Steven Paul Jobs was an American business mogul, inventor, and investor who lived from February 24, 1955, until October 5, 2011. He served as the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple as well as Pixar's majority shareholder, the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT, and the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar when that company was acquired by The Walt Disney Company. Along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, he was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
To a Syrian father and German-American mother, Jobs was born in San Francisco. Soon after his birth, he was adopted. Jobs enrolled at Reed College in 1972 but left the next year. He visited India in 1974 in search of enlightenment and afterwards studied Zen Buddhism. In order to market Wozniak's Apple I personal computer, he and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976. The creation and selling of the Apple II, one of the earliest and most successful mass-produced microcomputers, brought the pair acclaim and financial success a year later. In 1979, Jobs recognised the Xerox Alto's economic potential. This mouse-driven computer had a graphical user interface (GUI).
Due to this, the failed Apple Lisa was created in 1983, followed by the ground-breaking Macintosh, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI, in 1984. With the launch of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to support vector graphics, the Macintosh revolutionised the desktop publishing sector in 1985.
After a protracted power battle with the company's board of directors and its then-CEO, John Sculley, Jobs left Apple in 1985. Jobs founded NeXT, a computer platform development firm that specialised in computers for higher-education and corporate industries, in the same year he left Apple with a small group of Apple workers. Additionally, by providing financial support to George Lucas's Lucasfilm's computer graphics branch in 1986, he contributed to the growth of the visual effects business. The Graphics Group later split out on its own to become Pixar, which went on to create the first 3D computer-animated feature picture, Toy Story (1995), and establish itself as a major animation company by going on to create over 27 films.
Following Apple's acquisition of NeXT in 1997, Jobs rejoined the firm as CEO. He had a significant role in saving Apple from bankruptcy when it was on the verge of going under. The iMac, iTunes, Mac OS X, Apple Store, iPod, iTunes Store, iPhone, App Store, and iPad are just a few of the products and services he co-created with British designer Jony Ive that had a significant cultural impact. The "Think different" advertising campaign served as the catalyst for this effort. Jobs had a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour diagnosis in 2003. Tim Cook took over as CEO of Apple after he passed away in 2011 at the age of 56 from a tumor-related respiratory arrest. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom after his death in 2022.
Early life
Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, to parents Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali. Abdulfattah Jandali was the youngest of nine siblings and was the son of affluent Syrian Muslims. Jandali obtained a PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin after earning his undergraduate degree from the American University of Beirut. There, he met Joanne Schieble, a German-American Catholic American whose parents were real estate and mink farm owners. Despite Schieble's father's reluctance because of Jandali's Muslim beliefs, the two fell in love. Schieble planned a closed adoption when she was pregnant, and she went to San Francisco to give birth.
Schieble asked for college grads to adopt her kid. The infant was supposed to be adopted by a lawyer and his wife, but they withdrew when they learned it was a male, so Paul Reinhold and Clara Jobs adopted Jobs instead. The son of a dairy farmer, Paul Jobs worked as a mechanic after leaving high school before enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard. He met Clara Hagopian, an American of Armenian heritage, after his ship was decommissioned. Ten days later, in March 1946, the two were engaged, and they were married the following year. Paul Jobs first worked as a machinist in Wisconsin before moving on to Indiana, where he later sold cars. Clara wanted to go to San Francisco and persuaded Paul to do so.
Following an ectopic pregnancy in 1955, the couple decided to adopt a kid. Schieble initially refused to sign the adoption documents since Paul and Clara did not have college degrees. She then petitioned the court to have her son taken from the Jobs family and put with another family. Schieble later changed her mind after Paul and Clara pledged to pay for their son's college tuition.
Starting Apple
Wozniak finished the fundamental layout of the Apple I computer by March 1976 and showed it to Jobs, who recommended that they sell it. Wozniak was first dubious about the concept, but eventually agreed. Jobs, Wozniak, and administrative supervisor Ronald Wayne established the Apple Computer Company (today known as "Apple Inc.") as a partnership on April 1 of the same year in Jobs's parents' Crist Drive house. The business began in Jobs' bedroom and then relocated to the garage. Wayne only lasted for a limited period, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the company's active principal founders.
After Jobs returned from the All One Farm commune in Oregon and informed Wozniak about his experience in the farm's apple orchard, the two agreed on the moniker "Apple". For $50 (about $260 in 2022), Jobs initially intended to build bare printed circuit boards for the Apple I and sell them to computer enthusiasts. Jobs and Wozniak both sold their Volkswagen vans to raise money for the initial batch. Paul Terrell, a computer retailer, later paid $500 apiece for 50 completely constructed Apple I systems. A total of 200 Apple I computers were eventually made.
Jobs was described as a peculiar person who would greet his clients "with his pants hanging out, barefoot and hippie-like" by a neighbour on Crist Drive. Steve brought me over to the garage. Larry Waterland, a different neighbour, recalls denigrating Jobs's little company in comparison to the established sector of enormous mainframe computers with large decks of punch cards: "Steve took me over to the garage. He had a keyboard, a DuMont TV, a Panasonic cassette tape deck, and a circuit board with a chip on it. He declared, 'This is an Apple computer.' You've got to be joking, I exclaimed.
