Steven Paul Jobs, often called Steve Jobs, was born on the 24th of February 1995, in San Francisco, California, U.S. He was a business magnate, media proprietor, investor, and industrial designer. Steve Jobs was the genius behind Apple Inc’s growth and stability. He co-founded it along with Steve Wozniak.

Steve Jobs was the CEO and Chairman of Apple computers. He was a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer era. Steve Jobs died on the 5th of October 2011 because of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56.

Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell got married on the 18th of March, 1991. The couple met at Stanford business school in the early 1990s. In fact, Laurene Powell completed her MBA there. The two lived together in Palo Alto, California.  Together, they had four children; Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Eve Jobs, Reed Jobs, Erin Sienna Jobs.

Furthermore, Steve Jobs also had a daughter with his girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, in 1978. At that time, he was 23 years old. However, Steve Jobs denied the paternity of his daughter in court documents. He claimed he was sterile. Later, Lisa Brennan Jobs wrote about her relationship with her father, Steve Jobs, and her childhood in Small Fry. It was published in 2018.

In the book, Lisa wrote that DNA tests taken in 1980 revealed she and Steve Jobs were a match. Apparently, he was required to make paternity payments to her financially struggling mother, Chrisann. Furthermore, Steve Jobs and Lisa’s relationship were not well until she was seven years old. Later, when Lisa was a teenager, she lived with her father.

Early life

Steve was born in 1955 to two University of Wisconsin graduate students – Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah “John” Jandali. He was born in San Francisco, California. They gave him up for adoption. After Steve Jobs was given up for adoption, his biological parents got married. They had another child, Mona Simpson.

Steve Jobs discovered his biological parents at the age of 27. Jandali, his father, was a Syrian political science professor. Schieble, his mother, was a speech therapist.

Clara and Paul Jobs adopted Steve. They named him Steven Paul Jobs. Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist, while Clara was an accountant. He lived in MountainView, California, with his adoptive family. Later, the area was renamed Silicon Valley.

Steve and his father worked on electronics in their family garage. Paul showed Steve how to reconstruct electronics. Soon it became Steve’s hobby. As a young boy, he developed an interest in tenacity and mechanical prowess.

Education background

In school, Steve was known to be a prankster. He was intelligent and innovative but easily got bored. Steve did not like the idea of formal schooling. Funnily, in fourth grade, his teacher bribed him to study. He excelled well in school, and the administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school. However, his parents declined the idea.

Steve Jobs joined Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after high school. However, Steve lacked direction, and the fees were too expensive for his parents to afford. He dropped out of college six months later. He dedicated his next 18 months to creative school. Later, Steve developed a love for typography, thanks to his calligraphy course.

Steve met Stephen Wozniak when he was 13. At that time, Stephen was 18 years old. They attended high school together; Stephen and Steve went to Homestead High School. Stephen shared an electronic interest with Steve, and he was an incorrigible prankster like Steve. Therefore, they became close. In fact, when Steve Jobs was 14, and Stephen Wozniak 19, they build a computer board. They name it ‘The Cream Soda Computer.”

In an interview with PC World in 2007, Stephen Wozniak spoke about Steve Jobs.

“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.”

Steve’s first job ever

In 1974, Steve worked with Atari as a video game designer. Actually, he met the founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell, at Reed’s College. He joined Atari to experiment with Eastern mysticism. He was 19 years old then. Later, he left Atari in search of spiritual enlightenment in India. He experimented with psychedelic drugs. He explored Buddhism.

During the autumn of 1974, Steve Jobs reconnected with Stephen Wozniak. At that time, Stephen worked for Hewlett-Packard Company. At this time, Stephen told Steve jobs about his progress in designing his own computer logic board. Steve was interested. He suggested that he can do the business together with Stephen.

Stephen left Hewlett-Packard later after they turned down his design in 1976 – the Apple I. It was also called the logic board. In fact, they built it in Steve Jobs’ family garage. They used the money they obtained by selling Stephen Wozniak’s programmable calculator and Steve Jobs’ Volkswagen minibus. At this time, Steve was 21.

Founding of Apple Computer

Subsequently, Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak created machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive, and accessible to everyday consumers. They revolutionized technology.

Stephen was in charge of creating user-friendly personal computers while Steve Jobs took over the marketing section.

