[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] 92% of the American population
owns a personal computer.
- I don't think that there is any single innovation
that has propelled mankind forward
in the way the personal computer has done.
- We have smartphones, we have the iPod, we have computers
that you can seamlessly create art on.
- [Narrator] But just 50 years ago,
hardly anyone had one in their home.
- Computers are so out of reach for the general public
that they're almost science fiction.
The mainframe room was a refrigerated room
that could only be accessed by men in white lab coats.
- [Narrator] Until two college dropouts
set out to change that from their garage.
- Wozniak knew there was something bigger out there.
- He immediately started making plans for his own computer.
- This is what I've been dreaming of.
- Steve Jobs, he was obsessed with taking futuristic ideas
and making them accessible to the public.
- [Narrator] But to bring their computers to the world,
they must form an unlikely alliance.
- Steve Jobs needs software for his new Apple computer.
- Jobs and Gates had an unusual relationship.
Each of them had something the other coveted.
- [Narrator] Until it blows up into a bitter rivalry.
- You ripped us off.
You stole the Macintosh interface.
- That kind of was the ultimate rift
in their relationship for a very, very, very long time.
- [Narrator] Their battle gives rise
to two of the biggest brands in history.
- Apple really created its own ecosystem upon itself.
- Bill Gates somehow created this entire
billion-dollar global company just by writing code.
- [Narrator] And some of the most iconic products
the world has ever seen.
- I vividly remember the release of the iMac.
I didn't know computers could look cool
and fun and approachable.
- The iPhone is 100%
Apple's most iconic product ever.
- Steve.
- [Steve] Apple's gonna have to make our own software now.
- Steve.
- And you can be damn sure you'll wish we hadn't.
- Steve, Steve!
- Steve Jobs, Bill Gates.
Did they push each other to further places?
Absolutely.
- Let's go.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] Prior to the 1970s,
most computers were the size of a living room,
highly complex and often took dozens of people to operate.
- The government used them, huge corporations used them
and it was for payroll and accounting
and really large-scale projects.
- If you were lucky enough to work in a big corporation,
you were not allowed in the mainframe room.
- [Narrator] But this changes
when one company invents something groundbreaking,
the microchip.
- So in the early 1970s, Intel developed a microprocessor
which basically put some of the brains
of what we know of as a computer now on a single chip.
- [Narrator] Making a much smaller version of a computer
now possible.
- So a company in Albuquerque, New Mexico called MITS
got a hold of these Intel microprocessors
and realized that they could create a micro-computer kit.
This would be the Altair 8800.
- [Narrator] But the primitive Altair
is far from what we think of as a computer today.
- If you had an Altair, you had to learn how to assemble it.
You also had to know something about the programming.
- So it was a real challenge to get it to do anything.
It couldn't do things like word processing
or things like that.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] One computer hobbyist sees potential
and is inspired to make his own easier-to-use version.
[keyboard clacking]
His name is Steve Wozniak.
- Wozniak grows up in this climate
of tremendous intellectual energy
around engineering and electronics.
His father worked at Lockheed Martin.
His earliest memories
were sitting on a workbench with his dad
watching him use an oscilloscope.
[keyboard clacking]
- So in 1975, Wozniak is working for Hewlett-Packard.
He's actually helping design calculators, believe it or not,
and he loved his job,
but he knew there was something bigger out there.
- And you know,
he immediately started making plans for his own computer.
- [Narrator] As Wozniak begins tinkering,
he gives his friend a sneak peek.
His friend's name is Steve Jobs.
- Jobs and Woz interned together as Hewlett-Packard
and Jobs actually went on to design computer games
for Atari.
- This computer wasn't really what we think of a computer.
It wasn't even something like the Altair,
which came in a case.
It was a circuit board and you would take that circuit board
and you'll be able to hook up a keyboard and a monitor.
- [Narrator] But it can do something
that Jobs has never seen before.
- You just type a word on the keyboard
and it shows up on the monitor, like so.
- It's hard to imagine now
because computers are just an extension of us.
But at the time it was just mind blowing
to just easily type a word and have it appear on a monitor.
This was nothing short of revolutionary.
- You like it?
- Steve Wozniak has no intention in selling it.
