Steve Jobs’ 7-Year Health Battle: Defying Big Odds, Launching Big Products

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TIME’s health blog, Healthland, has a very interesting piece on the pancreatic cancer Steve Jobs had been battling before he passed away.

According to the post:

“Pancreatic cancer is one of the faster spreading cancers; only about 4% of patients can expect to survive five years after their diagnosis. Each year, about 44,000 new cases are diagnosed in the U.S., and 37,000 people die of the disease.

The pancreas contains two types of glands: exocrine glands that produce enzymes that break down fats and proteins, and endocrine glands that make hormones like insulin that regulate sugar in the blood. Jobs died of tumors originating in the endocrine glands, which are among the rarer forms of pancreatic cancer.”

Jobs had sought out alternative treatments for dealing with the disease—one being a special diet, and another reportedly being a radiation-based hormone treatment in Switzerland that’s not available in the U.S.

(MORE: The Pancreatic Cancer That Killed Steve Jobs)

Says Healthland:

“Whether these treatments helped to extend Jobs’ life or improve the quality of his last days isn’t clear. But cancer experts expressed surprise that Jobs survived as long as he did, continuing to fight his disease. Other pancreatic cancer patients typically aren’t as fortunate. Another high-profile patient, actor Patrick Swayze, managed to live for 20 months after his diagnosis, taking advantage of chemotherapy treatments. But, overall, patients’ median survival is generally only five months.”

So Jobs apparently outlasted a disease with a median five-month survival rate from at least mid-2004, when he reportedly revealed his illness to Apple employees, until early October 2011. And in that time period, Apple launched some of its biggest products—many unveiled personally by Jobs himself.

(VIDEO: Memorable Steve Jobs Keynote Speeches)

Here’s a timeline of some of the big-name Apple products that rolled out between 2005 and the present day:

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iPod Shuffle: January 11, 2005

shuffleWhile Apple’s line of iPods was one of the first projects Jobs tackled after becoming the company’s full-time CEO once again in 2000, the iPod Shuffle was the first to break the $100 barrier. Jobs pitched it as “smaller and lighter than a pack of gum.”

Even at $99, the Shuffle was expensive for what it actually did from a technical standpoint. People still bought it, though; its $99 price tag was part MP3 player, part admission to Apple’s world of portable music.

Mac Mini: January 11, 2005

macmini

Apple’s unbelievably tiny Mac Mini was unveiled in 2005 with an even more unbelievably tiny price tag—for an Apple product, at least: $499. The apparent aim of the Mini was to lure PC users into seeing what all the fruit-themed hubbub was about. The computer shipped without a keyboard or mouse, but its diminutive 6.5″ x 6.5″ x 2″ frame was charismatic enough that nobody really cared. I still remember marveling at its innards after using a putty knife to pry mine open so I could install some more memory.

iPod Nano: September 7, 2005

nanoSticking to the small-is-the-new-large theme the iPod Shuffle and Mac Mini had perpetuated throughout the year, Apple rolled out the iPod Nano in September.

The Nano’s selling point: a “full-featured iPod that holds 1,000 songs yet is thinner than a standard #2 pencil.”

iPod Video: October 12, 2005

ipodvideoThe fifth-generation iPod unveiled in October of 2005 was the first to feature video playback and represented Apple’s second full redesign of the product. The result was a slimmer case and a larger 320×240-resolution color screen.

Several additional iterations of the iPod Classic, Nano and Shuffle would make their way to market throughout the ensuing years as well.

MacBook Pro with Intel: January 10, 2006

mbp2006Apple’s 2006 MacBook Pro line was the first model to use Intel chips, replacing the PowerBook G4 line. Apple claimed Intel’s processor delivered four times the performance of the old PowerBook’s G4 chip; the new design featured an aluminum shell, measured an inch thick, and tipped the scales at just over five-and-a-half pounds. The consumer-focused, Intel-based, non-Pro MacBooks debuted in May of the same year, too, followed by the infusion of Intel processors into all of Apple’s computers that would roll out thereafter.

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iPhone: January 9, 2007

iphone

The phone that started it all. Apple pitched the iPhone as “a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device.” To give you an idea of how far the iPhone has come since its original launch, this first version started at $499, with the initial press release stating the phone was exclusive to the Cingular network, which AT&T had purchased and rebranded as “the new AT&T” just three days after the iPhone was announced.

