Steve Jobs

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This article is about the person. For the biography, see Steve Jobs
(book). For the 2013 biographical film, see Jobs (film).

Steve Jobs

Jobs holding an iPhone 4 at Worldwide
Developers Conference 2010
Born Steven Paul Jobs
February 24, 1955
San Francisco, California, US
Died October 5, 2011 (aged 56)
Palo Alto, California, US
Cause of
death
Metastatic Insulinoma
Residence Palo Alto, California, US
Alma mate
r
Reed College (dropped out)
Occupatio
n
Co-founder, Chairman and
CEO,
Apple Inc.
Co-founder and CEO,
Pixar
Founder and CEO,
NeXT Inc.
Years acti
ve
19742011
Net worth $US 8.3 billion (July 2010)
Board
member o
f
The Walt Disney Company[1]
Apple Inc.
Religion Zen Buddhism (previously
Lutheran)[2]
Spouse(s) Laurene Powell
(19912011; his death)
Children Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Reed Jobs
Erin Jobs
Eve Jobs
Relatives Patricia Ann Jobs (adoptive
sister), Mona Simpson
(biological sister)
Signature

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/dbz/; February 24, 1955 October
5, 2011)[3][4] was an American entrepreneur,[5] marketer,[6] and
inventor,[7] who was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple
Inc. Through Apple, he is widely recognized as a charismatic
pioneer of the personal computer revolution[8][9] and for his
influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields,
transforming "one industry after another, from computers and
smartphones to music and movies".[10] Jobs also co-founded and
served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a
member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in
2006, when Disney acquired Pixar. Jobs was among the first to see
the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical
user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, a
year later, the Macintosh. He also played a role in introducing the
LaserWriter, one of the first widely available laser printers, to the
market.[11]
After a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left
Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development
company specializing in the higher-education and business markets.
In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm,
which was spun off as Pixar.[12] He was credited in Toy Story (1995)
as an executive producer. He served as CEO and majority
shareholder until Disney's purchase of Pixar in 2006.[13] In 1996,
after Apple had failed to deliver its operating system, Copland, Gil
Amelio turned to NeXT Computer, and the NeXTSTEP platform
became the foundation for the Mac OS X.[14] Jobs returned to Apple
as an advisor, and took control of the company as an interim CEO.
Jobs brought Apple from near bankruptcy to profitability by
1998.[15][16][17]
As the new CEO of the company, Jobs oversaw the development of
the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and on the services side,
the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App
Store.[18] The success of these products and services provided
several years of stable financial returns, and propelled Apple to
become the world's most valuable publicly traded company in
2011.[19] The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many
commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business
history.[20][21][22]
In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine
tumor. Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone
imbalance, underwent a liver transplant in 2009, and appeared
progressively thinner as his health declined.[23] On medical leave for
most of 2011, Jobs resigned in August that year, and was elected
Chairman of the Board. He died of respiratory arrest related to the
tumor on October 5, 2011.
Jobs received a number of honors and public recognition for his
influence in the technology and music industries. He has been
referred to as "legendary", a "futurist" and a "visionary",[24][25][26][27]
and has been described as the "Father of the Digital Revolution",[28]
a "master of innovation",[29][30] "the master evangelist of the digital
age"[31] and a "design perfectionist".[32][33]

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Career
2.1 Early work
2.2 Apple Computer
2.3 NeXT Computer
2.4 Pixar and Disney
2.5 Return to Apple
2.6 Resignation
3 Business life
3.1 Wealth
3.2 Stock options backdating issue
3.3 Management style
3.3.1 Reality distortion field
3.4 Innovations and designs
3.4.1 The Macintosh Computer
3.4.2 The NeXT Computer
3.4.3 iMac
3.4.4 iPod
3.4.5 iPhone
3.5 Philanthropy
4 Personal life
4.1 Health issues
5 Death
5.1 Media coverage
6 Honors and public recognition
7 Portrayals and coverage in books, film, and theater
7.1 Books
7.2 Documentary films
7.3 Short film
7.4 Feature films
7.5 Theater
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links
10.1 Articles
10.2 Interviews

