Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5,
2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and Steve Jobs
investor best known for co-founding the technology
company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of
NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar.
He was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution
of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business
partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955 and adopted
shortly afterwards. He attended Reed College in 1972
before withdrawing that same year. In 1974, he
traveled through India, seeking enlightenment before
later studying Zen Buddhism. He and Wozniak co-
Jobs introducing the iPhone 4, 2010
founded Apple in 1976 to further develop and sell
Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Together, the Born Steven Paul Jobs[1]
duo gained fame and wealth a year later with February 24, 1955
production and sale of the Apple II, one of the first San Francisco, California, U.S.
highly successful mass-produced microcomputers. Died October 5, 2011 (aged 56)
Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto in Resting Alta Mesa Memorial Park
1979, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical place
user interface (GUI). This led to the development of
Education Reed College (no degree)
the largely unsuccessful Apple Lisa in 1983, followed
by the breakthrough Macintosh in 1984, the first mass- Years active 1971–2011
produced computer with a GUI. The Macintosh Known for Pioneer of the personal
launched the desktop publishing industry in 1985 (for computer revolution with
example, the Aldus Pagemaker) with the addition of Steve Wozniak
the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature Co-creator of the Apple II,
vector graphics and PostScript. Macintosh, iPod, iPhone,
iPad, and first Apple Stores
In 1985, Jobs departed Apple after a long power
struggle with the company's board and its then-CEO, Title Co-founder, chairman, and
John Sculley. That same year, Jobs took some Apple CEO of Apple Inc.
employees with him to found NeXT, a computer Primary investor and chairman
platform development company that specialized in of Pixar
computers for higher-education and business markets, Founder, chairman, and CEO
serving as its CEO. In 1986, he bought the computer of NeXT
graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off
Board The Walt Disney Company[2] ·
independently as Pixar.[3] Pixar produced the first
member of Apple Inc.
Spouse Laurene Powell (m. 1991)
computer-animated feature film, Toy Story (1995), and Partner Chrisann Brennan (1972–1977)
became a leading animation studio, producing dozens Children 4, including Lisa, Reed, and
of commercially successful and critically acclaimed Eve
films.
Relatives Mona Simpson (sister)
In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as CEO after the Bassma Al Jandaly (cousin)
company's acquisition of NeXT. He was largely Malek Jandali (cousin)
responsible for reviving Apple, which was on the verge
Awards Presidential Medal of Freedom
of bankruptcy. He worked closely with British designer
(posthumous, 2022)
Jony Ive to develop a line of products and services that
had larger cultural ramifications, beginning with the Signature
"Think different" advertising campaign, and leading to
the iMac, iTunes, Mac OS X, Apple Store, iPod,
iTunes Store, iPhone, App Store, and iPad. Jobs was
also a board member at Gap Inc. from 1999 to 2002.[4] In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic
neuroendocrine tumor. He died of tumor-related respiratory arrest in 2011; in 2022, he was posthumously
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Since his death, he has won 141 patents; Jobs holds over 450
patents in total.[5]
Early life
Family
Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24, 1955, to Joanne Carole Schieble
and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (Arabic: )عبد الفتاح الجندلي. Abdulfattah Jandali was born in a Muslim
household to wealthy Syrian parents, the youngest of nine siblings. After obtaining his undergraduate
degree at the American University of Beirut, Jandali pursued a PhD in political science at the University
of Wisconsin. There, he met Joanne Schieble, an American Catholic of Swiss-German descent whose
parents owned a mink farm and real estate in Green Bay. The two fell in love but faced opposition from
Schieble's father due to Jandali's Muslim faith. When Schieble became pregnant, she arranged for a
closed adoption, and travelled to San Francisco to give birth.[6]
Schieble requested that her son be adopted by college graduates. A lawyer and his wife were selected, but
they withdrew after discovering that the baby was a boy, so Jobs was instead adopted by Paul Reinhold
Jobs and his wife Clara. Paul Jobs, an American of German descent, was the son of a dairy farmer from
Washington County, Wisconsin. After dropping out of high school, Paul Jobs worked as a mechanic, then
joined the US Coast Guard. After he was discharged at San Francisco, Paul married Clara Hagopian of
Armenian descent in February 1946 and they moved to Wisconsin, then Indiana, where Paul worked as a
machinist and later as a car salesman. Since Clara missed San Francisco, she convinced Paul to move
back. There, Paul worked as a repossession agent, and Clara became a bookkeeper. In 1955, after having
an ectopic pregnancy, the couple looked to adopt a child.[6] Since they lacked a college education,
Schieble initially refused to sign the adoption papers, and went to court to request that her son be
removed from the Jobs household and placed with a different family, but changed her mind after Paul and
Clara promised to pay for their son's college tuition.[6][7]
Infancy
In his youth, Jobs's parents took him to a Lutheran church.[8] When Steve was in high school, Clara
admitted to Steve's girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, that she "was too frightened to love [Steve] for the first
six months of his life ... I was scared they were going to take him away from me. Even after we won the
case, Steve was so difficult a child that by the time he was two I felt we had made a mistake. I wanted to
return him." When Chrisann shared this comment with Steve, he stated that he was already aware,[9] and
later said that he had been deeply loved and indulged by Paul and Clara. Jobs would "bristle" when Paul
and Clara were referred to as his "adoptive parents", and he regarded them as his parents "1,000%". Jobs
referred to his biological parents as "my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a
sperm bank thing, nothing more."[10]
Childhood
Paul Jobs worked in several jobs that included
I always thought of myself as a humanities person
a try as a machinist,[12] several other jobs,[13]
and then "back to work as a machinist". Paul as a kid, but I liked electronics... then I read
something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of
and Clara adopted Jobs's sister Patricia in
Polaroid, said about the importance of people who
1957,[14] and by 1959 the family had moved to
could stand at the intersection of humanities and
the Monta Loma neighborhood in Mountain
sciences, and I decided that's what I wanted to do.
