Steve Jobs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Steve Jobs

Jobs holding a white iPhone 4 at Worldwide Developers

Conference 2010
Steven Paul Jobs
Born February 24, 1955 (age 56)[1]
San Francisco, California, U.S.[1]
Residence Palo Alto, California, U.S.[2]
Nationality American
Alma mater Reed College (dropped out in 1972)
Occupation Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc.[3]
Salary $1[4][5][6][7]
Net worth $8.3 billion (2011)[8]
Board member of The Walt Disney Company[9]
Religion Buddhism[10]
Spouse Laurene Powell (1991–present)
Children 4
Signature

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is an American business magnate and inventor. He is the
co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar
Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the
acquisition of Pixar by Disney. He was credited in the 1995 movie Toy Story as an executive producer.[11]

In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula,[12] and others, designed,
developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II
series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven
graphical user interface which led to the creation of the Macintosh.[13][14] After losing a power struggle with the
board of directors in 1984,[15][16] Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform
development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. Apple's subsequent 1996
buyout of NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since 1997.

In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as Pixar Animation
Studios.[17] He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1% until its acquisition by The Walt Disney
company in 2006.[3] Consequently Jobs became Disney's largest individual shareholder at 7% and a member of
Disney's Board of Directors.[18][19][20][21]

Jobs' history in business has contributed much to the symbolic image of the idiosyncratic, individualistic Silicon
Valley entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of design and understanding the crucial role aesthetics play in
public appeal. His work driving forward the development of products that are both functional and elegant has
earned him a devoted following.[22]

Contents

[hide]

• 1 Early years
• 2 Career
o 2.1 Beginnings of Apple Computer
 o 2.2 NeXT Computer
o 2.3 Pixar and Disney
o 2.4 Return to Apple
• 3 Business life
o 3.1 Wealth
o 3.2 Stock options backdating issue
o 3.3 Management style
o 3.4 Inventions
• 4 Personal life
o 4.1 Health concerns
• 5 Honors
• 6 In popular culture
• 7 See also
• 8 Notes
• 9 References
• 10 External links
o 10.1 Articles

o 10.2 Interviews

Early years

Steve Jobs at the WWDC 07

Jobs was born in San Francisco[1] and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs (née Hagopian)[23] of Mountain View,
California, who named him Steven Paul. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, who they named Patti. Jobs'
biological parents — Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian[24] graduate student who later became a political science
professor,[25] and Joanne Simpson, an American graduate student[24] who went on to become a speech language
pathologist[26] — later married, giving birth to and raising Jobs' biological sister, the novelist Mona Simpson.[27]
[28][29][30][31][32]

Jobs attended Cupertino Junior High School and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California,[22] and
frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California. He was soon hired
there and worked with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee.[33] In 1972, Jobs graduated from high school and
enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester,[34] he continued
auditing classes at Reed, such as one in calligraphy, while sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning
Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.[16] Jobs later
stated, "If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple
typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."[16]

In the autumn of 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer
Club with Wozniak. He took a job as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of popular video games, with the
primary intent of saving money for a spiritual retreat to India.

Jobs then traveled to India with a Reed College friend (and, later, the first Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in
search of spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian
clothing.[35][36] During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the
two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".[37] He has stated that people around him who did
not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.[37]

Jobs returned to his previous job at Atari and was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game
Breakout. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered US$100 for each chip that was
eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest or knowledge in circuit board design and made a deal with
Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the
amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to
reproduce on an assembly line. At the time, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had only given them $700 (instead of
the actual $5000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[38][39][40][41][42][43]

Career

Beginnings of Apple Computer

See also: History of Apple

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference (D5) in 2007.

In 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne,[44] with later funding from a then-semi-retired Intel
product-marketing manager and engineer A.C. "Mike" Markkula Jr.,[12] founded Apple. Prior to co-founding
Apple, Wozniak was an electronics hacker. Jobs and Wozniak had been friends for several years, having met in
1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. Steve
Jobs managed to interest Wozniak in assembling a computer and selling it. As Apple continued to expand, the
company began looking for an experienced executive to help manage its expansion.

In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to be
several turbulent years. In 1983, Steve Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO,
asking, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change
the world?"[45][46] 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."[47] The Macintosh became the
first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface. The development of the Mac was
started by Jef Raskin, and eventually taken over by Jobs.

