<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > one</h1>
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were born in San Francisco and Seattle in the United States in 1955, the same year, but with very different backgrounds.
Jobs (left) and Bill Gates (right)
Born into an excellent family, the father of a prominent local lawyer, the mother of a popular leader, and the director of numerous institutions, Bill Gates grew up in a wealthy, well-resourced family, attending the best private school in the local area, and receiving the best learning resources.
Jobs, by contrast, was much more "miserable."
Jobs's biological father is called Abdelfattah Chandry, as soon as he hears this strange name, he knows that he comes from the Middle East, and sure enough, Chandri is the son of a prominent family in Syria, who studied at the American University in Beirut earlier, and later came to the University of Wisconsin in the United States to study for a master's degree, that is, here, Chandry met a woman named Joanne Siebel, Joanne was a graduate student at this university, the two fell in love at first sight, lang talent, love, and then dry firewood, So in the summer of 1954, Joanne became pregnant.
But at this time, the two could not get married, because of the resistance, which was Joanne's father, Jobs's grandfather Arthur Siebel. Arthur was a devout Christian, and Chandri was an Islamist with different religions, and Arthur was very opposed to the two being together, and even before his death in 1955, he did not forget to threaten Joanne---- if Joanne and Chandry married, he would break off the father-daughter relationship with her. There was no way, Joanne was on the verge of running to a doctor's house in San Francisco to give birth, and in early 1955, Jobs was born. But at this time, Arthur Siebel was still alive, and Joanne did not dare to take it home, so she had no choice but to give Jobs to a family for adoption.
Jobs's adoptive father, Paul Reinhold Jobs, did not graduate from high school, was originally a coast guard, and after retiring from the army, he became a mechanic with excellent mechanical repair skills. Her adoptive mother, Beira, was a bookkeeper who was unable to have children after her marriage after an ectopic pregnancy miscarriage. The young couple has been married for 9 years and very much hopes to have a child, and the arrival of Jobs has undoubtedly brought the dawn of their lives.
Jobs and his adoptive father
However, Jobs's adoptive parents were economical, and unlike Bill Gates, who could attend the best private primary school, When he was a child, Jobs could only attend the third-rate primary school next to his home and live a second-rate life. Jobs, who has superior intelligence, thinks that the content taught by the teacher will be all, and simply plays pranks every day, and the most excessive one is to put explosives under the teacher's chair, which frightens the teacher and convulses. Such a mischievous child was not welcomed by the school anywhere, so the sixth grade Jobs transferred to one of the worst primary schools in the local area, where there were daily fights and extortion incidents, Jobs was often bullied there, and then he couldn't stand it, his parents could only save money and spend $21,000 to buy a house on the edge of Silicon Valley, so that Jobs could study at the best school in Silicon Valley.
After changing schools three times, Jobs finally settled down, and it was here that he began to find the direction of life.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > two</h1>
Silicon Valley in the United States was slowly developed after the end of World War II, before World War II this piece is the United States Naval Base, next to the many companies that serve the United States Naval Base, and later the World's Top 500 company Hewlett-Packard was founded here in 1939. Later, the naval base was withdrawn, there were few private high-tech enterprises here, in 1956, a professor named Fred Terman of Stanford University in the United States felt that such a large area was not easy to use, and decided to establish a Stanford Research Park here to encourage Stanford graduates to start a business here.
Not long after the establishment of the research park, it welcomed a heavyweight guest - William Shockley, the inventor of the crystal diode, Shockley set up a semiconductor laboratory here, and also brought 8 fierce generals, including the famous Noyes, Gordon Moore, Spock and Raymond, these people later established Intel and National Semiconductor Company, which greatly promoted the semiconductor development of this place, in 1971 a "Electronic News" newspaper in the United States officially named this place " Silicon Valley,"
Silicon Valley, USA
Living in such an environment made Jobs immersed in high-tech ideas such as transistors and semiconductors from a young age, and naturally he also had a strong interest in it, which also laid the seeds for him to create a high-tech enterprise later. He began to join the Explorers Club established by Hewlett-Packard, upside down crystal diodes, homemade frequency counters, studied electronics, and saw the world's first desktop computer developed by Hewlett-Packard in 1968, and became obsessed with computers. In 1970, after being introduced, Jobs met a man who liked to play pranks and electronics as much as he did, Wozniak, and it was this person who later founded Apple with Jobs.
