1 Who Was Steve Jobs?

Steven Paul Jobs was an American inventor, designer and entrepreneur who
was the co-founder, chief executive and chairman of Apple Computer. Apple's
revolutionary products, which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now
seen as dictating the evolution of modern technology. Born in 1955 to two
University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for adoption,
Jobs was smart but directionless, dropping out of college and experimenting
with different pursuits before co-founding Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976.
Jobs left the company in 1985, launching Pixar Animation Studios, then
returned to Apple more than a decade later. Jobs died in 2011 following a long
battle with pancreatic cancer.

Net Worth

In 2011, Forbes estimated the majority of Steve Jobs’ net worth at around
$6.5 billion to $7 billion from his sale of Pixar to the Walt Disney Company in
2006. However if Jobs had not sold his Apple shares in 1985, when he left the
company he founded and helmed for over a decade, his net worth would have
been a staggering $36 billion.

Steve Jobs: Movies and Books

Several movies inspired by the computer icon's life have been released as
well — namely the critically panned Jobs (2013), starring Ashton Kutcher,
and Steve Jobs (2015), starring Michael Fassbender and directed by Danny
Boyle.

A number of books have also been written on Jobs' life and career, including
an authorized 2011 general biography by Walter Isaacson. The book was
critiqued for the depiction of its main subject by Apple's chief executive Tim
Cook, who succeeded Jobs. Karen Blumenthal also wrote a 2012 young adult
biography, and Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli wrote 2015's Becoming
Steve Jobs.
2 Steve Jobs' Death

Steve Jobs died in Palo Alto on October 5, 2011, after battling pancreatic
cancer for nearly a decade. He was 56 years old.

Last Words

In Mona Simpson’s eulogy for Steve Jobs, his sister said Steve Jobs looked at
his sister Patty, kids and wife, then said his last words: “OH WOW. OH WOW.
OH WOW.”

Wife and Children

Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell married on March 18, 1991. The pair met in
the early 1990s at Stanford business school, where Powell was an MBA
student. They lived together in Palo Alto, California, with their three children.

Daughter

Although he remained a private man who rarely disclosed information about

his family, it is known that Jobs fathered a daughter, Lisa, with girlfriend
Chrisann Brennan when he was 23. He denied paternity of his daughter in
court documents, claiming he was sterile. Chrisann struggled financially for
much of her life, and Jobs did not initiate a relationship with his daughter until
she was seven years old. When she was a teenager, Lisa came to live with
her father.

When and Where Was Steve Jobs Born?

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California.

Young Steve Jobs

Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, two
University of Wisconsin graduate students, gave up their unnamed son, Steve
Jobs, for adoption. Jobs’ father, Jandali, was a Syrian political science
professor, and his mother, Schieble, worked as a speech therapist. Shortly
after Steve was placed for adoption, his biological parents married and had
another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that he was able to
uncover information on his biological parents.

As an infant, Jobs was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven
Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant and Paul was a Coast Guard
veteran and machinist. The family lived in Mountain View, California, within
the area that would later become known as Silicon Valley. As a boy, Jobs and
his father worked on electronics in the family garage. Paul showed his son
how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby that instilled
confidence, tenacity and mechanical prowess in young Jobs.

Education

While Jobs was always an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was
riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. Jobs was a prankster in
elementary school due to boredom, and his fourth-grade teacher needed to
bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to
skip him ahead to high school — a proposal that his parents declined.

After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking
direction, he dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18
months dropping in on creative classes at the school. Jobs later recounted
how one course in calligraphy developed his love of typography.

In 1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. Several
months later he left the company to find spiritual enlightenment in India,
traveling further and experimenting with psychedelic drugs.

Steve Wozniak

Back when Jobs was enrolled at Homestead High School, he was introduced
to his future partner and co-founder of Apple Computer, Steve Wozniak, who
was attending the University of California, Berkeley.

In a 2007 interview with PC World, Wozniak spoke about why he and Jobs
clicked so well: "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.”

Apple Computer

In 1976, when Jobs was just 21, he and Steve Wozniak started Apple
Computer in the Jobs’ family garage. They funded their entrepreneurial
venture by Jobs selling his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak selling his beloved
scientific calculator. Jobs and Wozniak are credited with revolutionizing the
computer industry with Apple by democratizing the technology and making
machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive and accessible to everyday consumers.

