February 24, 2026, marks a birthday that never came to be: Steve Jobs would have turned 71. The date serves as a reminder of the man who reshaped technology—not just as a founder, but as a relentless force of creative disruption. Nearly two decades after his passing, Apple remains a company defined by his imprint, where every product launch, design choice, and corporate decision still carries the weight of his influence.
Jobs’ story begins in a garage in 1976, where he and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple computer. By 1985, however, his tenure at the company he co-founded was in jeopardy. A power struggle with John Sculley, then-CEO and a former Pepsi executive, led to Jobs’ ouster from the Macintosh division. The fallout was dramatic: Jobs stormed out, leaving behind a company he believed was losing its way. His departure wasn’t clean—he later claimed he was fired, while Sculley insisted Jobs resigned. The aftermath saw Jobs founding NeXT, a high-end computer company that struggled until Apple acquired it in 1996.
The second act of Jobs’ Apple comeback began in 1997, when the company’s board, desperate to turn things around, brought him back as interim CEO. What followed was a decade of unparalleled transformation: the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. The iPhone in 2007 wasn’t just a product—it was a reinvention of an entire industry. Jobs’ ability to marry simplicity with groundbreaking technology set a standard that still defines Apple today.
Yet his influence extends beyond products. Under Tim Cook, who took the helm in 2011, Apple has shifted from a culture of radical innovation to one of refinement and operational excellence. Cook’s leadership has prioritized supply chain mastery, services growth, and sustained profitability—qualities Jobs himself admired but didn’t always execute. Still, the tension between the two eras is palpable: Jobs was a risk-taker who thrived on bold bets, while Cook’s Apple is a machine of precision, where even incremental upgrades (like the iPhone 16e) are treated as major events.
The question lingers: Would Jobs have approved of today’s Apple? The company he built is now the most valuable in the world, but its trajectory under Cook reflects a different philosophy—one where stability and scalability often trump the kind of moonshot thinking that defined Jobs’ era. Yet his ghost remains, not just in the products, but in the culture. Apple’s insistence on vertical integration, its obsession with design, and its refusal to compromise on user experience are all hallmarks of Jobs’ legacy.
As Apple prepares for another wave of products—rumored to include refinements to the iPhone lineup and potential upgrades to the M-series MacBooks—it’s worth asking how much of that future is shaped by the man who once declared, ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish.’ Today, on what would have been his 71st birthday, that question feels more relevant than ever.