He just did it for fun 'cause he loved it.
- [Narrator] However, Jobs has other ideas.
- Have you shown this to anyone else?
- Jobs really thinks there's a commercial opportunity here.
- [Narrator] The two immediately set up shop
in Jobs' parents' garage
to start their own company selling Wozniak's computer.
- Wozniak wanted to be behind the scenes.
He never wanted to be pushing or selling
and Jobs was the exact opposite.
He was the dreamer.
- [Narrator] But first, they'll need startup capital.
- The legend is that Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus
and Wozniak sold his Hewlett-Packard calculator.
- [Narrator] And a unique company name.
- Around the time
when they were trying to come up with a name,
Steve Jobs had taken a trip to an apple orchard
being into fruit as he was decided let's name it Apple.
- They called it the Apple I.
- [Narrator] In July of 1976, the Apple I goes on sale
for $666.66.
- It's really the first of its kind
to come with these inputs for a keyboard
and an output for a monitor.
- The Apple I was very successful
with tech enthusiasts,
but it wasn't the sort of out-of-the-box machine
that everyday people would wanna buy.
- It was all typing in code. It was very complicated.
I mean, you had to really know your stuff
in order to operate one of these.
You had to get your own keyboard.
You had to come up with your own monitor,
which nine times out of 10 was a TV screen.
So it was not for the average bear.
- Well, the Apple I
was never going to be a giant commercial success.
Its audience was always going to be
people who worked in their basements and soldered things
and wired things up.
- [Narrator] Despite that
Jobs and Wozniak quickly sell out
of their home-built Apple I computers.
- It's such a success with tech enthusiasts
that they know that they have to follow it up
with an even better machine.
[compelling pulsating music]
- So Jobs begins imagining
what a new-and-improved version of the Apple I
would look like.
- He wants them to appeal to customers
who may not be tech savvy
and don't want to have to assemble this themselves.
- [Narrator] With the relative success of the Apple I,
Jobs and Wozniak are able to secure an investment
of $91,000
and a line of business credit for 250,000
to work on creating the Apple II.
- The Apple II,
Jobs wanted to make a real consumer product out of it.
He was perceptive enough to know that in order to do this,
you had to move beyond the geeks,
beyond the hardcore hobbyists
and make something that you could market
to a larger audience.
- It was preloaded with programming language
and it had its keyboard already a part of it,
which was a huge improvement
from having to find a keyboard to plug in.
- So I used a seven megahertz master oscillator
divided by several ratios to get the frequencies needed.
- The Apple II came with color
and that was a very, very big deal at the time.
- Steve Wozniak, he was obsessed with games.
He developed this gaming software called Breakout
and he wanted the Apple II to be able to use it.
That's why it has color graphics,
it has ports for having little paddles.
- It needs a new case.
All that other stuff is great,
but you're trying to get people to invite this
into their homes.
- To Jobs, industrial design was not something
that you just tacked on afterwards.
- Something that was so geeky
and cold, like computer life, that touch, that flavor,
almost like an iconic fashion designer
was instrumental in the Apple we know today.
- It needs to look more like a typewriter,
like it belongs on a desk.
- [Narrator] They compromise on a sleek cream colored case
that's also removable.
And on June 10th, 1977, the Apple II hits the marketplace.
Priced at around $1,300,
it's the equivalent of 7,000 today.
- At the time, the Apple II was a success.
Jobs and Wozniak became the leader
in the personal computer space.
- [Narrator] But their success opens the door
to a wave of competition.
- In 1977, a bunch of major companies
catch on to the personal computer craze.
You have the Commodore PET and the RadioShack Tandy.
- [Narrator] And these new machines
have a big advantage over the Apple II.
They're much more affordable.
- Apple never regained their market share
after the flood of the cheap, affordable computers.
- [Narrator] Concerned,
Jobs is willing to do whatever it takes to stay on top,
even if it means outsourcing to a competitor.
[phone ringing] [dramatic music]
- This is Bill Gates.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Two years before Jobs and Wozniak
released the Apple II,
there's another dynamic duo making waves in the tech world.
- Bill Gates with his friend Paul Allen,
from the time that they were high school students,
played with computers and they built software.