Wozniak's origin is much better than Jobs, his father is an outstanding graduate of the California Institute of Technology, after graduation became a rocket expert, in such a family, Woz is naturally not inferior, only in the fourth grade of primary school, has been proficient in electronics, play with transistors and resistors, circuit boards, but also built a walkback system, a good engineering man. But since the ancient science and engineering department out of the dick, this sentence has been perfectly reflected in Woz, Woz is 5 years older than Jobs, in the electronics expertise is much better than Jobs, but in terms of social aspects is very poor, read to the fourth grade of high school, other classmates are in love, he is still touching the circuit board to live, everyone looks at this kind of dick is not willing to play with him. So the lonely Woz actually came up with the idea of making an electronic metronome to attract attention, this electronic metronome will make a "ticking" sound, and the bomb is similar, Woz put it in the school locker, once the cabinet door is opened, the sound of the metronome will accelerate, the result of the day someone found this metronome, thinking it was a bomb, scared the principal to pick it up, with a lightning speed to run to the uninhabited playground, carefully remove the wires, only to find that it is a false alarm.
Wozniak
The mad (faceless) principal sent Woz to the juvenile detention center that night, and it turned out that this guy was also a talent, and actually taught others to connect the fan wires to the iron window, and as soon as someone touched the iron window, he would be electrocuted. This mischievous personality is very compatible with Jobs, and the two have common interests - electronics and music, which is simply a hate for each other.
Two technological geniuses collided in this way, and something was bound to happen that changed the world.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > three</h1>
In 1971, the first product that Jobs and Woz collaborated on was a thing called a "blue box", which, in simple terms, could make a sound, and the audio of this sound was close to the frequency of long-distance calls made by The American Telephone Company, so that it could fool the telephone company and make long-distance calls for free. Woz was a technical genius, making such a blue box was not a difficult task, and Jobs could not help technically. But Woz is a full of technical house, he developed this blue box purely of interest, can be given to others for free, and Jobs wanted to commercialize it, so he went door to door, and finally sold 100 blue boxes, although he did not make any money, but this is the first time he and Woz division of labor, Woz is in charge of technology, Jobs is responsible for business, which also laid the foundation for their later division of labor in Apple.
In 1972, Jobs began to go to Reed College to study, but for such a restless person, it was impossible to go to the whole university for four years, and in less than two years, in 1974, Jobs chose to quit because he did not want to waste his parents' savings to study some insignificant courses, and worked in a company called Atari. In 1975, a photograph was published on the cover of a magazine called Volkswagen Mechanic in the United States, which was the first personal computer, the Altai computer, which was still just a bunch of parts, not that we can use it directly now, but that these parts need to be welded to the motherboard to run some simple commands. But even so, it still won the pursuit of many computer enthusiasts, indicating that a new era is coming.
At that time, Jobs and his partner Woz were very excited to see this issue of the magazine, and they were equally excited by Bill Gates, who studied at Harvard University, after which these technology geniuses began to develop their careers according to their own ideas, and will continue to collide in the next few days, constantly compete, and strive for their own grand causes.
Jobs's partner Woz was a complete technical genius, when he saw the Altai computer, he thought of making a personal computer, with a keyboard, a display screen, as long as you press on the keyboard, the screen will appear corresponding keys. With this idea, Woz began to devote himself to research, and on June 29, 1975, finally successfully tested, which became the Apple I, Jobs was stunned as soon as he saw this product, and he immediately decided to set up a company with a business mind, intending to commercialize the device for sale.
Jobs (right) and Watts (left)
Jobs sold his car, Woz sold his HP calculator, the two got a total of $1300 in start-up capital, ready to do a big job, the next day, Jobs thought of the name, it was called Apple.
But at this time, Woz did not want to sell this device to make money, but wanted to give the design schematic to computer enthusiasts for free, which can make Jobs angry, in the face of such a "IQ 150, emotional intelligence two hundred and five" people, Jobs can only find an ally Ron Wayne, this is Jobs's previous colleagues who worked at Atari, once opened a company, but went out of business, given way of Wayne's experience, so Jobs pulled him to a partnership, together to persuade Woz, Wayne did live up to the trust, a sentence " A great engineer, only by working with a great marketer, can be remembered by the world" Woz said stunned, blood-boiling, finally agreed to the design ownership of the new company, Jobs was very moved, gave Wayne 10% of the shares (but it was not long before Wayne because of the previous company bankruptcy, afraid of repeating the same mistakes and quit Apple, otherwise he should be a multimillionaire by now).
