tribute to the best Apple setups we saw last year.

Listen to this week’s episode of the Cult of Mac podcast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video, embedded below.

And, as a reminder, you can still hear our friend and colleague Erfon Elijah on The CultCast.

January 10, 2006: Steve Jobs unveils the original 15-inch MacBook Pro, Apple’s thinnest, fastest and lightest laptop yet.

Building on the previous PowerBook G4 laptop, the new laptop adds dual-core Intel processors for the first time. The MacBook Pro immediately makes waves in the tech community. And did we mention its awesome MagSafe connector?

January 9, 2007: Apple CEO Steve Jobs gives the world its first look at the iPhone onstage during the Macworld conference in San Francisco. The initial reaction to that first iPhone demo is mixed. But Jobs is confident that Apple has created a product that people want — even if they don’t know it yet.

The palm-size device combines an iPod, a phone and a PDA. The iPhone unveiling excites many Apple fans but critics remain skeptical.

January 8, 2004: The clumsily named iPod+HP, a Hewlett-Packard-branded iPod, debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Shown off by Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the prototype device is blue, the color used for HP’s branding. By the time it arrives on the market later that year, however, the digital music player is the same shade of white as the regular iPod. The device doesn’t hang around for long, either.

January 7, 1997: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak returns to the company to participate in an advisory role, reuniting with Steve Jobs onstage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Woz’s homecoming is revealed at the end of the Macworld conference. With Jobs’ recent return to Apple (thanks to the NeXT acquisition), it marks the first time the two co-founders have been at Apple together since 1983. It’s a great way to celebrate Apple’s 20th anniversary. Unfortunately, the reunion won’t last.

How would you like to own a ribbon cable once owned by Steve Jobs? Or how about a heat sink? What about his boyhood collection of bow ties?

These are just three of about 200 items associated with the Apple co-founder currently being auctioned online to celebrate Apple’s 50th anniversary.

Entitled “Steve Jobs & the Computer Revolution: The Apple 50th Anniversary Auction,” the collection of weird auction stuff is more interesting than usual. It provides a glimpse inside Jobs’ childhood home and the legendary Silicon Valley garage where Apple was born. There’s also Apple’s very first check, expected to go for a cool half million.

January 3, 1977: Apple Computer Co. is officially incorporated, with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak listed as co-founders. The Apple incorporation leaves out third founder Ron Wayne — who initially invested in the company — because he sold back his stake in Apple for $800.

The funding and expertise needed to turn Apple into a corporation is provided by a man named Mike Markkula, who becomes an important figure in the company’s history.

December 30, 1999: Microsoft hits the height of its 1990s dominance and begins its early-2000s decline, clearing a gap at the top for Apple.

After hitting an all-time high of $53.60, Microsoft stock starts to fall. Less than a year later, MSFT shares will fall more than 60% in value to $20.

December 29, 1999: Apple starts shipping its unfathomably large 22-inch Cinema Display, the biggest LCD computer display available anywhere,

Apple’s all-digital flat panel is a far cry from the bulky cathode ray tube monitor of the original iMac, which took the world by storm the previous year. The Cinema Display is also Apple’s first widescreen display — and the first to sport a digital video interface.

December 28, 2006: As the rest of the country enjoys a much-deserved holiday, Apple gets embroiled in a stock option “backdating” scandal.

The news, centered on the dubious awarding of stock options to CEO Steve Jobs, prompts Apple’s share price to fall. Some people even suggest Jobs might need to step down as Apple’s leader. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen.

December 27, 2010: Almost four months after the second-gen Apple TV’s debut, Cupertino says it has sold 1 million of the streaming video devices.

The news shows that Apple’s set-top box is gaining momentum. However, Apple’s PR move — which included a preemptive press release issued on December 21 that said Apple “expects sales of its new Apple TV to top one million units later this week” — is also a low-blow shot at competitor Roku, which recently said it planned to hit the 1 million unit mark by the end of 2010.

December 26, 1982: Time magazine names the personal computer its “Man of the Year.”

It’s the first time a nonhuman entity wins the award, which was created in 1927. The award devastates Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — because he thought the accolade would go to him.

December 23, 2005: Apple files a patent application for its iconic “slide to unlock” gesture for the iPhone.

At this point, the iPhone remains a secret research project. However, the ability to unlock the device by sliding your finger across it signifies Apple’s big ambitions for its smartphone. Cupertino wants the iPhone that it’s racing to develop to be easy to use, intuitive and miles ahead of the competition technologically.

December 20, 1996: Apple Computer buys NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after leaving Cupertino a decade earlier.

The deal costs Apple $429 million. It’s a massive price to pay for the failing NeXT, a computer company that already saw its hardware division crash and burn. But the price is worth it when you consider what Apple gets as part of the deal: the return of Steve Jobs.

December 12, 1980: Apple goes public, floating 4.6 million shares on the stock market at $22 per share. The Apple IPO becomes the biggest tech public offering of its day. And more than 40 out of 1,000 Apple employees become instant millionaires.

As Apple’s biggest shareholder, 25-year-old Steve Jobs ends the day with a net worth of $217 million. However, the big payday triggers internal tensions as it highlights Cupertino’s class divide.

December 8, 1975: San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneur Paul Terrell opens the Byte Shop, one of the world’s first computer stores — and the first to sell an Apple computer.

Years before Apple would open its own retail outlets, the Byte Shop stocks the first 50 Apple-1 computers built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

December 6, 2000: Apple Computer’s stock price falls after the company posts its first quarterly loss since Steve Jobs’ return to Cupertino in 1997.

Shares tumble $3 to just $14 a share as doom-predicting pundits worry that the big Apple comeback might come screeching to a halt. Little did they know …

Meet Steve Lemay, the new head of user interface design at Apple — the highest-profile software design job at the giant company, and possibly the world.

Unfortunately for Lemay, who has worked at Apple since 1999, he shares the same first name as the late Steve Jobs, who nicknamed him “Margaret” — a name that reportedly stuck.

Aside from being called “Margaret” internally at Apple, Lemay has a long and stellar design record at the company. He’s helped shape everything from OS X to visionOS. He is named on hundreds of patents and helped develop one of Apple’s most highly celebrated UI tricks.

November 29, 1995: Capitalizing on the success of Toy Story, Pixar floats 6.9 million shares on the stock market. The Pixar IPO makes Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who owns upward of 80% of the animation studio, a billionaire.

After the windfall, one of the first people Jobs calls is his friend, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who’s already a member of the billionaire’s club.

“Hello, Larry?” Jobs tells his friend on the phone. “I made it.”

November 26, 1984: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates praises Apple’s newly arrived Macintosh as the future of personal computing.

“The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC,” Gates says in a BusinessWeek cover story.

This high praise for the Mac would seem almost unthinkable coming out of Gates’ mouth just a few years later. However, the interview arrives at a time when Microsoft is best known as one of the biggest Mac developers.

November 24, 1999: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs gets another feather in his cap when Toy Story 2, the sequel to the 1995 Pixar hit, debuts in theaters. It goes on to become the first animated sequel in history to gross more than the original.

While more a piece of Steve Jobs history than Apple history, the release of Toy Story 2 caps a spectacular year for Apple’s interim CEO.