View, California.[15] Paul built a workbench in
his garage for his son in order to "pass along
—Steve Jobs[11]
his love of mechanics". Jobs, meanwhile,
admired his father's craftsmanship "because he
knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave
me a hammer so I could work with him ... I wasn't that into fixing cars ... but I was eager to hang out with
my dad."[16]
Jobs had difficulty functioning in a traditional classroom,
tended to resist authority figures, frequently misbehaved, and
was suspended a few times. He frequently played pranks on
others at Monta Loma Elementary School in Mountain View.
His father Paul (who was abused as a child) never
reprimanded him, however, and instead blamed the school for
not challenging his brilliant son.[18] Jobs skipped the 5th
grade and transferred to the 6th grade at Crittenden Middle
School in Mountain View, where he became a "socially
The childhood family home of Steve Jobs
awkward loner".[19] Jobs was often "bullied" at Crittenden on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, is
Middle, and in the middle of 7th grade, he gave his parents an the original site of Apple Computer. The
ultimatum: either they would take him out of Crittenden or he home was added to a list of historic Los
would drop out of school.[20] Altos sites in 2013.[17]
The Jobs family was not affluent, and only by expending all
their savings were they able to buy a new home in 1967, allowing Steve to change schools. The new
house (a three-bedroom home on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California) was in the better Cupertino School
District, in Cupertino, California.[21] The house was declared a historic site in 2013, as the first site of
Apple Computer.[17] As of 2013, it was owned by Jobs's sister, Patty, and occupied by his stepmother,
Marilyn.[22] When he was 13, in 1968,[23] Jobs was given a summer job by Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-
Packard) after Jobs cold-called him to ask for parts for an electronics project.[24]
Homestead High
The location of the Los Altos home meant that Jobs would be able to
attend nearby Homestead High School, which had strong ties to Silicon
Valley.[11] He began his first year there in late 1968 along with Bill
Fernandez,[25] who introduced Jobs to Steve Wozniak, and would
become Apple's first employee. Neither Jobs nor Fernandez (whose
father was a lawyer) came from engineering households and thus
decided to enroll in John McCollum's Electronics I class.[25] Jobs had
grown his hair long and become involved in the growing
counterculture, and the rebellious youth eventually clashed with
McCollum and lost interest in the class.[25]
Jobs underwent a change during mid-1970. He later noted to his
official biographer that "I started to listen to music a whole lot, and I Jobs's Homestead High School
started to read more outside of just science and technology — yearbook photo, 1972
Shakespeare, Plato. I loved King Lear ... when I was a senior I had this
phenomenal AP English class. The teacher was this guy who looked
like Ernest Hemingway. He took a bunch of us snowshoeing in Yosemite." During his last two years at
Homestead High, Jobs developed two different interests: electronics and literature.[26] These dual
interests were particularly reflected during Jobs's senior year, as his best friends were Wozniak and his
first girlfriend, the artistic Homestead junior Chrisann Brennan.[27]
In 1971, after Wozniak began attending University of California, Berkeley, Jobs would visit him there a
few times a week. This experience led him to study in nearby Stanford University's student union. Instead
of joining the electronics club, Jobs put on light shows with a friend for Homestead's avant-garde jazz
program. He was described by a Homestead classmate as "kind of brain and kind of hippie ... but he never
fit into either group. He was smart enough to be a nerd, but wasn't nerdy. And he was too intellectual for
the hippies, who just wanted to get wasted all the time. He was kind of an outsider. In high school
everything revolved around what group you were in, and if you weren't in a carefully defined group, you
weren't anybody. He was an individual, in a world where individuality was suspect." By his senior year in
late 1971, he was taking a freshman English class at Stanford and working on a Homestead underground