Ron Wayne is known as Apple's most resentful founder
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" ></h1>
On April 1, 1976, Apple was officially founded.
The first order they pulled came from a computer store, when they ordered 50 computers, each gave them $500, in order to be able to complete the order on time, Jobs launched the family in his garage to assemble tests, and delivered on schedule, a month later, Apple began to make a profit. However, Apple I also has its own problems, such as the appearance is not elegant enough, running fast enough (at that time they could not afford Intel chips, can only buy pirated Motorola chips at a low price, the performance is very poor), more importantly, Apple I at that time the audience was computer amateurs, not everyone, so Jobs after a look, decided that the next model to face the public, he wants to create a collection of keyboards, displays, software and other components of the personal computer.
However, at the beginning they encountered financial problems, such a computer if the mass production of about 200,000 US dollars, for a company just established for a month is indeed a little difficult, so they can only find partners, Jobs looked for the business owner he knew, almost all were rejected, most of the reasons actually appeared on Jobs, other bosses are wearing suits and ties, Jobs is hanging all day, dressed casually, but also wear slippers, more terrible is actually a long time without bathing, With a beard that had not been trimmed for an unknown amount of time, the smell on his body was unbearable, as recalled by those who saw him. Once, when he met the president of the company, Jobs actually put his feet on the table to chat with others, forcing people to be mad on the spot.
Such a man with a full range of "colors and fragrances" is difficult not to reject him.
Fortunately, in the end, I found a person who was willing to join the shares, named Mike Makula. Makula used to work at Intel Corporation, and with the options in his hand, he has already made a lot of money, and he is only 33 years old and in retirement (really envious). In January 1977, in Jobs's garage, Marcuola was so satisfied with Apple's new production that he decided to offer $250,000 in exchange for a 26% stake in Apple, and since then, Apple has been dominated by Jobs, Woz and Marcoola.
Mike Marcora
With the new capital injection, Apple came alive, Jobs was able to produce the second generation of Apple computers (Apple II) developed by Woz, and held a conference in April 1977, in order to make this conference successful, Jobs also specially customized suits, a change in the previous sloppy image, the results of this conference are also very good, all of a sudden received orders for 300 units, by the end of 1977, a total of 2500 units were sold, and then in 1981, this number became 210,000 units. In fact, the achievements of the Apple II are more than that, because in the next 16 years, it sold a total of 6 million units, and all of this is inseparable from Woz's superb technology, not to mention Jobs's genius business acumen, it was the two of them, jointly created the era of personal computers.
The success of the Apple II in 1977 made Apple start to get attention, but Jobs was hard to be happy, because there was another thing that happened that year that made Jobs very angry, and on Thanksgiving this year, Jobs's girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan told him that he was pregnant, and wanted to surprise Jobs, who knew that Jobs did not think so, and even said that the child was not necessarily his, but also someone else's. Brennan was with Jobs when he graduated from high school, and in the next 5 years, the two were separated and merged, and Brennan also lived with other men, so Jobs did not believe that the child was his, but Brennan insisted that the child must be Jobs's, because during that time she was not with other men (Oh, your circle is really messy... ）。
Christian Brennan
In May 1978, without The Care of Jobs, Brennan gave birth to the child, a daughter, 3 days after the birth of the child, Jobs reluctantly went over to take a look, and by the way gave the child a name, called Lisa Brennan, Jobs did not want the child to have his surname, because he did not want to have any intersection with the child, after that, Jobs did not turn his head and left. The poor orphans and widows lived on government benefits, and then they couldn't stand it, and Brennan took Jobs to court a year later and did a paternity test, which showed that "the probability of paternity is 94.41%", even so, Jobs is still reluctant to admit that Lisa is his daughter, and said that according to the results of the appraisal, 28% of men in the United States may be the father of the child. But facts are facts, and Jobs later had to raise Lisa until she was 18 years old, and the matter came to an end.