While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time had
described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. An industry-wide sales slump towards the end of 1984
caused a deterioration in Jobs's working relationship with Sculley, and at the end of May 1985 – following an
internal power struggle and an announcement of significant layoffs – Sculley relieved Jobs of his duties as head
of the Macintosh division.[48]

NeXT Computer

See also: NeXT

Around the same time, Jobs founded another computer company, NeXT Computer. Like the Apple Lisa, the
NeXT workstation was technologically advanced; however, it was largely dismissed by industry as cost-
prohibitive. Among those who could afford it, however, the NeXT workstation garnered a strong following
because of its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development system. Jobs
marketed NeXT products to the scientific and academic fields because of the innovative, experimental new
technologies it incorporated (such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet
port).

The NeXTcube was described by Jobs as an "interpersonal" computer, which he believed was the next step after
"personal" computing. That is, if computers could allow people to communicate and collaborate together in an
easy way, it would solve many of the problems that "personal" computing had come up against.

"1990 CERN: A Joint proposal for a hypertext system is presented to the management. Mike Sendall buys a
NeXT cube for evaluation, and gives it to Tim [Berners-Lee]. Tim's prototype implementation on NeXTStep is
made in the space of a few months, thanks to the qualities of the NeXTStep software development system. This
prototype offers WYSIWYG browsing/authoring! Current Web browsers used in "surfing the Internet" are mere
passive windows, depriving the user of the possibility to contribute. During some sessions in the CERN
cafeteria, Tim and I try to find a catching name for the system. I was determined that the name should not yet
again be taken from Greek mythology. Tim proposes "World-Wide Web". I like this very much, except that it is
difficult to pronounce in French..." by Robert Cailliau, 2 November 1995. [49]

During a time when e-mail for most people was plain text, Jobs loved to demo the NeXT's e-mail system,
NeXTMail, as an example of his "interpersonal" philosophy. NeXTMail was one of the first to support
universally visible, clickable embedded graphics and audio within e-mail. Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for
aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by such things as the NeXTcube's magnesium case. This put considerable
strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned
fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel.

Pixar and Disney

In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division
for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.[50]

The new company, which was originally based at Lucasfilm's Kerner Studios in San Rafael, California, but has
since relocated to Emeryville, California, was initially intended to be a high-end graphics hardware developer.
After years of unprofitability selling the Pixar Image Computer, it contracted with Disney to produce a number
of computer-animated feature films, which Disney would co-finance and distribute.

The first film produced by the partnership, Toy Story, brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it
was released in 1995. Over the next ten plus years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company
would produce the box-office hits A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding
Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009) and Toy
Story 3 (2010). Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 each received the
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.

In the years 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive
Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership,[51] and in early 2004 Jobs announced that Pixar
would seek a new partner to distribute its films once its contract with Disney expired.

In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to patch up relations with Jobs
and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-
stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. Once the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest
single shareholder with approximately 7% of the company's stock.[18] Jobs's holdings in Disney far exceed those
of Eisner, who holds 1.7%, and Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who held about 1% of the company's
stock and whose criticisms of Eisner included the soured Pixar relationship and accelerated his ousting. Jobs
joined the company's board of directors upon completion of the merger.

Jobs also helps oversee Disney and Pixar's combined animation businesses with a seat on a special six-man
steering committee.

Return to Apple

Jobs on stage at Macworld Conference & Expo, San Francisco, January 11, 2005.
See also: "1998–2005: Return to profitability" in Apple Inc.

In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $429 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996,[52]
bringing Jobs back to the company he had co-founded. He soon became Apple's interim CEO after the directors
lost confidence in and ousted then-CEO Gil Amelio in a boardroom coup. In March 1998, to concentrate
Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs immediately terminated a number of projects such as Newton,
Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while
riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs'
summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company."[53] Jobs also
changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue
making machines.

With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most
notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance the company increased sales
significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and
powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the
"interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would
be using the title 'iCEO.'[54]

In recent years, the company has branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With
the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the
company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. In 2007, Apple entered the cellular
phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also included the
features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionized the mobile browsing scene. While
stimulating innovation, Jobs also reminds his employees that "real artists ship",[55] by which he means that
delivering working products on time is as important as innovation and attractive design.