film project with Chrisann Brennan.[28][29]
Around that time, Wozniak designed a low-cost digital "blue box" to generate the necessary tones to
manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. He was inspired by an article titled
"Secrets of the Little Blue Box" from the October 1971 issue of Esquire.[30] Jobs decided then to sell
them and split the profit with Wozniak. The clandestine sales of the illegal blue boxes went well and
perhaps planted the seed in Jobs's mind that electronics could be both fun and profitable.[31] In a 1994
interview, he recalled that it took six months for him and Wozniak to design the blue boxes.[32] Jobs later
reflected that had it not been for Wozniak's blue boxes, "there wouldn't have been an Apple".[33] He states
it showed them that they could take on large companies and beat them.[34][35]
By his senior year of high school, Jobs began using LSD.[26] He later recalled that on one occasion he
consumed it in a wheat field outside Sunnyvale, and experienced "the most wonderful feeling of my life
up to that point".[36] In mid-1972, after graduation and before leaving for Reed College, Jobs and
Brennan rented a house from their other roommate, Al.[37]
Reed College
In September 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.[38] He insisted on applying only
to Reed, although it was an expensive school that Paul and Clara could ill afford.[39] Jobs soon befriended
Robert Friedland,[40] who was Reed's student body president at that time.[41] Brennan remained involved
with Jobs while he was at Reed.
After just one semester, Jobs dropped out of
Reed College without telling his parents.[43] I was interested in Eastern mysticism which hit the
Jobs later explained this was because he did not shores about then. At Reed there was a constant
want to spend his parents' money on an flow of people stopping by – from Timothy Leary
education that seemed meaningless to him. He and Richard Alpert, to Gary Snyder. There was a
continued to attend by auditing his classes, [44] constant flow of intellectual questioning about the
including a course on calligraphy that was truth of life. That was the time when every college
taught by Robert Palladino. In a 2005 student in the country read Be Here Now and Diet
commencement speech at Stanford University, for a Small Planet.
Jobs stated that during this period, he slept on
the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returned Coke —Steve Jobs[42]
bottles for food money, and got weekly free
meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. In that same speech, Jobs 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".[45]
1974–1985
I was lucky to get into computers when it was a
Pre-Apple
very young and idealistic industry. There weren't
In February 1974, Jobs returned to his parents' many degrees offered in computer science, so
home in Los Altos and began looking for a people in computers were brilliant people from
job.[47] He was soon hired by Atari, Inc. in Los mathematics, physics, music, zoology, whatever.
Gatos, California, as a computer They loved it, and no one was really in it for the
[47][48]
technician. Back in 1973, Steve Wozniak money [...] There are people around here who start
designed his own version of the classic video companies just to make money, but the great
game Pong and gave its electronics board to companies, well, that's not what they're about.
Jobs. According to Wozniak, Atari only hired
Jobs because he took the board down to the —Steve Jobs[46]
company, and they thought that he had built it
himself.[49] Atari's cofounder 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".[50]
Jobs traveled to India in mid-1974[51] to visit Neem Karoli Baba[52] at his Kainchi ashram with his Reed
College friend and eventual Apple employee Daniel Kottke, searching for spiritual teachings. When they
got to the Neem Karoli ashram, it was almost deserted because Neem Karoli Baba had died in September
1973. Then, they made a long trek up a dry riverbed to an ashram of Haidakhan Babaji.[48]
After seven months, Jobs left India[53] and returned to the US ahead of Daniel Kottke.[48] Jobs had
changed his appearance; his head was shaved, and he wore traditional Indian clothing.[54][55] 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".[56][57] He spent a period at the All One Farm, a
commune in Oregon that was owned by Robert Friedland.