This year, Jobs was only 23 years old. Ironically, his biological parents also had Jobs at the age of 23 and abandoned him.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" ></h1>
The advent of the Apple II did bring a lot of wealth to Jobs and Apple, but there was still a gap from the personal computer that Jobs really wanted, Jobs wanted the computer to be for the general public, and the Apple II, although trying to do this, was still complicated, because the interface people saw was still code and command characters, unlike the computers we see now. It wasn't until 1979 that Jobs visited a tech company called Xerox that was working on a graphical interface, and Jobs laughed like he was spinning at the sight of it, like unveiling a gauze blindfolded, as if he saw the future of computers.
Upon his return, Jobs began to steal Xerox's ideas, and also unashamedly quoted Picasso to justify himself: "Good artists just copy, and great artists steal inspiration, and we have always been brazen in stealing great inspiration." Jobs intends to use the graphical interface for his next R&D product. At that time, Apple made a lot of money by apple II, and started three projects on the basis of Apple II, one was Apple III, sold in 1980, the effect was not good, the response was very poor, it was a premature death; the second project was "Lisa", seeing this name, everyone should have an impression, yes, Jobs's illegitimate daughter's name is called Lisa, the name of this project is still Jobs personally taken, at that time everyone was confused, and thought that his brain was not normal. However, it turns out that Jobs is not concerned about his daughter Lisa, but he is very concerned about the Lisa project, and after returning from the Xerox company, Jobs put all his energy on Lisa, but unfortunately because of his hot temper, he scolded this all day, that, everyone couldn't stand him, and the board kicked him out of the Lisa project in September 1980.
After that, it was the turn of the third project , the Macintosh. Jobs turned his energy on the Lisa project to the Macintosh project, wanting to build a computer for the masses. From 1980 onwards, it took 4 years of continuous research before it was officially released, and in these 4 years, Apple had a total of three major events, the first of which was that Apple went public on December 12, 1980, with an opening price of $22 in the morning and rising to $29 at the close. Suddenly, Apple, a small company originally founded in the garage, became a large company with a market value of $1.79 billion, 600 people became millionaires in an instant, and Jobs's value also rose, suddenly with $256 million in assets, this year, he was only 25 years old.
The second thing is that Mike Markula doesn't want to be the president of Apple anymore, And Makula originally just valued Apple, invested $250,000, and who knows how to become apple's president. Being the president of Apple is not a good thing, mainly to wipe Jobs's ass every day, Jobs's violent temper, every day to quarrel with people, this side scolded this person for neurosis, that side scolded that project is "shit", if it were not for his boss, who would want to beat him to death. Marcoola had to follow Jobs's ass every day to help him coordinate this, coordinate that, and make himself half dead, so he didn't want to do this thankless job anymore, and it was not good to go out on his private plane every day?
Therefore, Jobs had to find another wronged boss to be the president, he took a fancy to Pepsi's marketing wizard John Scalley, from the end of 1982 Jobs began to invite him to join, so to say that 5 months, Sculley is still twisting and pinching, want to refuse to return, until Jobs said the classic quote "Do you want to sell a lifetime of sugar water, or do you want to seize the opportunity to change the world", which impressed Sculley, half pushed and half on the spot with 1 million annual salary to apple to work.
Jobs (left) and Sculley (right)
The third thing is that in 1981, IBM also released the first personal computer, when it was first released, Jobs also bought a special one to study, after reading it, he thought it was a garbage, but then IBM sales continued to catch up with the Apple II, in 1982 The Apple II sold 279,000 units, IBM sold 240,000 units, in 1983 The Apple II sold 420,000 units, and the IBM computer soared to 1.3 million units. Watching the market share shrink step by step, this move has brought invisible pressure to the unreleased Macintosh computer.
In order to make the Macintosh computer meet the needs of more people, Jobs also went to Find Bill Gates. As mentioned earlier, Bill Gates and Jobs saw the first computer together in the 1975 Mass Mechanic magazine, and the two people began to have their own ideas, Jobs thought of developing new computers and creating the era of personal computers, and Bill Gates thought of writing the Basic language for this computer, that is, a programming language that people can use to write software programs, through which Bill Gates earned the first pot of gold in his life and founded his own company in 1975. Microsoft Corporation. Two years later, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard university and began writing Basic language programs for IBM's computer and Jobs's Apple II, and it was from then on that Jobs and Gates met, two people with technical and business geniuses who collided with each other and became known as the "binary system" in the field of personal computers.