Jobs is both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been
dubbed the "reality distortion field" and is particularly evident during his keynote speeches (colloquially known
as "Stevenotes") at Macworld Expos and at Apple's own World Wide Developers Conferences.

In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the U.S. by lashing out
at environmental and other advocates at Apple's Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April. However, a few weeks
later, Apple announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer TakeBack Campaign
responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the
commencement speaker.[16] The banner read "Steve — Don't be a mini-player recycle all e-waste". In 2006, he
further expanded Apple's recycling programs to any U.S. customer who buys a new Mac. This program includes
shipping and "environmentally friendly disposal" of their old systems.[56]

Business life

Wealth

As of October 2009, Jobs owned 5.426 million shares of Apple, most of which was granted in 2003 when Jobs
was given 10 million shares. He also owned 138 million shares of Disney, which he had received in exchange
for Disney's acquisition of Pixar.[57] Forbes estimated his net wealth at $5.1 billion in 2009, making him the 43rd
wealthiest American.[58] After Bloomberg had accidentally published Jobs' obituary in 2008, Arik Hesseldahl of
BusinessWeek magazine noted that "Jobs isn’t widely known for his association with philanthropic causes",
compared to Bill Gates' efforts.[59] After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate
philanthropy programs.[60]

Stock options backdating issue

In 2001, Steve Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7.5 million shares of Apple with an exercise
price of $18.30, which allegedly should have been $21.10, thereby incurring taxable income of $20,000,000 that
he did not report as income. This indicated backdating. Apple overstated its earnings by that same amount. If
found liable, Jobs might have faced a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. Apple claimed that the
options were originally granted at a special board meeting that may never have taken place. Furthermore, the
investigation is focusing on false dating of the options resulting in a retroactive $20 million increase in the
exercise price. The case is the subject of active criminal and civil government investigations,[61] though an
independent internal Apple investigation completed on December 29, 2006, found that Jobs was unaware of
these issues and that the options granted to him were returned without being exercised in 2003.[62] On July 1,
2008, a $7 billion class action suit was filed against several members of the Apple Board of Directors for
revenue lost due to the alleged securities fraud.[63][64]

Management style

Much has been made of Jobs' aggressive and demanding personality. Fortune wrote that he "is considered one
of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs."[65] Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in Mike
Moritz's The Little Kingdom, one of the few authorized biographies of Jobs; The Second Coming of Steve Jobs,
by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon.

Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs "would have made an excellent king of France," alluding to
Jobs' compelling and larger-than-life persona.[66]

Jobs has always aspired to position Apple and its products at the forefront of the information technology
industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept at the
end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007 by quoting ice hockey legend
Wayne Gretzky:[67]

There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.'
And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.
—Steve Jobs

Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the creative
process of the filmmakers.[68]

In 2005, Steve Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their
publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.[69] In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had
"closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad."[70]

Inventions

Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in over 230 awarded patents or patent applications
related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-
based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages.[71][72]

Personal life

Jobs married Laurene Powell, on March 18, 1991. Presiding over the wedding was the Zen Buddhist monk
Kobun Chino Otogawa.[73] The couple have a son, Reed Paul Jobs,[74] and two other children. Jobs also has a
daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan.[75] She
briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; he later
acknowledged paternity.[75]

In the unauthorized biography, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, author Alan Deutschman reports that Jobs
once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed College, as
saying she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the
lover of Bob Dylan." In another unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs by Jeffrey S. Young & William L.
Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez, but her age at the time (41) meant it was
unlikely the couple could have children.
Jobs is also a Beatles fan. He has referenced them on more than one occasion at Keynotes and also was
interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on 60 Minutes,
he replied:[76]

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check;
they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not
done by one person, they are done by a team of people.

