As you can imagine, Jobs didn't know what to do next but he stilled loved what he did, so he invested in two different companies. During 1986, he created his own computer company called NeXT and he bought a small set of computer graphic equipment called Pixar from George Lucas. As you can imagine, both companies struggled to get off their feet. During October of 1988, NeXT released their first cube shaped computer and it was known to be "five years ahead of its time" said Jobs. They quickly realized that sales were not as high as they would like because it was too expensive, nearly ten thousand dollars.
|
They came to the decision that the next model needed to have a floppy drive. The Japanese company, Canon, was impressed with the company and they decided to invest $100 million in 1989 for a 16.7% piece of pie. Within later years to come, the NeXT computer software became extremely popular and there were rumors that the only reason people were buying the computers was for the software. Many people recommended that Jobs ditch the computers and just sell the software, but because of Jobs love for computer making, he couldn't do it. Over the next couple of years, many people believe that Jobs was running the company into debt, but they were still selling computers. Meanwhile, Pixar wasn't doing very well either until they began working with Disney. They created movies scenes for movies such as; the Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast.
Steve Jobs worked day and night to keep both companies a float but was relieved when the Walt Disney Company asked Pixar to make a full length film. They had an idea in mind: "a story about toys that yearned for kids to play with them. Appropriately, they called it Toy Story." (Blumenthal, 144). After having many struggles and difficulties with the Walt Disney Company, Toy Story was released in 1995 and was a complete success. They made over $29 million in the first weekend and roughly $200 million in the first year in just the United States.
|
On December 20th of 1996 Apple agrees to buy NeXT, returning Jobs to the company. Apple was falling, they had good products, but only a few. They didn't have enough variety of products, which changed once Jobs became CEO in 1997. Jobs launched the 'Think Different' campaign which sparked innovation within Apple and the creation of the iMac. During 2001 while Jobs was at Apple, they announced the iPod and unveiled iTunes. During October of 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but that didn't stop him. Apple soon released the iPod Shuffle and the Macbook Pro.
|
The company was seeking something more, again, and Steve Jobs suggested that they look into touchscreen computers or tablets. In september of 2005, Apple and Motorola released the ROKR, which was a mobile phone that featured the use of the iTunes. Fortunately, Apple was not happy with the sales, so they created a team to create a touchscreen mobile phone. The iPhone was anounced during January and released on June 29, 2007 and was a complete success. The iPhone continued with a new model every year, most recently the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The use of the touchscreen in the iPhone was then created into the iPad, iPod Touch, and Apple Watch.
The link to the left is a video of Jobs announcing the original iPhone at the MacWorld Convention in January of 2007. |