Steve Jobs: Guru of the user experience

Steve Jobs: Guru of the user experience

The founder of Apple popularized a gospel of surprising and delighting users with designs that were simple, yet elegant and above all easy to use. Along the way, he helped drive the shift to digital media. Jobs also cut an example of tenacity and the independence to, in the words of his own slogan, “think different.”

Although he had no engineering degree, Jobs was steeped in Silicon Valley culture from an early age. Caught up in its microcomputer frenzy, he founded Apple Computer Company with EE Steve Wozniack in 1976.

Jobs championed the design of the Apple Macintosh that in 1984 crystallized the move to graphical user interfaces in personal computing. The Xerox PARC Alto was the first microcomputer to use a mouse, icons and pull-down menus, but under Jobs’ leadership the Macintosh brought those tools to a mass market.

The Mac set the stage for what was to come years later. After a bitter parting from Apple in 1985, Jobs returned in 1996 to lead it from near bankruptcy to becoming in August 2012 the most valuable company in history.

Apple’s rise followed the arc of a string of iconic consumer products that led the PC industry into the post-PC era. Like the Macintosh, the products were not the first to use new technologies but were typically the first to implement and market them in ways that captured the imagination of increasingly broad audiences.


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Steve Jobs


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