In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in The San Remo, an apartment building in New York City with a politically
progressive reputation, where Demi Moore, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan,
daughter of Rita Hayworth, also had apartments. With the help of I.M. Pei, Jobs spent years renovating his
apartment in the top two floors of the building's north tower, only to sell it almost two decades later to U2
frontman Bono. Jobs had never moved in.[77][78]

In 1984, Jobs purchased a 17,000-square-foot (1,600 m2), 14 bedroom Spanish Colonial mansion, designed by
George Washington Smith in Woodside, California, also known as Jackling House. Although it reportedly
remained in an almost unfurnished state, Jobs lived in the mansion for almost ten years. According to reports,
he kept an old BMW motorcycle in the living room, and let Bill Clinton use it in 1998. Since the early 1990s,
Jobs has lived in a house in the Old Palo Alto neighborhood of Palo Alto. President Clinton dined with Jobs and
14 Silicon Valley CEOs there August 7, 1996.[79]

He allowed the mansion to fall into a state of disrepair, planning to demolish the house and build a smaller
home on the property; but he met with complaints from local preservationists over his plans. In June 2004, the
Woodside Town Council gave Jobs approval to demolish the mansion, on the condition that he advertise the
property for a year to see if someone would move it to another location and restore it. A number of people
expressed interest, including several with experience in restoring old property, but no agreements to that effect
were reached. Later that same year, a local preservationist group began seeking legal action to prevent
demolition. In January 2007 Jobs was denied the right to demolish the property, by a court decision.[80] The
court decision was overturned on appeal in March 2010 and the mansion was demolished beginning February
2011[81]

He usually wears a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by St. Croix, Levi's 501 blue jeans, and New
Balance 991 sneakers.[82] He is a pescetarian.[83]

His choice of car is a silver 2006 Mercedes SL 55 AMG, which has no licence plates.[84][85]

Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting when Jobs first criticized Dell
for making "un-innovative beige boxes."[86] On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell
was asked what he would do if he owned then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the
money back to the shareholders."[87] In 2006, Steve Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's market
capitalization rose above Dell's. The email read:[88]

Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market
close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I
thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.

Health concerns

In mid-2004, Jobs announced to his employees that he had been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in
his pancreas.[89] The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very grim; Jobs, however, stated that he
had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.[89] After initially resisting
the idea of conventional medical intervention and embarking on a special diet to thwart the disease,
Jobs underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004 that appeared to
successfully remove the tumor.[90][91] Jobs apparently did not require nor receive chemotherapy or
radiation therapy.[89][92] During Jobs' absence, Timothy D. Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations
at Apple, ran the company.[89]

Jobs at the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo.

In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the keynote for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. His
"thin, almost gaunt" appearance and unusually "listless" delivery,[93][94] together with his choice to delegate
significant portions of his keynote to other presenters, inspired a flurry of media and internet speculation about
his health.[95] In contrast, according to an Ars Technica journal report, WWDC attendees who saw Jobs in
person said he "looked fine";[96] following the keynote, an Apple spokesperson said that "Steve's health is
robust."[97]

Two years later, similar concerns followed Jobs' 2008 WWDC keynote address;[98] Apple officials stated Jobs
was victim to a "common bug" and that he was taking antibiotics,[99] while others surmised his cachectic
appearance was due to the Whipple procedure.[100] During a July conference call discussing Apple earnings,
participants responded to repeated questions about Steve Jobs' health by insisting that it was a "private matter."
Others, however, voiced the opinion that shareholders had a right to know more, given Jobs' hands-on approach
to running his company.[101] The New York Times published an article based on an off-the-record phone
conversation with Jobs, noting that "while his health issues have amounted to a good deal more than 'a common
bug,' they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer."[102]

On August 28, 2008, Bloomberg mistakenly published a 2500-word obituary of Jobs in its corporate news
service, containing blank spaces for his age and cause of death. (News carriers customarily stockpile up-to-date
obituaries to facilitate news delivery in the event of a well-known figure's untimely death.) Although the error
was promptly rectified, many news carriers and blogs reported on it,[103][104][105] intensifying rumors concerning
Jobs' health.[106] Jobs responded at Apple's September 2008 Let's Rock keynote by quoting Mark Twain:
"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated";[107] at a subsequent media event, Jobs concluded his presentation
with a slide reading "110/70", referring to his blood pressure, stating he would not address further questions
about his health.[108]

On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that marketing vice-president Phil Schiller would deliver the
company's final keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2009, again reviving questions about
Jobs' health.[109][110][111] In a statement given on January 5, 2009 on [Link],[112] Jobs said that he had been
suffering from a "hormone imbalance" for several months.[113] On January 14, 2009, in an internal Apple memo,
Jobs wrote that in the previous week he had "learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I
originally thought" and announced a six-month leave of absence until the end of June 2009 to allow him to
better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who had previously acted as CEO in Jobs' 2004 absence, became acting
CEO of Apple,[114] with Jobs still involved with "major strategic decisions."[114]

