What Steve Jobs Learned From His Biggest Failure

Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs traces the Apple co-founder's career in Silicon Valley--from its soaring highs to its crushing lows. Jobs has been hailed as a tech visionary, but he also weathered his fair share of dud products and nearly witnessed the demise of the company he founded in his youth.

In 1985, after Apple discontinued its poorly selling Lisa computer and faced flagging Macintosh sales, Jobs was ousted from his position as head of the company's Macintosh division. The decision came from the board of directors and CEO John Sculley, whom Jobs himself had selected for the position in 1983. Before the year's end, Jobs would leave Apple to found a new company, NeXT.

While NeXT hardware ultimately flopped, Apple purchased the company's software division in 1997, and NeXT became a building block for Apple's future Mac software. The acquisition also helped Jobs along the road to his comeback at Apple.

During Jobs' absence from Apple, Macintosh sales continued to struggle as competitive products from Microsoft began crowding the personal computing space. "Microsoft simply ripped off what other people did," Jobs said, according to Iassacson's telling. However, Jobs also said, "Apple deserved it. After I left, it didn't invent anything new. The Mac hardly improved. It was a sitting duck for Microsoft."

By 1997, Jobs was back at Apple, but the company's stock hovered around $4 a share, according to the New York Times. (To put that into perspective, Apple stock currently sits above $390 per share.) Jobs quickly cemented his position and, by 2000, was officially given the title of CEO.

During the course of Isaacson's interviews, Jobs shared what he saw to be his major mistake during those tumultuous years: Letting a desire for profitability outweigh passion.

"My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products," Jobs told Isaacson. "[T]he products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything."

Jobs went on to describe the legacy he hoped he would leave behind, "a company that will still stand for something a generation or two from now."

"That's what Walt Disney did," said Jobs, "and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That's what I want Apple to be."

He also stated the importance of helping Silicon Valley's next generation--the Larry Pages and Sergey Brins, the Mark Zuckerbergs. "That's how I'm going to spend part of the time I have left," Jobs told Isaacson two months before his death. "I can help the next generation remember the lineage of great companies here and how to continue the tradition. The Valley has been very supportive of me. I should do my best to repay."

During his near decade-long absence from Apple, Jobs also purchased a graphics company that would grow to become one of Hollywood's most successful animation studios. That company was Pixar. Even after he returned to Apple, Jobs continued to serve as CEO of the Pixar juggernaut for a time.

Jobs has credited his dramatic ouster from Apple as the key to his success with Pixar and his later success upon his return to Apple. In 2005, said the following, during a moving commencement address at Stanford University:

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. [...] Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.

Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs hits stores on October 24.

Take a look at Steve Jobs' 11 most memorable quotes (below).

Comments

[bshum3]

05:42 AM on 10/25/2011

Okay , okay , we get it . Steve Jobs was an innovated genius. He should have lived for decades longer . He will be sorely missed . But he still needs at least three miracles to be canonized .

[BHooverO]

03:19 PM on 11/18/2011

Steve Jobs was an IP criminal. He should have been hung in the village square instead of made into a hero.

[fordgarye]

01:54 AM on 10/25/2011

Steve Jobs might have been some sort new of age gadget hero, but he also had some serious flaws of character - one of them being is that he treated people he thought less important like crap. Some of his failures were due to his own thinking which at times was a bit off. He possibly could have lived had he sought treatment a bit sooner, but his choice was to delay. His comments about the President also showed what a bloated ego - his own sense of self importance didn't seem to leave much room for anyone else in the world. He was gift yes, but he was also quite flawed.

[Mark Helfgott]

01:27 AM on 10/25/2011

Okay, he was a great man, but isn't this getting a little creepy now?

[dws51564]

12:14 AM on 10/25/2011

Another story on Steve Jobs? Huff Post enough is enough.

[MIKEinNYC]

10:48 PM on 10/24/2011

He was a pretty smart guy. Maybe HE will come back like that other guy.

[MIKEinNYC]

10:47 PM on 10/24/2011

From what I'm reading his biggest failure was not getting his cancer properly treated.

