Steve Jobs (February 24 1955- October 5, 2011)

Category: Inventors & Innovators

Steven Paul “Steve Jobs” was an American Entrepreneur and inventor. He was the Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Apple, Inc., Co-founder, and Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios, Founder and CEO of NeXT Inc. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company from 2006 until his death on October 5 2011.

Steve Jobs was a Zen Buddhist who masterminded Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes.

He was born on February 24 1955 to a Swiss speech therapist, Joanne Carole Schieble (Joanne Simpson) and Abdulfattah “John” Jandali a Syrian professor when they were both students of Wisconsin University. Abdulfattah said he had no choice but to put the baby up for adoption because Joanne’s family objected to their relationship.

Steven was placed on adoption by his biological parents and did not know anything about them until he was 27.

Abdulfattah and Joanne later married in December 1955 and had a second child in 1957, novelist Mona Simpson. They later divorced in 1962.

After he was adopted by Clara Jobs, an accountant and Paul Reinhold Jobs a coast guard veteran and machinist, Steven Paul’s name was changed to Steven Paul Jobs.

He grew up with his adopted parents at Mountain View, Silicon Valley of California; they later adopted Patti as their second child.

Paul taught his son how to reconstruct electronics and work with his hands while Clara taught him how to read before he went to school.

At Monta Loma Elementary School in Mountain View, Steve’s teacher had to cajole him in fourth- grade for him to study as he was not interested in class works. However his performance in class examinations was high to the extent that the school’s administrators wanted him to skip ahead to high school, but his parents declined the proposal.

Pictures of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs later went to Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino and California.

At Homestead, he became friends with Bill Fernandez, his neighbor who shared the same interests in electronics. It was Fernandez who introduced him to Steve Wozniak, an older computer whiz kid who later became his business partner.

In 1969 Wozniak built “The Cream Soda Computer” and later Jobs worked with him as a summer employee at the Hewlett- Packard Company in Palo Alto, California.

When he graduated from high school in 1972, Steve Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He dropped out of college after six months and spent 18 months dropping in on creative classes and calligraphy.

In 1974, Jobs took a position as video game designer with Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California. That same year he went to India in search of spiritual enlightenment.

When he returned to America after spending seven months in India, Jobs changed his appearance; his head was shaved and he wore traditional Indian clothing. He later became a serious practitioner of Zen Buddhism. He once said people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.

Jobs and Wozniak later became partners; they designed a low-cost digital blue box in early 1970s. It was used to generate tones to manipulate telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls.

In 1976 Jobs and Wozniak formed their business which they named “Apple Computer Company”, a name chosen by Steve Jobs.

They conceived a series of user-friendly personal computers that first sold for $666.6 each. Their first model, the Apple I earned them $774,000. Three years after the release of their second model, the Apple II, sales increased 700 percent to $139 million.

In 1980 Apple became a publicly traded company with a market value of $1.2 billion on the very first day of trading.

In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh and Steve Jobs resigned in 1985 as Apple’s CEO to begin a new hardware and software company NeXT, Inc.

In 1986 he bought George Lucas’ animation company and named it Pixar Animation Studios. He invested $50 million into the company, producing “Toy Story”, “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredible”. The company in 2006 netted $4 billion before it merged with Walt Disney. Steve Jobs was the largest shareholder in the two companies that merged.

In early 1990s Jobs met Lauren Powell at Stanford Business School, where Powell was a MBA student. They married on March 18, 1991 and lived together in Palo Alto, California, with their three children, Reed Jobs, Erin Jobs and Eve Jobs.

In 1997 Steve Jobs returned to the position of Apple’s CEO, selling Next, Inc. to Apple for $429 million. He took a salary of $1 a year as the CEO of Apple.

In 2003 he discovered he had a neuroendocrine tumor, a form of pancreatic cancer. It was operated and successfully removed through surgery in 2004.

In 2007, Apple announced a profit of $1.58 billion, an $18 billion surplus in the bank, and zero debt.

In 2008, iTunes a product of Apple became the second largest 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.

Apple was rated No. 1 America’s Most Admired companies and No 1 amongst Fortune 500 companies for returns of shareholders.

Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56 from pancreatic cancer.

References
bio.TrueStory
Wikipedia
abc

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