In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in
Memphis, Tennessee.[115][116] Jobs' prognosis was "excellent."[116]

On January 17, 2011, one and a half years after Jobs returned from his liver transplant, Apple announced that he
had been granted a medical leave of absence. Jobs announced his leave in a letter to employees, stating his
decision was made "so he could focus on his health." As during his 2009 medical leave, Apple announced that
Tim Cook would run day-to-day operations and that Jobs would continue to be involved in major strategic
decisions at the company.[117][118]

On March 2, 2011 Steve Jobs made an appearance at the iPad 2 launch event.

Honors

He was awarded the National Medal of Technology from President Ronald Reagan in 1984 with Steve Wozniak
(among the first people to ever receive the honor),[119] and a Jefferson Award for Public Service in the category
"Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under" (aka the Samuel S. Beard Award) in 1987.[120]
On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by Fortune Magazine.[121]

On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted
Jobs into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.[122]

In August 2009, Jobs was selected the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers on a survey by Junior
Achievement.[123]

On November 5, 2009, Jobs was named the CEO of the decade by Fortune Magazine.[124]

In November 2009 Jobs was ranked #57 on Forbes: The World's Most Powerful People.[125]

In December 2010, the Financial Times named Jobs its person of the year for 2010, ending its essay by stating,
"In his autobiography, John Sculley, the former PepsiCo executive who once ran Apple, said this of the
ambitions of the man he had pushed out: 'Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products
company. This was a lunatic plan. High-tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.' How
wrong can you be".[126]

In popular culture

Due to his young age, great wealth, and charisma, after Apple's founding Jobs became a symbol of his company
and industry. When Time named the computer as the 1982 "Machine of the Year", it published a long profile of
him as "the most famous maestro of the micro."[127][128] Jobs was prominently featured in three films about the
history of the personal computing industry:

• Triumph of the Nerds — a 1996 three-part documentary for PBS, about the rise of the home
computer/personal computer.
• Nerds 2.0.1 — a 1998 three-part documentary for PBS, (and sequel to Triumph of the Nerds) which
chronicles the development of the Internet.
• Pirates of Silicon Valley — a 1999 docudrama which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft. He
was portrayed by Noah Wyle.

Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. That's why it hired a soft-
drinks guy in the first place. By now, however, I knew this was a lunatic plan; our race to realize it had
been a death march. Technology companies are only superficially in the same category as consumer
products companies. We couldn't bend reality to all our dreams of changing the world. The world
would also have to change us. Our perspective had been hopelessly wrong. High tech could not be
designed and sold as a consumer product. The consumer business had collapsed at the end of 1984.
Most people who bought computers stuffed them in the closet because balancing a checkbook wasn't
reason enough to flick on the switch. Consumers weren't ready to put computers in their homes as
easily as they installed telephones, refrigerators, televisions, and even Cuisinarts. They weren't willing
to pay a couple of thousand dollars for something they didn't know what to do with.

John Sculley and John A. Byrne, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple -- a journey of adventure, ideas and the
future, Harper & Row, 1987

• 18, 2008

Steve Jobs is the Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc., a leading manufacturer of electronic devices
including the Macintosh Computer (MAC), iPod, iPhone, and the music and video software itunes. He was CEO
of Pixar Animation Studios until it was acquired by Disney in 2006. Although he is known as a business and
sales wizard, Steve Jobs is credited with many of the electronic inventions now patented by Apple.

Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco to Joanne Carole Schieble and Syrian Abdulfattah John Jandali
and adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. He attended the Cupertino Middle School followed by high school at
Homestead H.S. in the same town of Cupertino. He spent his childhood in the South Bay area, a region that
would later become known as Silicon Valley. During high school Jobs held a summer job at the Hewlett-
Packard Company in Palo Alto prior to attending college. His original association with Steven Wozniak began
as a result of attending lectures and working at HP.