So when they heard about the Altair, they realized,
oh my God, this moment is here.
There's an opportunity now for companies
to actually sell software to individuals
and the audience could be tremendous.
- [Narrator] While Apple is focused on hardware,
these two men carve out their own path
selling software and they call their new venture Microsoft.
- Gates and Allen created the Altair software called BASIC
and they thought it was gonna make them rich,
but they were disappointed
because they were selling mostly to computer hobbyists.
- Microsoft struggled initially to get a foothold.
- [Narrator] Now in 1977,
a surprising opportunity could help put them on the map.
[phone ringing]
- This is Bill Gates.
- So back in the '70s,
the tech world was a much smaller community
than people might have imagined.
So Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both knew of each other.
- I could pull something together for next week then.
[phone receiver clicks]
Well, Steve Jobs needs software for his new Apple computer.
[edgy music]
- Jobs and Gates had an unusual relationship.
Each of them had something the other coveted.
Gates had a sense of how to make software for the masses.
Steve had a sense of the future of design excellence.
- [Narrator] Within months,
Gates delivers a series of business-oriented applications
they package as Applesoft.
- So Applesoft increased the computer's math abilities
so that it could deal with just not whole numbers,
it offered commands to allow users
to move words and sentences around, to access files
and to even draw pictures.
Look, right away
Jobs knows what an upgrade this new software
is gonna be for Apple.
- [Narrator] With the addition of Applesoft,
the Apple II sales jumped from just 600 machines in 1977
to 35,000 by 1979,
helping Apple to stay on top of the personal computer market
- In fairly short order,
applications like word processing
and the first spreadsheet were developed for the Apple II
and the spreadsheet, in particular,
gave people a reason to buy it.
- The Apple II was selling very well.
It had a tremendous market in schools.
- [Narrator] Despite the Apple II's meteoric success,
Jobs is already looking for what's next.
- At that time,
Xerox was one of the biggest technology companies
that existed and they were interested
in investing in Apple.
So Steve Jobs negotiated an agreement with Xerox
for a tour of the Xerox research lab that was known as PARC.
- PARC stood for Palo Alto Research Center
and the goal was for Xerox engineers
to explore potential new technologies and innovations.
[dramatic music]
Steve Jobs gets a tour of PARC
and he's shown a demonstration
of a computer called the Alto.
And unlike all computers previously,
this computer has a graphical user interface
and it's controlled with a mouse.
[footsteps]
- Steve, I'm in the middle of something here.
[Steve grunts]
[dramatic music]
- Graphic user interface represents real life objects
like they would appear on your desk.
So a trash can to delete a file looks like a trash can.
A piece of paper icon represents a file.
- Previously, every computer
if you wanted to get it to do anything,
you had to go into a command line interface
and just program in lines on the MS-DOS prompt.
So what Jobs sees at PARC is revolutionary
and he sees big opportunity there.
[edgy music]
- What am I looking at? - A desktop,
illustrated with a graphical user interface, a GUI.
- So with a much smaller amount of technical knowledge,
you can begin using the computer instantaneously.
- This is what I've been dreaming of.
This is what integrates the computer with real life.
- So what are they doing with it?
- Them?
Nothing, but we're gonna change the world with it.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] By 1980, the Apple II
is raking in a respectable $118 million annually,
but still less than 8% of Americans own a computer.
- So look, the Apple II
was keeping the lights on at Apple, right?
And it wasn't just beloved by the public.
The staff really adored this computer,
but Jobs, you know, he starts to belittle it, right?
He says it's really kind of old fashioned.
It's not really the future
and he really didn't see that computer
as the future of Apple.
- [Narrator] Much to the dismay of Wozniak
in 1980 Jobs takes his top engineers
and designers off the Apple II
to focus on something new.
- Jobs is fully inspired
and fully committed to building a new computer
inspired by the graphical user interface computer
he just saw at Xerox PARC.
- [Narrator] But pulling this off
requires overcoming a number of challenges,
starting with the need for a new device to operate it.
- The original mouse is big, it's clunky,
it's got three wheels on the outside of it
and it's not really something
that's ready to be mass produced for consumers.