Wozniak conceived of a series of user-friendly personal computers, and —

with Jobs in charge of marketing — Apple initially marketed the computers for
$666.66 each. The Apple I earned the corporation around $774,000. Three
years after the release of Apple's second model, the Apple II, the company's
sales increased by 700 percent to $139 million.

In 1980, Apple Computer became a publicly traded company, with a market

value of $1.2 billion by the end of its very first day of trading. Jobs looked to
marketing expert John Sculleyof Pepsi-Cola to take over the role of CEO for
Apple.

The next several products from Apple suffered significant design flaws,
however, resulting in recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly
surpassed Apple in sales, and Apple had to compete with an IBM/PC-
dominated business world.

In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the computer as a piece of

a counterculture lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative. But despite positive
sales and performance superior to IBM's PCs, the Macintosh was still not
IBM-compatible. Sculley believed Jobs was hurting Apple, and the company's
executives began to phase him out. Not actually having had an official title
with the company he co-founded, Jobs was pushed into a more marginalized
position and thus left Apple in 1985.

Pixar
In 1986, Jobs purchased an animation company from George Lucas, which
later became Pixar Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar's potential, Jobs
initially invested $50 million of his own money in the company. The studio
went on to produce wildly popular movies such as Toy Story, Finding
Nemo and The Incredibles; Pixar's films have collectively netted $4 billion.
The studio merged with Walt Disney in 2006, making Steve Jobs Disney's
largest shareholder.

NeXT

After leaving Apple in 1985, Jobs began a new hardware and software
enterprise called NeXT, Inc. The company floundered in its attempts to sell its
specialized operating system to mainstream America, and Apple eventually
bought the company in 1996 for $429 million. In 1997, Jobs returned to his
post as Apple's CEO. Just as Jobs instigated Apple's success in the 1970s,
he is credited with revitalizing the company in the 1990s.

Reinventing Apple

With a new management team, altered stock options and a self-imposed

annual salary of $1 a year, Jobs put Apple back on track. Jobs’ ingenious
products (like the iMac), effective branding campaigns and stylish designs
caught the attention of consumers once again. In the ensuing years, Apple
introduced such revolutionary products as the Macbook Air, iPod and iPhone,
all of which dictated the evolution of technology. Almost immediately after
Apple released a new product, competitors scrambled to produce comparable
technologies.

Apple's quarterly reports improved significantly in 2007: Stocks were worth

$199.99 a share—a record-breaking number at that time — and the company
boasted a staggering $1.58 billion profit, an $18 billion surplus in the bank and
zero debt. In 2008, Apple became the second-biggest music retailer in
America — second only to Walmart, fueled by iTunes and iPod sales. Apple
has also been ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine's list of "America's Most
Admired Companies," as well as No. 1 among Fortune 500 companies for
returns to shareholders.

Battle with Cancer

In 2003, Jobs discovered that he had a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare but
operable form of pancreatic cancer. Instead of immediately opting for surgery,
Jobs chose to alter his pesco-vegetarian diet while weighing Eastern
treatment options. For nine months, Jobs postponed surgery, making Apple's
board of directors nervous. Executives feared that shareholders would pull
their stock if word got out that their CEO was ill. But in the end, Jobs'
confidentiality took precedence over shareholder disclosure. In 2004, he had a
successful surgery to remove the pancreatic tumor. True to form, in
subsequent years Jobs disclosed little about his health.

Early in 2009, reports circulated about Jobs' weight loss, some predicting his
health issues had returned, which included a liver transplant. Jobs responded
to these concerns by stating he was dealing with a hormone imbalance. Days
later, he went on a six-month leave of absence. In an e-mail message to
employees, Jobs said his "health-related issues are more complex" than he
thought, then named Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, as
“responsible for Apple's day-today operations."

Final Years

After nearly a year out of the spotlight, Steve Jobs delivered a keynote
address at an invite-only Apple event on September 9, 2009. He continued to
serve as master of ceremonies, which included the unveiling of the iPad,
throughout much of 2010.

However, in January 2011, Jobs announced he was going on medical leave.

In August, he resigned as CEO of Apple, handing the reins to Cook, and in
October he died.