(PHOTOS: The Long, Extraordinary Career of Steve Jobs)

In September, Apple killed off the $499 model with 4GB of storage and lowered the price of the 8GB model from $599 to $399. Apple fans who had purchased the phone at full price in June when it was first available were irate (to put it mildly), prompting Jobs to write an open letter, offering $100 in Apple Store credit to any early adopters.

Of course, the iPhone has seen several revisions since the first go-around: The 3G version was announced in June 2008, the 3GS followed a year later, the iPhone 4 a year after that, followed by the Verizon version, the white model and, most recently, the iPhone 4S.

Apple TV: January 9, 2007

appletvfamily-72You’ll forgive the Apple TV for being a wee bit overshadowed by the iPhone, as the two were announced at the same event in early January of 2007.

Apple TV is a set-top box that’s always been positioned as a “hobby” of sorts by Apple: The first version cost $299 and only pulled in content from a nearby computer running iTunes. Before the January unveiling, the product had been demoed as a work in progress—a rare move for Apple—in late 2006 under the “iTV” moniker.

The latest version, unveiled in 2010, shrunk the size of the box down considerably, along with the price tag, while adding additional features such as Netflix streaming and the ability to use the box without iTunes.

iPod Touch: September 5, 2007

ipodtouch

Anyone who’s fallen prey to the allure of one or more Apple products remembers the first product that really pushed them over the edge. The iPod Touch did it for me. I was impressed by the iPhone, but its price tag was too high and I was stuck in the early stages of a two-year phone contract at the time it came out. The iPod Touch, though, was unlike anything I’d ever seen: a gorgeous, wafer-thin touchscreen MP3 player? With a Wi-Fi connection? And a web browser? And you could download music directly to it? Sold.

To this day, the first-generation iPod Touch is still one of my favorite gadgets I’ve ever purchased. There was nothing else like it at the time for $299.

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MacBook Air: January 15, 2008

features_i5_main

The razor-thin MacBook Air was quite a design feat when it launched, measuring 0.16 inches thick at its thinnest point and barely over three-quarters of an inch at its thickest.

(LIST: The 10 Most Memorable Apple Commercials)

The high price tag coupled with the MacBook Airs’ relatively underpowered innards didn’t exactly make the first version a breakout hit, but the next version brought a second 11.6-inch form factor, a sub-$1,000 starting price, and a bit more horsepower. This year’s line brought even better processors and nimbler flash memory while keeping the starting price low.

Although the MacBook Air came out in early January of 2008, competing super-slim form factors from PC makers (called ultrabooks) are only just now starting to make their way to the market en masse.

iPad: January 27, 2010

overview_performance_20110302

In what may ultimately go down as one of Steve Jobs’ most important achievements, the iPad did what no tablet before it could: appeal to the masses. Apple had reportedly been working on the concept prior to even the iPhone before deciding to go handheld first, tablet second.

Several early reviews of the tablet criticized its inability to provide more value than a similarly-priced notebook, yet the general public didn’t seem to care. By the time the dust cleared, Apple had sold 300,000 iPads on the first day alone; a month later: a million iPads; less than a month after that: two million; less than a month after that: three million.

(VIDEO: Steve Jobs’ Greatest Keynote Speeches)

By June 21st, 80 days after the iPad became available, Apple had sold three million of them. It’d be months until another major tablet even hit the market—the expensive, underwhelming 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab—and almost a year before another big-name 10-inch tablet—the also-expensive, also-underwhelming Motorola Xoom—showed up. And less than a week after the Xoom became available, Apple announced the iPad 2.

Earlier this year, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak remarked that Jobs had the tablet computing concept set in his sights from the company’s earliest years, saying of the iPad, “I think Steve Jobs had that intention from the day we started Apple, but it was just hard to get there.” Apple started in April of 1976; the iPad was announced almost 34 years later.

Defying big odds, launching big products

If Steve Jobs did indeed stave off a disease for more than seven years that normally takes people in five months, that’s an impressive enough feat in and of itself. But then to also look back at just some of the Apple products that were announced in the past seven years while Jobs had been battling pancreatic cancer seems truly—as Apple might put it—magical.

He surrounded himself with some of the best and the brightest in the consumer electronics industry, so it’s not to say that some or all of these products wouldn’t have launched had Jobs not made it as long as he did. But you have to wonder what Apple would have looked like on October 5th, 2011 had Steve Jobs not been able to put up such an incredible fight.

MORE: Check Out TIME Magazine’s Steve Jobs Coverage

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