- Jobs wanted to simplify the system for the consumer.
- You need to completely reinvent this mouse.
Get rid of all the buttons except for one.
[mouse clicking]
- This team invented this convention
called the double click.
So it was like a simple way
to create multifunctions on a mouse
without having a confusing extra button.
- It needs to work on a countertop and on my blue jeans
and it can't cost more than $15.
Let's go.
- Steve Jobs was obsessed
with creating the perfect computer.
He was relentless.
He worked his team to exhaustion.
- Their great achievement was to take this expensive
prone-to-failure device
that had rarely been out of the laboratory
and they turned it into a cheap, hardy,
ready-for-consumer device.
It was amazing.
- [Narrator] With their new mouse,
Jobs dreams of a graphical user interface
one step closer to becoming a reality.
- Steve Jobs knows that his computer
has the potential to be a game changer,
but he decides he has to keep it secret
and therefore gives it a secret name.
And he takes the name from a kind of Apple
that has the most versatility
and an incredible, incredible likability, Macintosh.
- Steve Jobs, he's pouring money into this.
He's poaching talent from other parts of the company, right?
The Apple II is still paying the bills for Apple,
but Steve Jobs does not care.
He's fully in on this
and it starts to destroy the morale at the company.
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, in August of 1981,
an announcement shakes the whole industry to its core.
IBM is entering the personal computer market.
- Being a pioneer in the mainframe computer market,
IBM had an amazing reputation.
They had a long history in the technology world
and they were the leaders right out of the gate.
- The IBM personal computer
or PC really took the world by storm.
It was very solidly engineered.
It had a very solid rugged keyboard
and business people loved the fact
that they could get a computer that had the word IBM on it.
- It was a computer made by the most trusted
computing brand on Earth, right?
- [Narrator] Priced around $1,500,
it's far more affordable than the Apple II,
which averages around 2,500.
With pressure mounting, Jobs turns to a familiar source
to help ensure the Macintosh knocks IBM off their pedestal.
- Apple was a hardware manufacturer
and Microsoft at that point,
their strongest software was in operating systems
and they very much wanted to become a big power
in application software.
So it was a great opportunity for both companies
and a great partnership.
- Jobs decides to show Gates the Macintosh
and everything they've developed for it.
- [Narrator] It's a move that will set the stage
for one of the biggest rivalries
in the history of American industry.
[suspenseful music]
- In 1983, Bill Gates delivers on his promise
of a new application software for the Macintosh,
a business-oriented program
which embraces the Mac's graphic interface,
allowing users to easily format and edit documents.
Gates calls it Microsoft Word.
- In addition to Microsoft Word,
Microsoft also made a spreadsheet program
for the Macintosh called Multiplan,
which would ultimately go on
to become a little thing we call Excel.
- [Narrator] But Jobs is still not ready
to release the Macintosh.
- Steve was a perfectionist, had this great vision,
but was sometimes very hard to work with.
- The board, they're looking at Jobs and saying,
listen, this thing needs to come out
and it better be damn, damn good.
- [Narrator] With IBM eating into Apple's profits
and their stock price plummeting,
members of the Apple Board are getting impatient.
- So in 1983 the Apple board tells Steve Jobs
they want to bring in a CEO for the company,
basically to serve as basically adult supervision.
- Jobs ultimately feels okay, fine, bring in this CEO
as long as I have final approval on who it is.
He ultimately rejects about 20 candidates
before he meets John Sculley.
- [Narrator] The former CEO of Pepsi
and the brains behind their wildly successful
Generation Next campaign.
Sculley is tasked with getting the Macintosh on shelves
as soon as possible.
- One is inspired by serif
and the other by sans serif typefaces.
It really varies the amount of space
between different letter combinations.
- We need to release it, Steve.
- We release it when I say it's ready.
- Jobs is a visionary artist.
He rejects any of the kind of boundaries
that businessmen put on his art.
Sculley, however, has been hired to run a company.
- Woz, which one do you prefer?
- Steve, I agree with Sculley.
We should have released this six months ago.
At this point, the difference between these two,
it really doesn't matter.
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, Bill Gates
is about to reveal Microsoft's newest operating system.
