Steve
Jobs left us six years ago, but the world cannot forget his incredible genius. Without you, Steve, it's even more difficult to "Stay hungry. Stay Foolish".
Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, 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 father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a Syrian political science
professor and his mother, Joanne Schieble, worked as a speech therapist.
Shortly after Steve was placed 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. As an infant, Steven 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 within California's Silicon Valley. As a boy, Steve and his
father would work on electronics in the family garage. Paul would show his son
how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby which instilled
confidence, tenacity and mechanical prowess in Steve. While he has always been
an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with frustrations
over formal schooling. A prankster in elementary school, Jobs's fourth-grade
teacher needed to bribe him to study. Steve tested so well, however, that
administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school—a proposal that his
parents declined.
Not long after Jobs did enroll at Homestead High School
(1971), he was introduced to his future partner, Steve Wozniak, through a
friend of Wozniak's. Wozniak was attending the University of Michigan at the
time. In a 2007 interview with ABC News, Wozniak spoke about why he and Steve
clicked so well: "We both loved electronics and the way we used to hook up
digital chips," Wozniak said. "Very few people, especially back then
had any idea what chips were, how they worked and what they could do. I had
designed many computers so I was 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 Computers 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. 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 Atari to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling the
continent and experimenting with psychedelic drugs. In 1976, when Jobs was just
21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computers. The duo started in the Jobs family
garage, and funded their entrepreneurial venture after Jobs sold his Volkswagen
bus and Wozniak sold his beloved scientific calculator. Jobs and Wozniak are
credited with revolutionizing the computer industry by democratizing the
technology and making the machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive and accessible
to everyday consumers. Wozniak conceived 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 $774,000. Three
years after the release of Apple's second model, the Apple II, sales increased
by 700 percent, to $139 million.
In 1980, Apple Computer became a publically traded
company, with a market value of $1.2 billion on the very first day of trading.
Jobs looked to marketing expert John Scully of Pepsi-Cola to help fill the role
of Apple's president.
However, the next several products from Apple suffered
significant design flaws resulting in recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM
suddenly surpassed Apple 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 counter culture lifestyle: romantic, youthful,
creative. But despite positive sales and performance superior to IBM's PCs, the
Macintosh was still not IBM compatible. Scully believed Jobs was hurting Apple,
and executives began to phase him out.
In 1985, Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO to begin a new
hardware and software company 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 into the company. Pixar Studios went on to produce
wildly popular animation films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The
Incredibles. Pixar's films have netted $4 billion. The studio merged with Walt
Disney in 2006, making Steve Jobs Disney's largest shareholder.
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 1997 for $429 million. That same year, Jobs
returned to his post as Apple's CEO.
Much like 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 such as the iMac,
effective branding campaigns, and stylish designs caught the attention of
consumers once again.
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 pescovegetarian 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 stocks if word got out that their CEO was ill. But in the end,
Jobs's 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.
Apple introduced such revolutionary products as the
Macbook, iPod, iPhone and iPad, all of
which have dictated the evolution of modern technology. Almost immediately
after Apple releases a new product, competitors scramble to produce comparable
technologies. In 2007, Apple's quarterly reports were the company's most
impressive statistics to date. Stocks were worth a record-breaking $199.99 a
share, and the company boasted a staggering $1.58 billion dollar profit, an $18
billion dollar surplus in the bank, and zero debt.
In 2008, iTunes became the second biggest music retailer
in America-second only to Wal-Mart. Half of Apple's current revenue comes from
iTunes and iPod sales, with 200 million iPods sold and six billion songs
downloaded. For these reasons, Apple has been rated No. 1 in America's Most
Admired Companies, and No. 1 amongst Fortune 500 companies for returns to
shareholders.
Early in 2009, reports circulated about Jobs's 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 discloses 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. 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.
On
October 5, 2011, Apple Inc. announced that co-founder Steve Jobs had died. He
was 56 years old at the time of his death.
