Steve Jobs Co-founded Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak. Under Jobs' guidance, the company pioneered a series of revolutionary technologies, including the iPhone and iPad.
About
Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on
February 24, 1955, to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave
him for adoption. Smart but directionless, Jobs experimented with different pursuits
before beginning Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak in 1976. Apple’s
revolutionary products, which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now seen
as dictating the evolution of modern technology, with Jobs having left the
organization in 1985 and returning over 10 years after the fact. He passed on
in 2011, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Early Life
Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San
Francisco, California, to Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and
Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, two University of Wisconsin graduate students
who gave their unnamed son up for adoption. His dad, Jandali, was a Syrian
political science professor, and his mom, Schieble, worked as a speech
therapisst. Shortly after Steve was put for adoption, his biological parents
married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that
he was able to uncover information on his biological parents.
The infant was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named
Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant and Paul was a Coast Guard
veteran and machinist. The family lived in Mountain View, California, within
the area that would later become known as Silicon Valley. As a boy, Jobs and
his father worked on electronics in the family garage. Paul showed to his son
how to take apart reconstruct electronics, a hobby that instilled confidence,
tenacity and mechanical prowess in young Jobs.
While Jobs was always an intelligent and innovative
thinker, his childhood was filled with dissatisfactions over formal schooling. Jobs
was a prankster in elementary school due
to boredom, and his fourth-grade teacher needed to bride him to study. Jobs
tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high
school—a proposal that his parents declined.
A few years later,
while Jobs was enrolled at Homestead High School, he was introduced to his
future partner Steve Wozniak, who was attending the University of California,
Berkeley. In a 2007 interview with PC World, Wozniak spoke about why he and
Jobs clicked so well: "We both loved electronics and the way we used to hook
up digital chips," Wozniak said. "Very few individuals, particularly
in those days, had any thought what chips were, how they worked and what they
could do. I had composed numerous PCs, so I way ahead of him in electronics and
computer design, but we still had common interests. We both had pretty much
sort of an independent attitude about things in the world. ..."
Apple Computer
After
high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking
direction, he dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18
months dropping in on creative classes at the school. Jobs later recounted how
one course in calligraphy developed his love of typography.In
1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. Several months
later he left the company to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling
further and experimenting with psychedelic drugs. In 1976, when Jobs was just
21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computer. The duo started in the Jobs family
garage, funding their entrepreneurial venture by Jobs selling his Volkswagen bus
and Wozniak selling his beloved scientific calculator.
Jobsand Wozniak are credited with revolutionizing the computer industry by
democratizing the technology and making machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive
and accessible to everyday consumers. Wozniak conceived of a series of
user-friendly personal computers, and—with Jobs in charge of marketing—Apple
initially marketed the computers for $666.66 each. The Apple I earned the
corporation around $774,000. Three years after the release of Apple's second model,
the Apple II, the company's sales increased by 700 percent to $139 million. In
1980, Apple Computer became a publicly traded company, with a market value of
$1.2 billion by the end of its very first day of trading. Jobs looked to
marketing expert John Sculley of
Pepsi-Cola to take over the role of CEO for Apple.
Departure from
Company
However,
the next several products from Apple suffered significant design flaws,
resulting in recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly surpassed Apple
in sales, and Apple had to compete with an IBM/PC-dominated business world. In
1984, Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the computer as a piece of a
counterculture lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative. But despite positive
sales and performance superior to IBM's PCs, the Macintosh was still not
IBM-compatible. Sculley believed Jobs was hurting Apple, and the company's
executives began to phase him out.
Not
actually having had an official title with the company he co-founded, Jobs was
pushed into a more marginalized position and thus left Apple in 1985 to begin a
new hardware and software enterprise called NeXT, Inc. The following year Jobs
purchased an animation company from George Lucas, which later
became Pixar Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar's potential, Jobs initially
invested $50 million of his own money in the company. The studio went on to
produce wildly popular movies such as Toy Story, Finding
Nemo and The Incredibles, Pixar's films have collectively
netted $4 billion. The studio merged with Walt Disney in 2006, making Steve
Jobs Disney's largest shareholder.
Reinventing Apple
Despite
Pixar's success, NeXT, Inc. floundered in its attempts to sell its specialized
operating system to mainstream America. Apple eventually bought the company in
1996 for $429 million. The following year, Jobs returned to his post as Apple'sCEO. Just as
Steve Jobs instigated Apple's success in the 1970s, he is credited with
revitalizing the company in the 1990s. With a new management team, altered
stock options and a self-imposed annual salary of $1 a year, Jobs put Apple
back on track. His ingenious products (like the iMac), effective branding
campaigns and stylish designs caught the attention of consumers once again.
Pancreatic Cancer
In 2003, Jobs discovered that he
had a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare but operable form of pancreatic cancer.
Instead of immediately opting for surgery, Jobs chose to alter his
pesco-vegetarian diet while weighing Eastern treatment options. For nine
months, Jobs postponed surgery, making Apple's board of directors nervous.
Executives feared that shareholders would pull their stock if word got out that
their CEO was ill. But in the end, Jobs' confidentiality took precedence over
shareholder disclosure. In 2004, he had a successful surgery to remove the
pancreatic tumor. True to form, in subsequent years Jobs disclosed little about
his health.
Later Innovations
Apple
introduced such revolutionary products as the Macbook Air, iPod and iPhone, all
of which have dictated the evolution of modern technology. Almost immediately
after Apple releases a new product, competitors scramble to produce comparable
technologies. Apple's quarterly reports improved significantly in 2007: Stocks
were worth $199.99 a share—a record-breaking number at that time—and the
company boasted a staggering $1.58 billion profit, an $18 billion surplus in
the bank and zero debt. In
2008, iTunes became the second-biggest music retailer in America—second only to
Walmart, fueled by iTunes and iPod sales. Apple has also been ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine's
list of "America's Most Admired Companies," as well as No. 1 among
Fortune 500 companies for returns to shareholders.
Personal Life
Early
in 2009, reports circulated about Jobs' weight loss, some predicting his health
issues had returned, which included a liver transplant. Jobs had responded to
these concerns by stating he was dealing with a hormone imbalance. After nearly
a year out of the spotlight, Steve Jobs delivered a keynote address at an
invite-only Apple event September 9, 2009.
In
respect to his personal life, Steve Jobs remained a private man who rarely
disclosed information about his family. What is known is Jobs fathered a
daughter with girlfriend Chrisann Brennan when he was 23. Jobs denied paternity
of his daughter Lisa in court documents, claiming he was sterile. With Chrisann
struggling financially for much of her life, Jobs did not initiate a
relationship with his daughter until she was 7, but when she was a teenager she
came to live with her father.In the
early 1990s, Jobs met Laurene Powell at Stanford business school, where Powell
was an MBA student. They married on March 18, 1991, and lived together in Palo
Alto, California, with their three children.
Death
On October 5, 2011, Apple Inc. announced that its co-founder
had passed away. After battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a decade, Steve
Jobs died in Palo Alto. He was 56 years old.
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