- What I'm about to show you
is nothing short of a revolution in computer technology.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] Gates's new operating system
features a desktop
with movable, resizable icons much like the Macintosh.
- Steve showed Bill the preview of that
and Bill kind of ran back home and created the interface
because of that information.
- As you can see, it operates via graphical user interface,
which allows the user to layer one screen on top of another.
We call it Interface Manager.
Any questions?
- About the name, Interface Manager, isn't the catchiest.
It sort of reminds me of a bunch of windows.
- If Bill Gates had his way,
Windows OS might have been called Interface Manager.
- Back in the day, you could only run one application
at a time and if you wanted to do something else,
you had to close the first application
and then reopen whatever else you wanted to see.
So the idea of creating multiple windows
where you could have multiple things
running at the same time
and effortlessly switch between them was groundbreaking.
- [Narrator] Even though Microsoft Windows
won't be ready for another two years,
on November 10th, 1983, Gates announces it to the world.
- No one can really say for sure
why Gates decides to announce Windows
two years before it's actually going to come out.
But it is pretty coincidental
because it lines up to when Apple
is about to start talking about the Macintosh.
- [Narrator] And Windows will allow all other computers
to function with a graphic interface like the Mac.
[tense music]
- You ripped us off.
You stole the Macintosh interface.
- Well, Steve,
I think there's more than one way of looking at it.
I think it's more like we both had this rich
neighbor named Xerox.
I broke into his house to steal the TV set,
but found out that you had already stolen it.
- Steve, really, you can't say we stole from you
because you stole it from Xerox.
- That kind of was the ultimate rift in their relationship
for a very, very, very long time.
- [Narrator] Finally, in 1984,
after more than four years in development
and in increasing pressure from the board,
Jobs decides the Macintosh is ready,
beating Microsoft Windows to the marketplace.
- The Macintosh is publicly unveiled in 1984
with a rather infamous commercial
that aired during the Super Bowl
that somewhat notably also never shows you
an image of the computer itself.
- We shall prevail.
- So the Macintosh's rollout, it was an exciting moment.
They did the famous commercial in the Super Bowl,
directed by Ridley Scott.
It was kind of amazing because they never really explained
what it was, but it got a lot of attention.
- [Narrator] At $2,495 or 7,500 today,
the Macintosh is the most expensive personal computer
on the market, but initial sales are strong
with over 72,000 units being sold in the first few months.
- It was truly a beautiful machine.
- People became enamored of the interface.
It had a cult following, still does to this day,
the cult of Mac.
- [Narrator] But by the fall of that same year,
sales suddenly start to falter.
- So the Macintosh, it's incredibly slow
and because Jobs insisted on there being no hard drive
or fan to create extraneous noise,
there's also no cooling for the internal components,
which would then subsequently melt down
earning the Macintosh, the nickname, the Beige Toaster.
- He made some bad decisions about the Macintosh
and they stumbled as a result.
- For the first time in Apple's company history,
they lost money.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] And it's causing a rift
between Jobs and his right hand man.
- Steve.
Steve.
- Wozniak is watching Steve Jobs
funnel countless resources into the Macintosh launch,
the whole time, it's his Apple II
that's really bringing that money in in the first place
and he's feeling a bit marginalized
and a bit forgotten.
- Wozniak was the engineering genius behind the Apple II.
Wozniak wanted to extend the Apple II forever,
keeping it alive.
It didn't happen.
- Steve, Steve!
I'm leaving.
- Where are you going?
- I'm leaving Apple.
- There was a little bit of dissension
about who got what stock and who didn't.
Jobs came out very wealthy.
Wozniak did okay, also,
but there was a bit of tension
that Wozniak felt that maybe he didn't get enough credit.
- It's not my company anymore.
This isn't why I got into this.
- [Narrator] With Wozniak out of the picture,
Jobs has lost his one true ally
and he'll be forced to face more obstacles at Apple alone.
- On November 20th, 1985,
Microsoft's revolutionary new operating system
Windows is finally released.
- It was a profoundly good creative tool
for businesses to make layouts or menus or brochures.
You began seeing Windows
used for business applications like accounting,
bill paying, chronicling inventory,
accounts receivable and so on.
