"Game Changers" looks at Apple's amazing success

Business news network Bloomberg have posted their recently-aired, 48-minute Game Changers documentary on the life of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, mostly focusing on his founding and subsequent departure from Apple decades ago before returning in 1997 to lead what is referred to in the program as "the greatest turnaround in the history of corporate America."

The series looks at movers and shakers in the business world with a special emphasis on up-and-coming talent, particularly from the online world. In the Steve Jobs edition, friends and colleagues such as co-founder Steve Wozniak, former Mac Evangelist Guy Kawasaki, and tech pundit Robert X. Cringely add their memories and anecdotes of the sometimes-mercurial Jobs to a history of Apple's rise, fall and rise again into a company that not only holds tremendous influence on the market, but is threatening to become the single most highly-valued brand and corporation in the world.

Of particular interest are the remarks from former CEO John Sculley, who has admitted that with hindsight it was wrong of the board to fire Jobs back in the 1980s.

Despite the focus on Jobs, very little mention is made of his important time as the creator and head of NeXT, the company who's main contribution was to make UNIX more programmer- and user-friendly, a key concept that directly led to the creation of Mac OS X. The program also skips over the creation of the iMac, which is widely credited with saving the company from its "death spiral" in the late 90s, and started trends -- such as the ubiquitous use of "i" in front of product names, the loss of legacy ports, and the killing of the floppy -- that slowly spread throughout the industry and is still influencing the flow of personal technology today.

The documentary originally aired on October 14th.

by MacNN Staff