Early life
Jobs's birth parents met at the University of Wisconsin, where his
Syrian-born biological father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (Arabic:
),[34][35][36][37][38] was a student, and later taught,
and where his biological mother, Swiss-American Catholic Joanne
Carole Schieble, was also a student. Jandali, who was teaching in
Wisconsin when Jobs was born, said he had no choice but to put the
baby up for adoption because his girlfriend's family objected to their
relationship.[39]
Jobs was born in San Francisco, California on February 24,
1955.[40][41] He was adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs (1922
1993) and Clara Jobs (ne Hagopian) (19241986), an Armenian
American.[42][43] Paul and Clara had gotten married ten days after
they met. Clara had an ectopic pregnancy and couldn't bear
children. Nine years after their marriage, they decided to adopt a
child.[44] According to Steve Jobs's commencement address at
Stanford, Schieble wanted Jobs to be adopted only by a college
graduate couple. Schieble learned that Clara Jobs hadn't graduated
from college and Paul Jobs had only attended high school, but
signed final adoption papers after they promised her that the child
would definitely be encouraged and supported to attend college.
Later, when asked about his "adoptive parents", Jobs replied
emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs "were my parents."[45] He
stated in his authorized biography that they "were my parents
1,000%."[46] Walter Isaacson wrote in his authorized biography
about Steve Jobs that Steve had told him, Paul and Clara are 100%
my parents. And Joanna and Abdulfatah - are only a sperm and an
egg bank. Its not rude, it is the truth.[44]
Unknown to him, his biological parents would subsequently marry
(December 1955), have a second child, novelist Mona Simpson, in
1957, and divorce in 1962.[46]
The Jobs family moved from San Francisco to Mountain View,
California when Jobs was five years old.[40][41] The parents later
adopted a daughter, Patty.[40] Paul worked as a mechanic and a
carpenter, and taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to
work with his hands.[40] Paul showed Steve how to work on
electronics in the family garage, demonstrating to his son how to
take apart and rebuild electronics such as radios and televisions. As
a result, he became interested in and developed a hobby of
technical tinkering.[47]
Clara was an accountant[45] who taught him to read before he went
to school.[40] Clara Jobs had been a payroll clerk for Varian
Associates, one of the first high-tech firms in what became known as
Silicon Valley.[48]
Jobs's youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. At
Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View, he frequently
played pranks on others.[49] Though school officials recommended
that he skip two grades on account of his test scores, his parents
elected for him only to skip one grade.[46][49]
[
not in citation given
]

Jobs then attended Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High
School in Cupertino, California.[41] At Homestead, Jobs became
friends with Bill Fernandez, a neighbor who shared the same
interests in electronics. Fernandez introduced Jobs to his neighbor,
Steve Wozniak, a computer and electronics whiz kid, who was also
known as "Woz". In 1969 Wozniak started building a little computer
board with Fernandez that they named "The Cream Soda
Computer", which they showed to Jobs; he seemed really
interested.[50] Wozniak has stated that they called it the Cream
Soda Computer because he and Fernandez drank cream soda all
the time whilst they worked on it and that he and Jobs had gone to
the same high school, although they did not know each other
there.[51]
Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed
College in Portland, Oregon. Reed was an expensive college which
Paul and Clara could ill afford. They were spending much of their life
savings on their son's higher education.[50] Jobs dropped out of
college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in
on creative classes, including a course on calligraphy.[52] He
continued auditing classes at Reed while sleeping on the floor in
friends' dorm rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and
getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.[53] Jobs
later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy
course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces
or proportionally spaced fonts."[53]
Career
Early work


Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter, September 1976
In 1972, Steve Wozniak designed his own version of the classic
video game, Pong. After finishing it, Wozniak gave the board to
Jobs, who then took the game down to Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos,
California. Atari thought that Jobs had built it and gave him a job as
a technician.[54][55] Atari's co-founder Nolan Bushnell later
described him as "difficult but valuable", pointing out that "he was
very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people
know that".[56]
Jobs travelled to India in mid-1974[57] to visit Neem Karoli Baba[58]
at his Kainchi ashram with a Reed College friend (and, later, an
early Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual
enlightenment. When they got to the Neem Karoli ashram, it was
almost deserted because Neem Karoli Baba had died in September
1973.[55] Then they made a long trek up a dry riverbed to an ashram
of Haidakhan Babaji. In India, they spent a lot of time on bus rides
from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.[55]
After staying for seven months, Jobs left India[59] and returned to
the US ahead of Daniel Kottke.[55] Jobs had changed his
appearance; his head was shaved and he wore traditional Indian
clothing.[60][61] During this time, Jobs experimented with
psychedelics, later calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or
three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".[62][63] He
also became a serious practitioner of Zen Buddhism, engaged in
lengthy meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center,
the oldest St Zen monastery in the US.[64] He considered taking
up monastic residence at Eihei-ji in Japan, and maintained a lifelong
appreciation for Zen.[65] Jobs would later say that people around
him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate
to his thinking.[62]
Jobs then returned to Atari, and was assigned to create a circuit
board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Bushnell,
Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine.
Jobs had little specialized knowledge of circuit board design and
made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if
Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the
amazement of Atari engineers, Wozniak reduced the number of
chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on
an assembly line.
[
further explanation needed
]
According to Wozniak,
Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered
$5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[66] Wozniak did
not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if
Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money,
Wozniak would have given it to him.[67]
Wozniak had designed a low-cost digital "blue box" to generate the
necessary tones to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free
long-distance calls. Jobs decided that they could make money
selling it. The clandestine sales of the illegal "blue boxes" went well,
and perhaps planted the seed in Jobs's mind that electronics could
be fun and profitable.[68] Jobs, in a 1994 interview, recalled that it
took six months for him and Wozniak to figure out how to build the
blue boxes.[69] Jobs said that if not for the blue boxes, there would
have been no Apple. He states it showed them that they could take
on large companies and beat them.[70][71]
Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club
with Wozniak in 1975.[41] He greatly admired Edwin H. Land, the
inventor of instant photography and founder of Polaroid Corporation,
and would explicitly model his own career after that of Land's.[72][73]
In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed their own business, which they
named "Apple Computer Company" in remembrance of a happy
summer Jobs had spent picking apples. At first they started off
selling circuit boards.[74]
Apple Computer
See also: History of Apple


Home of Paul and Clara Jobs, on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California. Steve Jobs
formed Apple Computer in its garage with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in
1976. Wayne stayed only a short time, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the
primary co-founders of the company.
In 1976, Wozniak single-handedly invented the Apple I computer.
After Wozniak showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it,
they and Ronald Wayne formed Apple Computer in the garage of
Jobs's parents in order to sell it.[75] Wayne stayed only a short time
leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the primary co-founders of the
company.[76] They received funding from a then-semi-retired Intel
product-marketing manager and engineer Mike Markkula.[77] Scott
McNealy, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, said that
Jobs broke a "glass age ceiling" in Silicon Valley because he'd
created a very successful company at a young age.[71]
In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to
serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In
1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as
Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to spend the rest of your life
selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the
world?" [78]
In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial
potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface,
which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa. A year later, Apple
completed the Macintosh.[79][80]
The following year, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial
titled "1984". At Apple's annual shareholders meeting on January
24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly
enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as
"pandemonium".[81]


Apple logo introduced May 17, 1976, created by Rob Janoff with the rainbow
scheme used until August 26, 1999.
While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple,
some of his employees from that time described him as an erratic
and temperamental manager. Disappointing sales caused a
deterioration in Jobs's working relationship with Sculley, which
devolved into a power struggle between the two.[82] Jobs kept
meetings running past midnight, sent out lengthy faxes, then called
new meetings at 7:00 am.[83]
During an April 10 & 11 board meeting, Apple's board of directors
gave Sculley the authority to remove Jobs from all roles, except
chairman, to reassign him to an undetermined position. John
delayed a reassignment. But when Sculley learned that Jobswho
believed Sculley to be "bad for Apple" and the wrong person to lead
the companyhad been attempting to organize a boardroom coup,
on May 24, 1985, called a board meeting to resolve the matter.
Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley once again and
removed Jobs from his managerial duties as head of the Macintosh
division. With no duties and exiled from the rest of the company to
an otherwise-empty building, Jobs stopped coming to work and later
resigned as chairman.[82][84][85] After unsuccessfully applying to fly
on the Space Shuttle as a civilian astronaut, and briefly considering
starting a computer company in the Soviet Union,[86] he resigned
from Apple five months later.[82]
In a speech Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, he said being
fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to
him; "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the
lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It
freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." And
he added, "I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I
hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I
guess the patient needed it."[53][87][88]