- [Narrator] Although the Windows operating system
is not compatible with the Macintosh,
it is with every other personal computer on the market.
And for a fraction of the price.
- Where they had projected that the Mac
would sell 150,000 units at Christmas,
they'd only sold 50,000.
Meanwhile, because Windows is so appealing to the masses,
sales of other PCs skyrocket.
[retro-futuristic music]
- [Narrator] As Apple's profits dwindle,
tension between Jobs and Sculley hits a boiling point.
- So Jobs as this sort of artistic visionary
and Sculley as a true CEO and a corporate guy
are continually knocking heads.
- I'd like to propose that John Sculley
be removed from the position of CEO at Apple.
All in favor?
[dramatic music crescendos]
- Jobs thinks he can stage a coup against Sculley
and force him to step down.
Unfortunately, the motion fails.
The board votes against him, then Sculley turns the tables.
- The board believes that you need to step down
as manager of the Macintosh division.
- So the board tries to pull Jobs
off of overseeing the Macintosh
and it's essentially the equivalent of firing him.
- You have to choose him or me.
- So being that Jobs has said, "It's either him or me"
and the board says, "Well, we want him and not you."
Jobs sells all but one of his Apple shares
as sort of a major vote of no confidence
and telling the world
that he's no longer part of this company.
[hands slap table]
- [Narrator] After Jobs' departure,
Apple's stock plunges into a free fall
for the rest of the '80s.
[tense music]
By the early '90s,
Bill Gates is working on an updated version of Windows
that includes an innovative feature, an internet browser.
- So in 1992,
America Online is birthed into the world
and it basically offered dial-up internet service
to everyone in America.
Suddenly the information highway could be driven by anybody
and Bill Gates sees an opportunity.
[dramatic music]
- Windows 95, it was a sensation.
They spent hundreds of millions of dollars
on just the marketing launch.
They licensed a Rolling Stones' song, "Start Me Up"
and then danced to it in front of everyone.
That is how on top of the world Bill Gates was at this time.
- So now that the internet became accessible
to homes across the country,
owning and using a computer became a lot more functional.
You could pay your bills online,
you can message with friends,
you can send and receive emails.
Now the everyday person
saw the value of owning one of these devices.
- [Narrator] Microsoft sells a record-breaking
100 million copies of Windows 95
in the first four days and at 39 years old,
Bill Gate becomes the richest man in the world
worth roughly $12 billion.
- Computers started to become everywhere.
Because Microsoft is on every single PC clone,
they dominated the entire computer space.
- [Narrator] But there's still one computer brand
that Windows 95 is not compatible with, Apple.
- By the '90s, Apple was in trouble.
Its sales weren't anywhere where they wanted to be,
and a lot of people felt that Apple was going to die.
- [Narrator] With the company on the edge of bankruptcy,
Apple needs to make a drastic change or go under.
- [Narrator] By the mid '90s, Apple's worldwide market share
has spiraled from roughly 20% to 3%.
- Once Steve was gone, there really wasn't the Apple
that we all know today or we knew prior
and it was a very dark era for Apple
in a very substantial way.
- [Narrator] Though Apple tries to continue innovating,
nothing can compete with Microsoft.
- So Microsoft is flying.
They've created Internet Explorer.
Website developers are specifically optimizing
their websites to work with Internet Explorer
so it's kind of the nail in the coffin
for Apple at this time.
- [Narrator] And by 1997, the empire Steve Jobs built
is at risk of going under.
[tense music]
- What happens is a story as old as time,
the non-founders, the executives run Apple
and really run it into the ground.
Failure after failure after failure, the magic was gone.
- Jobs meanwhile was able to get involved in a company
called NeXT where he was able to implement
some of his dreams about what a computer should be like.
- So it seems very insignificant to us now,
but NeXT had some really interesting
features for the time.
For example, they had a programming doc
and this little spinning wheel that would let you know
that the computer's trying to process
what you asked it to do.
Back then, computers were still pretty slow,
so it was an easy way to tell users we're working on it.
Don't worry.
- [Narrator] In a desperate move,
Apple offers to buy the NeXT operating system from Jobs
who has a specific set of conditions.