At first, Apple marketed their laptops for $666.66 each. The innovation, Apple I, earned the corporation around $774,000. Steve and Stephen gained fame and wealth after the launch of the machine. Steve’s understanding of the market was rather accurate. He understood that the personal computer would appeal to a wider audience. He figured this out in a junior high school science fair.

Then, after three years, Apple released its second model – the Apple II. The improved design featured a keyboard. Moreover, they arranged a sleek, molded plastic case manufactured to enclose the unit. The company’s sales increased by 700 percent to $139 million.

Steve’s marketing obtained publicity for the product. More Apple products got distributed.

Steve’s Great Project

In 1979 Steve headed to carry out the most important project in the company’s history. He led a small group of Apple engineers to demonstrate at the Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Steve wanted to see how the graphical user interface could make computers easier to use and more efficient. Graphical User Interface, commonly known as GUI a computer program that enables a person to communicate with a computer through symbols, visual metaphors, and pointing devices.

Later, the engineering team was designing Lisa, a business computer. Steve left the group and headed towards a smaller group building a lower-cost computer.

Apple Computer as a publicly-traded company

Apple Computer became a publicly traded company in 1980. The company had a market value of $1.2 billion by the end of its very first day of trading. Later, Steve Jobs appointed Pepsi-Cola’s (PepsiCo.) marketing expert John Sculley to take over the role of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Apple. He convinced John to accept the position by asking him, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?”. The question was rather effective. John was appointed on the 8th of April 1983.

Macintosh was born

Later, Apple suffered design flaws for a while. They got poor customer feedback, and they understood they were not satisfied with the product. IBM soon surpassed Apple in terms of sales. Apple had to up its game to compete with an IBM PC-dominated business world. Apple decided to redesigned and refine the PARC ideas. However, Steve Jobs saw a vision in the Macintosh. Macintosh was later known as Mac.

Steve referred to his engineers as artists. He asked them to redesign the internal circuit board because he felt that it was unattractive. Later on, Steve’s idea – Macintosh became an insanely great innovation.

In January 1984, Steve Jobs launched Macintosh. The machine was known for its brilliantly choreographed demonstration. Moreover, the piece has an extraordinary publicity campaign that Steve planned for. He marketed the computer as a piece of a counterculture lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative.

However, despite positive sales and performance superior to IBM’s PCs, the Macintosh was still not IBM-compatible. This was because the first Mac computers were underpowered and expensive, and they had very few software applications. Because of this, the sales target Steve has placed could not be attained.

The company improved the machine slowly, and it became an important product of the company that brought significant returns. However, John Sculley was unhappy that Steve did not correct the problem faster.

John Sculley strongly believed Steve Jobs was hurting Apple. Apple’s executives began to push Steve Jobs out. Steve Jobs was not given an official title even though he co-founded the company. He was pushed into a more marginalized position. Later, Steve left Apple in 1985.

NeXt

Soon, Steve Jobs began a software and hardware enterprise called NeXt Inc. The company sold the specialized operating systems to mainstream America. Jobs partnered with Texan entrepreneur Ross Perot and Canon Inc., a Japanese electronics company. Later, Apple bought the company in 1996 for $429 million.

NeXt Inc was known for its engineering design. Moreover, it became popular as it was less costly than its competitor’s products. Competitors included Sun Microsystems, Inc. Steve focused on the innovative software system NEXTSTEP in the early 1990s.

Pixar

Steve Jobs grew an interest in Pixar, a computer graphics firm, in 1986. Actually, the firm had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Limited.  Lucasfilm is a production company of a Hollywood movie director, George Lucas. Furthermore, Steve Jobs built Pixar into a great animation studio.

The studio gained fame for many achievements. In fact, it produced the first full-length feature film called Toy Story in 1995, which was completely computer-animated. Later on, the company produced Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Eventually, Pixar offered public stock that year. It made him a billionaire as Pixar films collectively netted $4 billion. Later, he sold the studio to the Disney Company in 2006. This made Steve Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder.

Steve’s return to Apple

Apple suffered huge financial losses in 1996. John Sculley left by then. Apple had $2 billion in cash and $200 million in debt. Apple almost collapsed. Later, they hired Gilbert Amelio as the CEO. The company’s research efforts failed. Also, they failed to develop a replacement for the Macintosh operating system. Gilbert opted for NEXTSTEP. He bought Steve Job’s company for more than $400 million. Steve Jobs joined back to Apple as a consultant.

