Apple's Leadership (Essay Sample)

Apple
By [Student’s Name]
[Code + Course Name]
[Name of Tutor]
[Name of University]
[City, State]
[Date of Submission]
Introduction
In the modern society, there are key figures whose actions shape the behaviours of the society. These people occupy influential positions, and therefore, many people look upon them for guidance. As a result, they are held responsible if they use their positions to mislead the community or society. This means that to be in such a position, a person is required to be of high moral standards, be a good listener, be of high integrity and be wise. People in such positions may include the elected political leaders, religious leaders, and business people whose organizations are largely depended on by the community. This means that the products and services they offer to a region and the world at large should be of high standards to meet and exceed the expectations of the clients. This paper will look into Apple’s former Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs who is credited with turning around the company from a loss making company to a profit making organization. Steve Jobs was the most successful corporate CEO, even though he was never been taught Business. He was also the most adept consumer psychologist and human sociologist. He was a charismatic technologist, even though he was self-taught. He was a visionary, a trend-setter, as well as an agent who advocated for change. He had been regaded as a disruptive force in the system and an artist who was a fountain of ideas. For the few years, Steve Jobs had been behind some of the greatest advances technology has ever made: calligraphic computer fronts, the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, micropayments, the iTunes store, aesthetics in products, and simplicity of user interfaces. Steve Jobs had managed to make everyday devices interesting, beautiful, intuitive, simple to use and yet powerful. He transformed lives through his products, but also introduced a paradigm shift for business and leadership, and he has earned his reputation as being one of the best leaders to have lived.
Biography and historical analysis that explain the origins and significance events of Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco California in 1955 to Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandal who later gave him for adoption to Paul Jobs and Clara Jobs. He grew up and taught himself how to program and interact with the predecessors of personal computers. It is said that he left the college after only six months although he continued to take classes for the next two and a half years. It was during his legendary commencement address to Stanford in 2005, where he talked about taking a class on the calligraphy after he had left the college; thanks to this class, he would, 10 years later create the beautiful fonts used in modern computing. In 1976, together with Steve Wozniack they built Apple in his garage and soon they had revolutionized the world of personal computers by creating the Apple and the Apple 2. Apple had used the proof-of-concept window-mouse interface developed at Xerox PARC to develop a beautiful interface for a personal computer. The company’s products were an instant hit, and in 1984, they introduced Macintosh, after a groundbreaking Orwell-themed super bowl ad. However, in 1985, after a company power struggle with Steve Wozniack, Steve Jobs was fired from Apple Company although he had regarded himself as a co founder.
During that time of devastation in retrospect, he has described this unfortunate occurence as the greatest thing that could have ever happened to him, because he managed to be free of heavy workload success and was free to venture into other business. He went on and founded Pixar, which changed the movie animation industry by way of coming up with Toy Story, which was the world’s first computer-generated movie. However, after a few years into operation, Pixar was bought by Disney, a situation that made Jobs the largest shareholder in Disney.
In addition, Jobs also created NeXT Computer, which was technologically state-of-the-art device and software that brought in object-oriented programming, modern web browsers, rich-content email and some of the fundamental building blocks of OSX.
While Steve Job’s ventures were on an upward rise, Apple was on a downward spiral due to mismanagement, lack of direction, failure and, ultimately, bankruptcy. As a result, in 1996, it bought NeXT for about $430m and Steve Jobs was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of Apple for the second time. With exceptional discipline, leadership and vision, he worked hard to re-establish the lost corporate culture, sense of pride and famously said that Apple was in dire need of innovating its way out of bankruptcy. And true to his words, Apple was re-innovated itself until it was out of bankruptcy and turned into one of the most profitable companies in the 21st century.
Steve Jobs had succeeded to fulfill yet another task, that of bringing to life a dying organization into a landmark of modern entrepreneurship. In 2001, Apple brought to market the iPod, which made it a monopoly in the production of music devices. At the same time introduction of iTunes music store completely transformed the way music is bought. In 2007, Apple Company introduced the iPhone, it entered yet another seemingly saturated market, the cellular phone business, and where under the guidance of Steve Jobs established the concept of micropayments with the App Store. This created a new flourishing market for mobile applications. The last product to be introduced in the market was in, in 2010, where it introduced the iPad. In less than one year, Apple earned the majority of market share in the tablet PC market.
The most important factor is that Steve Jobs had managed what many had failed to achieve by introducing products in saturated markets and becoming the leader in that field. It is said that this was achieved by understanding the consumer needs and preferences and then using the available resources and re arranging them so that they can suit what a client needs. By the time he died in October 2011, Steve Jobs had managed to build his name as one of the best Chief Executive Officer of the 21st century.

Main qualities of Steve Jobs that affected the success in five aspects of his life
He was very creative and sensitive to products produced
When he took over the helms of Apple for the second time as the Chief Executive Officer, Steve Jobs perceived Apple as a company that was at the cross roads of Liberal Arts and technology. During this time, the market was flooded with traditional personal computers that were very slow in processing documents. As a result, he thought of making products that were both attractive before the customers as well as high gadgets that had high processors. The other idea he had was to reduce the size of these gadgets. He thought if the gadgets had chips and other products packed well within the gadget boards, then making thinner, more energy efficient, faster service and high-tech devices was possible.
According to Molinaro, Steve Jobs brought in a philosophy by which Apple products should entail. He has observed that the products had to have a visual appeal to customers. Steve Jobs was quoted saying that the buttons of their products have to be made beautiful so that a customer might even be tempted to lick them off the screen (23-26). This is an act of how creative he wanted the company employees to be in order to compete with other established and profit making companies. On the same note, the company was to employ the latest available technology to produce hi-tech products at a low cost to compete well with other companies such as Samsung and SONY. The second philosophy was to make sure that their products were the easiest to use in the market and be the most beautiful. He has noted that beautiful products attract customers first even before their performance is put to the test. It is for this reason that Steve Jobs wanted the company to have the most beautiful products in the market to continue their domination of the market for many years. Thirdly, Steve Jobs wanted the company to establish the same level of quality in the boxing, the presentation, the ads, the manuals, the retail, the service so that whenever a customer buys an Apple product , it becomes a real experience because of the service the products offer. In short, Steve Jobs wanted customers to feel the value of their money every time they bought any of the company’s products. Through his creativity and sensitivity of the goods the company produce, he was able to transform Apple from a loss making company to a leading electronics goods company in the world today. For example, iPods, iPhones and the iPads have become an instant hit in the market because of their simplicity, high quality and low cost compared to the devices produced by other companies. The middle class in many countries across the world use iPads as their personal computers other than laptops which are heavy. The beauty about iPad is that it doubles up as a personal computer as well as a mobile phone.
Good Listener of consumer needs
One of the basic principles of the Jobs philosophy was his deep understanding of the clients. The consumer does not know what he needs. For example, Snyder points out that prior to the introduction of the iPhone, nobody really needed one; today, however, a lot of people cannot operate without an iPhone (11-14). According to him, once presented with a product, customers can create a need for it, if it is better than the product he or she is currently using. He points out that there are many good things that keep on attracting a huge number of people to iPhones: some of the features are their simplicity, their intuitiveness, their beauty, their ...