Although he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Steve Jobs never graduated, having only spent about
six months at college. He returned to California in 1974 and began attending meetings of the Homebrew
Computer Club with his friend Wozniak. At the same time he took a job at Atari to save money for a spiritual
retreat to India. While working there he discovered that a popular whistle recreated the tones needed to make
long distance phone calls with AT&T. Jobs convinced Wozniak to go into business with him to create "blue
boxes" and sell them to people wishing to make free long distance phone calls.

Jobs ended up backpacking through India but returned to work with Atari. He continued to work with Wozniak
on other projects and finally convinced him to market a computer Wozniak had built for himself. On April 1,
1976, Apple Inc. was born. Although the business started with printed circuit boards, Steve Wozniak and Steve
Jobs eventually created their first personal computer, the Apple I, and sold it for $666.66. They later followed it
with the Apple II, a large success for their business. Apple Inc. began selling shares in December of 1980.

As the company grew, so did its merchandise and the hugely successful Macintosh was introduced to the public
in 1984 and became the first personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) through which individuals
could interact with the items on the screen. As Apple grew even more, Jobs experienced tension with the board
and the struggles led to Jobs leaving Apple in May of 1985.

Steve Jobs went on to create the company called NeXT in 1986. Although it began as a company designed
around aesthetic interpersonal computing, it later focused more on software development. NeXT ended up
playing a major role in the development of email and the world wide web.

Apple bought NeXT in 1996 and reinstated Jobs as the Chief Executive Officer. His current annual salary is $1,
but he receives executive gifts from the board that give better tax advantages than does his salary. He is well
known for his work ethic as well as his rumored temper, but has consistently helped to grow Apple from a
company bordering on bankruptcy in the 1990s to a very successful company today. Steve Jobs has helped
establish the new electronic divisions and personally helped to create the ipod, iphone, and other personal
devices.
Born: February 24, 1955
San Francisco, California
American business executive, computer programmer, and entrepreneur

Computer designer and corporate executive Steve Jobs is cofounder of Apple Computers.
With his vision of

Steve Jobs.
Reproduced by permission of the
Corbis Corporation
.
affordable personal computers, he launched one of the largest industries of the past decades
while still in his early twenties. He remains one of the most inventive and energetic minds in
American technology.

Early life
Steven Jobs was born February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, and was adopted by
Paul and Clara Jobs. He grew up with one sister, Patty. Paul Jobs was a machinist and fixed
cars as a hobby. Jobs remembers his father as being very skilled at working with his hands.

In 1961 the family moved to Mountain View, California. This area, just south of Palo Alto,
California, was becoming a center for electronics. Electronics form the basic elements of
devices such as radios, televisions, stereos, and computers. At that time people started to
refer to the area as "Silicon Valley." This is because a substance called silicon is used in the
manufacturing of electronic parts.

As a child, Jobs preferred doing things by himself. He swam competitively, but was not
interested in team sports or other group activities. He showed an early interest in electronics
and gadgetry. He spent a lot of time working in the garage workshop of a neighbor who
worked at Hewlett-Packard, an electronics manufacturer.

Jobs also enrolled in the Hewlett-Packard Explorer Club. There he saw engineers
demonstrate new products, and he saw his first computer at the age of twelve. He was very
impressed, and knew right away that he wanted to work with computers.
While in high school Jobs attended lectures at the Hewlett-Packard plant. On one occasion he
boldly asked William Hewlett (1931–2001), the president, for some parts he needed to
complete a class project. Hewlett was so impressed he gave Jobs the parts, and offered him a
summer internship at Hewlett-Packard.

College and travel

After graduating from high school in 1972, Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon,
for two years. He dropped out after one semester to visit India and study eastern religions in
the summer of 1974. In 1975 Jobs joined a group known as the Homebrew Computer Club.
One member, a technical whiz named Steve Wozniak (1950–), was trying to build a small
computer. Jobs became fascinated with the marketing potential of such a computer. In 1976
he and Wozniak formed their own company. They called it Apple Computer Company, in
memory of a happy summer Jobs had spent picking apples. They raised $1,300 in startup
money by selling Jobs's microbus and Wozniak's calculator. At first they sold circuit boards
(the boards that hold the internal components of a computer) while they worked on the
computer prototype (sample).

