Steve Jobs.Other books in the People in the News series phần 9 pptx

80 Steve Jobs

creating more innovative devices that Jobs believed the public

would love. One of the most inventive was the iPhone, which

debuted in 2007. It was a stylish, simple to use cellular phone,

which also served as a handheld mini-computer. With it, Jobs

reinvented the telephone. It was the first device of its kind.

Jobs got the idea for the phone because he did not like his cell

phone. He wanted a phone with more power and versatility. If,

he reasoned, Apple could install the same operating system on

a cell phone as they used on their computers, the phone would

have much the same capabilities of a computer. And, since Apple

had already worked with miniaturizing technology with the iPod,

creating such a device did not seem like an impossible task. He

explains:

We all had cell phones. We just hated them, they were awful

to use. The software was terrible. The hardware wasn’t very

good. We talked to our friends and they all hated their cell

phones too. Everybody seemed to hate their phone. And

we saw that these things really could become much more

powerful and interesting to license. . . . It was a great chal￾lenge. Let’s make a great phone that we fall in love with. And

we’ve got the technology. We’ve got the miniaturization from

the iPod. We’ve got the sophisticated operating system from

Mac. Nobody had ever thought about putting an operating

system as sophisticated as OS X inside a phone, so that was

a real question. We had a big debate inside the company

whether we could do that or not. And that was one where I

had to adjudicate it and just say, “We’re going to do it. Let’s

try.” The smartest software guys were saying they can do it,

so let’s give them a shot. And they did.59

The iPhone was a huge success. And, although Jobs was deeply

involved with Apple, he had not forgotten about Pixar. Under

Jobs’s leadership, the company was producing one blockbuster

hit after another. By 2001, Pixar had earned $2.5 billion, making

it one of the most successful movie studios of all time.

In 2003, Disney’s contract with Pixar ran out. It took years for

Jobs to negotiate another contract to his liking. He knew that