$429 million, 1.5 million shares of Apple stock
and his return to the company he started.
- Apple purchased NeXT
and then Steve kind of just made his way back
to CEO of the company.
- When Jobs came back to Apple,
he realized the company was in trouble.
It was about to go under.
- [Narrator] To save the company,
Jobs makes a move that will shock the world.
- I wanna apologize
for some of the things I said in that documentary.
- So during his time away from Apple,
Steve Jobs has actually appeared in a documentary
called "Triumph of the Nerds."
And within that documentary,
Steve Jobs dropped some pretty terrible insults.
Saying, you know,
"the only problem with Microsoft
is they just have no taste."
- The question that people always talk about in rivalries
is, could one be successful without the other?
We think about it in sports,
is Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ali without Joe Frazier?
- If Apple goes down,
Microsoft won't have anyone to win against.
- I think out of all the battles
of entrepreneurs in the history of time and companies,
I think the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates,
did they push each other to further places?
Absolutely.
- Here's what I propose.
[dramatic music]
- H[suspenseful music]e.
- [Narrator] Following a top secret meeting
between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in August of 1997,
Jobs makes a shocking announcement to the world.
- I'd like to announce one of our first partnerships today,
a very, very meaningful one, and that is one with Microsoft.
- [Narrator] Bill Gates agrees to invest $150 million
in Apple to save it from bankruptcy
in exchange for 150,000 non-voting shares.
And with the cash infusion from Microsoft
Jobs sets out to bring the Macintosh into the future.
- Computers were kind of all about function
and nothing to do with aesthetics,
and they were basically sort of putty-colored beige boxes
and Jobs very accurately reasoned,
look, we know the computer works.
We have function.
Let's work on form.
- It's sleek, it's playful, it's futuristic,
but we need to do something different than beige
for the color.
[man clears throat]
- I've been thinking about this one.
If you don't like it, it's okay.
- I love it.
- [Narrator] Their new creation will be called the iMac.
- The idea of creating a computer
that was as beautiful on the outside
as it was effective on the inside,
that's groundbreaking baby.
- [Narrator] And it's old new look
isn't its only futuristic feature.
- The "I" stood for the internet
and it was built for an internet focused future in mind.
- [Narrator] The iMac features built-in ethernet
and separate icons for email, web browsing and messaging.
The revolutionary iMac hit stores on August 15th, 1999.
- It sort of reestablished Apple as a creative company.
- I vividly remember the release of the iMac.
I didn't know computers could look cool and fun
and approachable
and instead of hard edges, things were rounded
and it looked somewhat like a futuristic item
that you might see in a sci-fi movie.
- [Narrator] And Steve Jobs is just getting started.
Between 2001 and 2008,
he'll build upon the success of the iMac
and launch a series of revolutionary products
in line with his design- forward sensibilities.
The iPod would change the music industry.
- With the introduction of iTunes and the iPod,
it really created its own ecosystem upon itself.
- [Narrator] The iPhone
would become the most-used mobile device in the world.
- They came at it recognizing, in fact,
no longer is it primarily a phone,
it's really now a computer
that you can use as a phone.
- The iPhone is 100%
Apple's most iconic product ever.
And I believe that because it's the last product
that really has Steve's deep DNA in it.
- [Narrator] While Steve Jobs passed away in 2011,
he remains as iconic
as the life-changing products he brought to the world.
- Jobs created this world that was a fantasy,
but somehow people believed in him
and he got engineers to design them,
which was a cool thing.
- [Narrator] In 2018, Apple became the first company
valued at over a trillion dollars.
Today worth roughly 4 trillion,
it's the most profitable company in the world.
- Steve Jobs was obsessed with taking futuristic ideas
and making them accessible to the public
and by always pursuing that passion
we have smartphones, we have the iPod,
we have computers that you can seamlessly create art on.
He revolutionized the industry by taking it into the future.
- [Narrator] Just behind Apple,
the second biggest company in the world, Microsoft
is now valued at 2.79 trillion.
- I believe Steve Jobs' impact on the world
was making products that we loved and made our lives better.
I believe that Bill Gates' impact on the world
was creating our understanding
that it was the software inside of those products
that actually mattered for us to love it.