Apple and the personal computer era

Jobs had realized there was a huge gap in the computer market. At that time almost all
computers were mainframes. They were so large that one could fill a room, and so costly that
individuals could not afford to buy them. Advances in electronics, however, meant that
computer components were getting smaller and the power of the computer was increasing.

Jobs and Wozniak redesigned their computer, with the idea of selling it to individual users.
The Apple II went to market in 1977, with impressive first year sales of $2.7 million. The
company's sales grew to $200 million within three years. This was one of the most
phenomenal cases of corporate growth in U.S. history. Jobs and Wozniak had opened an
entirely new market—personal computers. Personal computers began an entirely new way of
processing information.

By 1980 the personal computer era was well underway. Apple was continually forced to
improve its products to remain ahead, as more competitors entered the marketplace. Apple
introduced the Apple III, but the new model suffered technical and marketing problems. It
was withdrawn from the market, and was later reworked and reintroduced.
Jobs continued to be the marketing force behind Apple. Early in 1983 he unveiled the Lisa. It
was designed for people possessing minimal computer experience. It did not sell well,
however, because it was more expensive than personal computers sold by competitors.
Apple's biggest competitor was International Business Machines (IBM). By 1983 it was
estimated that Apple had lost half of its market share (part of an industry's sales that a
specific company has) to IBM.

The Macintosh
In 1984 Apple introduced a revolutionary new model, the Macintosh. The on-screen display
had small pictures called icons. To use the computer, the user pointed at an icon and clicked a
button using a new device called a mouse. This process made the Macintosh very easy to use.
The Macintosh did not sell well to businesses, however. It lacked features other personal
computers had, such as a corresponding high quality printer. The failure of the Macintosh
signaled the beginning of Jobs's downfall at Apple. Jobs resigned in 1985 from the company
he had helped found, though he retained his title as chairman of its board of directors.

NeXT
Jobs soon hired some of his former employees to begin a new computer company called
NeXT. Late in 1988 the NeXT computer was introduced at a large gala event in San
Francisco, aimed at the educational market. Initial reactions were generally good. The
product was very user-friendly, and had a fast processing speed, excellent graphics displays,
and an outstanding sound system. Despite the warm reception, however, the NeXT machine
never caught on. It was too costly, had a black-and-white screen, and could not be linked to
other computers or run common software.

Toy Story
NeXT was not, however, the end of Steve Jobs. In 1986 Jobs purchased a small company
called Pixar from filmmaker George Lucas (1944–). Pixar specialized in computer animation.
Nine years later Pixar released Toy Story, a huge box office hit. Pixar later went on to make
Toy Story 2 and A Bug's Life, which Disney distributed, and Monsters, Inc. All these films
have been extremely successful. Monsters, Inc. had the largest opening weekend ticket sales
of any animated film in history.
NeXT and Apple
In December of 1996 Apple purchased NeXT Software for over $400 million. Jobs returned
to Apple as a part-time consultant to the chief executive officer (CEO). The following year, in
a surprising event, Apple entered into a partnership with its competitor Microsoft. The two
companies, according to the New York Times, "agreed to cooperate on several sales and
technology fronts." Over the next six years Apple introduced several new products and
marketing strategies.

In November 1997 Jobs announced Apple would sell computers directly to users over the
Internet and by telephone. The Apple Store became a runaway success. Within a week it was
the third-largest e-commerce site on the Internet. In September of 1997 Jobs was named
interim CEO of Apple.

In 1998 Jobs announced the release of the iMac, which featured powerful computing at an
affordable price. The iBook was unveiled in July 1999. This is a clam-shaped laptop that is
available in bright colors. It includes Apple's AirPort, a computer version of the cordless
phone that would allow the user to surf the Internet wirelessly. In January 2000 Jobs
unveiled Apple's new Internet strategy. It included a group of Macintosh-only Internet-based
applications. Jobs also announced that he was becoming the permanent CEO of Apple.

In a February 1996 Time magazine article, Jobs said, "The thing that drives me and my
colleagues … is that you see something very compelling to you, and you don't quite know how
to get it, but you know, sometimes intuitively, it's within your grasp. And it's worth putting in
years of your life to make it come into existence." Jobs has worked hard to translate his ideas
into exciting and innovative products for businesses and consumers. He was instrumental in
launching the age of the personal computer. Steve Jobs is truly a computer industry
visionary.