Daniel Kottke, a buddy of Jobs's from Reed College and India, stated that as an early Apple employee, he "was the only person who worked in the garage... I dismissed the whole idea." Once each week, Woz would arrive with his most recent code. In that regard, Steve Jobs didn't get his hands filthy. The majority of the early work, according to Kottke, was done in Jobs's kitchen, where he spent hours on the phone attempting to recruit investors for the business.
They acquired finance from Mike Markkula, an engineer and then-semi-retired manager of product marketing at Intel. One of Sun Microsystems' cofounders, Scott McNealy, said that Jobs cracked the "glass age ceiling" in Silicon Valley by founding a very successful firm at such a young age. When Arthur Rock saw the packed Apple stand at the Home Brew Computer Show thanks to Markkula's introduction, he decided to invest $60,000 and join the Apple board. When Markkula chose Mike Scott, a former executive at National Semiconductor, to lead Apple as its first president and CEO in February 1977, Jobs was not happy.
Brennan and Jobs fell in love again when she returned from her own trip to India because she had noticed changes in him that she attributed to Kobun (whom she was still following at the time). In their living area, Jobs also showed Brennan and his dad a prototype Apple II computer at this time. Brennan observes a change during this time period, as Kobun and Apple Inc. became Jobs' two primary inspirations.
Start Again (Apple 1997-2011)
Apple said in 1996 that it would purchase NeXT for $400 million. When the deal was completed in February 1997, Jobs returned to the business he cofounded. After former CEO Gil Amelio was fired in July 1997, Jobs assumed the position of de facto leader. On September 16, he was formally appointed interim chief executive. Jobs cancelled a number of initiatives in March 1998 in order to focus Apple's efforts on being profitable again, including Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. Many workers began to fear travelling in the lift with Jobs in the following months because they were "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened." Even though Jobs's summary killings were infrequent, a small number of victims was sufficient to terrorise a whole corporation.
Jobs altered the licencing scheme for Macintosh clones, making it too expensive for the producers to keep producing the devices.
Many of NeXT's technological innovations, most notably NeXTSTEP, which developed into Mac OS X, made their way into Apple products when the firm was acquired by Apple. With the launch of the iMac and other new products, the business saw a considerable surge in sales under Jobs' leadership. Since then, Apple has prospered thanks to its eye-catching designs and strong branding. Jobs became Apple's permanent CEO during the 2000 Macworld Expo, thus removing the "interim" from his title. At the time, Jobs joked that he would use the title "iCEO".
Later, the business expanded, introducing and developing new digital appliances. The corporation entered the consumer electronics and music distribution markets with the launch of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store. On June 29, 2007, Apple launched the iPhone, a cell phone featuring a multi-touch touchscreen, an iPod-like feature set, and a built-in mobile browser that completely changed the way people surf on their phones. Jobs stressed to his staff that "real artists ship" while still encouraging unrestricted experimentation.
A award of 7.5 million Apple shares with an exercise price of $18.30 was made to Jobs in 2001. It was claimed that the exercise price for the options should have been $21.10 and that they had been backdated. Further allegations were that Jobs had failed to disclose taxable income of $20,000,000 and that Apple had inflated its profits by the same amount. Jobs could have been charged with various crimes and subject to various civil fines as a result. Although an independent internal Apple inquiry concluded on December 29, 2006, that Jobs was not aware of these problems and that the options issued to him in 2003 were returned without being exercised, the situation remained still the focus of ongoing criminal and civil government investigations.
At Apple's annual meeting in Cupertino in April 2005, Jobs retaliated against environmentalists and other campaigners after hearing criticism of the company's subpar recycling programmes for electronic trash in the US. A few weeks later, Apple declared that iPods would be accepted for free at its retail locations. In response, the Computer TakeBack Campaign flew a banner above the Stanford University commencement, where Jobs served as the keynote speaker. "Steve, don't be a mini-player—recycle all e-waste," stated the poster.
Jobs said in a 2011 interview with historian Walter Isaacson that he had met with US President Barack Obama and informed him that he was "headed for a one-term presidency" due to the country's lack of software developers. Jobs advocated for offering a green card instantly to any international student who graduated with an engineering degree from a US institution. "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done," Jobs said after the meeting. It aggravates me.
Death
On October 5, 2011, about 3 p.m. (PDT), Jobs passed away in his Palo Alto, California, home from difficulties brought on by a resurgence of his previously treated islet-cell pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour, which led to respiratory arrest. The previous day, he had fallen asleep, and when he passed away, his wife, kids, and sisters were at his side. According to his sister, Mona Simpson, Steve's last words, said hours before, were three monosyllable repetitions. Before leaving, he had gazed at his sister Patty, his children for a considerable amount of time, his life partner Laurene, and then beyond them.
Steve ended by saying, " 'Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.' " He subsequently passed away many hours later after losing consciousness.[210] On October 7, 2011, a modest, private funeral was performed, the specifics of which were kept hidden out of respect for Jobs's family.