[Jim45]

10:41 PM on 10/24/2011

No! His biggest failure was in not trusting the tremendous advances that have been made in Medicine at the time that he was first diagnosed with a small tumor. Thats a shame. Maybe he would have made it. Now we will never know! If you get the big C forget about the Allo, Meditation and Orange Juice and check into Sloan Kettering as soon as possible (Like within 24 hours).
Been there! Done that! Thats why I am here to write this. JC

[stevestevenyny]

10:19 PM on 10/24/2011

Time to move on and concentrate on the future. We could debate his accomplishments and failures from now to doomsday.

[palmerbeepee]

10:02 PM on 10/24/2011

It's a game of inches - When Apple (who should have NEVER given MS the GUI, in the first place (THEY got it from XEROX)) filed against MS over the "look and feel" of Windows, had they known that holding down the "Alt" key while operating Windows versions during that period, Windows functionality, though a "shell" not a true OS, is identical to the Mac OS. They should have won. The "drop downs" activate by hover-click vs click-click. There was a program called "Pub Tech", exception of a thin screen boarder, you would swear it's a Mac. Apple's true profitability is from the iPod forward and that's good. It's a shame, because the MS computers have always "reverse engineered" everything Apple (and Mr Woz) has done. And yes, before being given the GUI, they sort of morphed "DOS" from CP/M which they outright purchase and created "A:" Sold it to IBM (WHO LET MS KEEP THE CODE (all the way to the bank IBM DOS was a camel's hair different from MS DOS). We've all been just trying to get our PC's to do Apple stuff from the very start. It's a shame that they invented the PC but were never really able to go main stream, at least to the level that they deserved. To me, they're like an "American Sony", they have the imagination and the productivity. MS is like a big GM, producing multiple models, multiple prices, with the same old engines.

[bouquetheaven]

09:45 PM on 10/24/2011

May God bless Steve Jobs. Thanks to Mr. Jobs. Hope all the good that he has done will last.

[jianyoa]

09:45 PM on 10/24/2011

It's amazing how fast technology has progressed. I believe Mr.Jobs was a major player in the computer industry. If you showed an Ipad too people ten years ago they would faint.

[palmerbeepee]

10:16 PM on 10/24/2011

Close. . . . . . ten years ago, it was the tablet pc, or "xp table addition". 12 years ago, it was the Newton, the basic "mother" of the tablet pc. I have a 5 year old "tablet" pc with a 15" screen - we're talking about high functionality - wow! The improvement is the new battery life - but I still can't use the new ipad, cause I still need a full computer - I can get email on my phone.

As an inspector I've been using tablet pc's for 10 years, but with excellent handwriting recog. and voice activation. I'm glad to see somebody producing tablets on a larger scale - it's about time.

[ahetty2000]

08:38 PM on 10/24/2011

The fact is Apple could be a MAJOR [layer in the PC market today if Apple had followed IBM's example and allowed third parties to copy Apples motherboard design.

Fact is - throughout the late 80's and into the 90's PC's rapodly dropped in price because of incereased competition. Mac's on the other hand - remained very expensive throught this period.

The I - Mac which was released in the late 90's was too little too late.

So Apple did the next best thing - conquer the MP3/electronic gadget market- which it did - and very successfully at that..

SDtill Apple could be SO much more!! And I never cared for the way Jobs treats his underlings!!

[drdanobgyn]

07:45 PM on 10/24/2011

This dude is getting more coverage than JFK got. I'm tired of hearing about him.

[bmitche]

06:42 PM on 10/24/2011

EVEN A GENIUS DOESN'T ALWAYS MAKE THE BEST DECISIONS !

[Al Schrader]

06:24 PM on 10/24/2011

Knowing what doesn't work is just as valuable as knowing what does. I've sketch-out inventions on paper that were perfect, then built it in my workshop, and it didn't work. I've also sketched out things and built them and they did something totally better and that I had never thought of. But I will admit that there is few things as cool as when you build something and it works and you are the first person in history to see it working....Al-