However, at this time, Gates is far less than Jobs, in 1982 Apple's annual sales reached $1 billion, Microsoft is only a pitiful 32 million, Gates need to rely on the Apple II to write language to earn Jobs's money, to apple work. It was not until 1983 that the situation improved, because at this time Jobs in order to defeat IBM, he needed Gates to help him design several applications that could only run at Macintosh, including the current form software Excel and text software word, but Jobs hoped that Gates could only do these applications for Apple, not for IBM, and wanted to use this to seize some market share, Gates agreed. But in business, where there is only one side to profit, one side to suffer, Gates is not stupid, fine like a monkey, he looks at the graphical interface that Jobs is developing, Jobs is looking at the future trend of the graphical interface, Gates naturally also saw, so, while developing software for Apple, Gates is also developing his own graphical interface system, that is, the later Windows system.
Gates secretly developed the system was known to Jobs, angrily asked Gates out to scold him, saying that he was stealing, and as a result, Gates also said a classic sentence "We all have a rich neighbor, called Xerox, when I broke into their house to steal the TV, I found that you had stolen him", this sentence made Jobs dumbfounded, because his inspiration was indeed to steal Xerox (Xerox at this time said that he was helpless: obviously it is a movie of three people, but I can never have a name~).
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > land</h1>
But fortunately, the Macintosh research and development is nearing the end, to January 24, 1984, after 4 years, from the mouse, power supply, computer interface, host, from hardware to software, Jobs injected a lot of effort, this collection of simple and practical Macintosh computer finally came out, the conference originally can only accommodate 2600 people Auditorium suddenly surrounded by water, this conference is very successful, everyone just began to be full of expectations and love for this product. Note, I'm talking about the beginning, because in less than a year, Macintosh computers were getting worse and worse, and by the end of 1984, less than 10,000 units were sold every month, which was too far from Apple's expectations. The reason for this situation is because the Macintosh is too card, the previous computer interface is some commands and characters, do not need too much memory, running will not be card, but the Macintosh computer uses a graphical interface, the memory that needs to run is larger, but the computer memory is only a pitiful 128k, so there are often failures, and in the end, the sales of the Macintosh are less than 10% of the estimated.
Macintosh Computer
Working overtime for 4 years, the result is such a thing, for everyone to be angry, Jobs is angry, those Macintosh project employees are even more angry, because in addition to working overtime, they have to be scolded by Jobs, 4 years, do you know how I have lived in these 4 years?
So, Macintosh's failure suddenly exploded the problems lurking in the apple. Apple's interior began to slowly split, some engineers left because they couldn't stand Jobs, and even Wozniak, one of Apple's founders, offered to leave Apple. As mentioned earlier, Woz is a technical house, unlike Jobs, Woz does not like to deal with people, does not like to engage in business schemes, and only wants to be a beautiful man who quietly engages in technology. Apple II can be so successful can not be separated from Woz, in fact, even if Apple has released so many computers at that time, but Apple II is still the most profitable one, relying on it to support Apple to go down, but Jobs is bent on developing more new computers, ignoring the Apple II project department, making Woz very cold, so he proposed to leave.
The next one to quarrel with Jobs to leave is the president Sculley who was pulled in to wipe his ass a few years ago, Sculley was originally a Pepsi company selling sugar water, is a sales wizard, values the profit maximization of the enterprise, and Jobs pays more attention to the quality of the product, the two often quarrel about the price of the product, Jobs said that the price should be close to the people, Sculley said no, the price should be higher, otherwise there is no profit, and finally the two broke up, and also made trouble with the board. On the board, Sculley showdown directly, do you really love me or him? As a result, Jobs found that everyone really hated him, no way, in September 1985, shortly after his 30th birthday, he sold all the 6.5 million shares of Apple stock worth $100 million in his hand, leaving only 1 share, and then officially resigned from Apple.
The man who single-handedly built the apple was eventually abandoned by the apple. Ironically, just after the company announced jobs, Apple's stock price actually rose by $1.
To be continued...
Only halfway written, found that has written seven or eight thousand words, I plan to send it out in two parts, too long to estimate that everyone is also very annoyed to see, code words are not easy, original is not easy, if you like it, you can pay attention to me.
Author: Shen Cheng Fenglin
A little brother who likes to write about international figures. If you like it, you can follow me!