By June 1997, Apple asked Steve Jobs to lead the company once again as the board of directors was disappointed with Gilbert’s inability to turn Apple’s finances. Steve Jobs decided to team up with Apple’s competitor Microsoft Corporation.

Steve always had unique marketing ideas. He engineered an award-winning advertising campaign. The campaign asked potential customers to “think different.” Equally important, Steve Jobs resisted the temptation to make Apple machines run in Microsoft’s Windows Operating System (OS).

As the only major personal computer maker with its own operating system, Steve Jobs believed that Apple was in a unique position to innovate.

iMac – Steve’s genius innovation

Jobs introduced the iMac in 1998. iMac was unveiled on the 6th of May 1998.  It featured a 233 MHz G3 processor, 4 GB hard drive, tray-loading CD-ROM drive, and built-in 15″ CRT display. Despite the size of the machine, it used 144-pin laptop memory. It was an egg-shaped, one-piece computer. iMac had a stylish “Bondi Blue” translucent plastic. It offered high-speed processing at a relatively modest price and initiated a trend of high-fashion computers.

The iMac was everything the rest of the computing world wasn’t – including previous Mac models. It was bright, fast, colorful, compact, and daring.

By the end of 1998, the iMac was the nation’s highest-selling personal computer. Steve Jobs was successfully able to announce consistent profits.

Apple’s comeback into the tech market

Steve Jobs gained the CEO post at Apple in 1997. Thanks to his innovation and out-of-the-box ideas, he instigated Apple’s success in the 1970s.

Steve brought together a new management team. He changes inventory options and self-imposed annual salary of $1 a year. It is fair to say that Steve Jobs brought Apple back on track. He created ingenious products like the iMac. Steve invested in effective branding campaigns and stylish design that grasped the consumers’ attention.

Later on, the company introduced products such as iPods, iPhones, Macbook Air into the market. The products were revolutionary. In addition to that, the company’s quarterly reported improved tremendously. Later in 2007, Apple Inc’s stocks were going for $199.99 a share. In fact, Apple’s products were known as an evolution of technology. Competitors scrambled to produce comparable technologies as Apple posed a serious threat. Apple sold 2.3 million Macs and 22.1 million iPods. The company gained $1.58 billion profit, an $18 billion surplus with zero debt.

Later in 2008, Apple Inc became America’s second-largest music retailer thanks to the incredible iTunes and iPod sales. Walmart was second. Fortune Magazine listed Apple as the number 1 “America’s Most Admired Companies.” In addition to that, the magazine also listed it as the number 1 out of 500 companies in which shareholders gain returns. Furthermore, the iPhone and iPod Touch soon boasted more games than any other portable gaming system.

Steve Jobs fell sick.

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumor in 2003. He took medicines and avoided surgery for almost nine months. Later, in 2004, Steve went through a major surgery called the Whipple operation in which part of the duodenum, gallbladder, a portion of the bile duct were removed. After Steve recovered, he returned to Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs lost a lot of weight in 2008. There was speculation that his cancer was back. On the 9th of January 2009, Steve released a statement and said he is suffering from hormonal imbalance. Almost a week later, Steve said he is taking a leave to recover. In June 2009, he received a liver transplant. Then, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO and became chairman in August 2011. Two months later, on the 5th of October 2011, Steve Jobs passed away. He died when he was 56.

In fact, in 2011, Forbes estimated the majority of Jobs’ net worth of $6.5 billion to $7 billion. This was from his sale of Pixar to the Walt Disney Company in 2006.

Achievements and awards

In 1985, United States President Ronald Reagan awarded Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs the National Media of Technology award.

In 1987, Jefferson Award for Public Service for Samuel S. Beard Award for Outstanding Public Service by An Individual 35 Years or Under.

Later in 1989, Steve Jobs achieved the Entrepreneur of the Decade award by Inc. Magazine, and in 1991 he won the Howard Vollum Award from Reed College. In addition to that, he was listed as Times 100 Most Influential People in the World on five separate occasions from 2004 to 2010.

Fortune Magazine listed Steve Jobs as the most powerful business person in 2007. After he passed away, he attained the Grammy Trustees Award in 2012 and the Edison Achievement Award in 2012.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.”
-Steve Jobs-

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