During this time period, Jobs and Brennan both became practitioners of Zen Buddhism through the Zen
master Kōbun Chino Otogawa. Jobs engaged in lengthy meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain
Center, the oldest Sōtō Zen monastery in the US.[58] He considered taking up monastic residence at
Eihei-ji in Japan, and maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen,[59] Japanese cuisine, and artists such as
Hasui Kawase.[60]
Jobs returned to Atari in early 1975, and that summer, Bushnell assigned him to create a circuit board for
the arcade video game Breakout in as few chips as possible, knowing that Jobs would recruit Wozniak for
help. During his day job at HP, Wozniak drew sketches of the circuit design; at night, he joined Jobs at
Atari and continued to refine the design, which Jobs implemented on a breadboard.[61] According to
Bushnell, Atari offered $100 (equivalent to about $600 in 2024) for each TTL chip that was eliminated in
the machine. Jobs 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, within four days Wozniak
reduced the TTL count to 45, far below the usual 100, though Atari later re-engineered it to make it easier
to test and add a few missing features.[62] According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari paid them only
$750 (instead of the actual $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $375.[63] Wozniak did not learn
about the actual bonus until ten years later but said that if Jobs had told him about it and explained that he
needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.[64]
Jobs and Wozniak attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975, which was a stepping
stone to the development and marketing of the first Apple computer.[65] According to a document
released by the United States Department of Defense, Jobs claimed that in 1975, he was arrested in
Eugene, Oregon, after being questioned for being a minor in possession of alcohol. Jobs alleged that he
"didn't have any alcohol", but police questioned him, and subsequently determined that he had an
outstanding arrest warrant for an unpaid speeding ticket. Jobs claimed he then paid the $50 fine. The
arrest allegedly occurred "behind a store".[66][67]
Apple (1976–1985)
By March 1976, Wozniak completed the basic
Basically Steve Wozniak and I invented the Apple
design of the Apple I computer and showed it
because we wanted a personal computer. Not only
to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it;
Wozniak was at first skeptical of the idea but couldn't we afford the computers that were on the
market, those computers were impractical for us to
later agreed.[69] In April of that same year,
use. We needed a Volkswagen. The Volkswagen
Jobs, Wozniak, and administrative overseer
isn't as fast or comfortable as other ways of
Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer
Company (now called "Apple Inc.") as a traveling, but the VW owners can go where they
business partnership in Jobs's parents' Crist want, when they want and with whom they want.
Drive home on April 1, 1976. The operation The VW owners have personal control of their car.
originally started in Jobs's bedroom and later
moved to the garage.[70][71] Wayne stayed —Steve Jobs[68]
briefly, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the active
primary cofounders of the company.[72]
The two decided on the name "Apple" after Jobs returned from the All One Farm commune in Oregon
and told Wozniak about his time in the farm's apple orchard.[73] Jobs originally planned to produce bare
printed circuit boards of the Apple I and sell them to computer hobbyists for $50 (equivalent to about
$280 in 2024) each. To fund the first batch, Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator and Jobs sold his
Volkswagen van.[74][75] Later that year, computer retailer Paul Terrell purchased 50 fully assembled
Apple I units for $500 each.[76][77] Eventually, about 200 Apple I computers were produced in total.[78]
A neighbor on Crist Drive recalled Jobs as an odd individual who External image
would greet his clients "with his underwear hanging out, barefoot and
Jobs and Steve Wozniak
hippie-like". Another neighbor, Larry Waterland, who had just earned
with an Apple I circuit board, c.
his PhD in chemical engineering at Stanford, recalled dismissing
1976. (https://img.gazeta.ru/file
Jobs's budding business compared to the established industry of giant
s3/725/13190725/upload-uploa
mainframe computers with big decks of punch cards: "Steve took me
d-04-pic4_zoom-1000x1000-1
over to the garage. He had a circuit board with a chip on it, a DuMont
8187-pic4_zoom-1500x1500-6
TV set, a Panasonic cassette tape deck and a keyboard. He said, 'This
5192.jpg)
is an Apple computer.' I said, 'You've got to be joking.' I dismissed
the whole idea." Jobs's friend from Reed College and India, Daniel
Kottke, recalled that as an early Apple employee, he "was the only person who worked in the garage ...
Woz would show up once a week with his latest code. Steve Jobs didn't get his hands dirty in that sense."
Kottke also stated that much of the early work took place in Jobs's kitchen, where he spent hours on the
phone trying to find investors for the company.[22]
They received funding from semi-retired Intel product marketing manager and engineer Mike
Markkula.[79] Scott McNealy, one of the cofounders 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.[35]
Markkula brought Apple to the attention of Arthur Rock, who, after looking at the crowded Apple booth
at the Home Brew Computer Show, started with a $60,000 investment and went on the Apple board.[80]
Jobs was not pleased when Markkula recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor in February
1977 to serve as the first president and CEO of Apple.[81][82]
After Brennan returned from her own journey
to India, she and Jobs fell in love again, as For what characterizes Apple is that its scientific
Brennan noted changes in him that she staff always acted and performed like artists – in a
attributes to Kobun (whom she was also still field filled with dry personalities limited by the
following). It was also at this time that Jobs rational and binary worlds they inhabit, Apple's
displayed a prototype Apple II computer to engineering teams had passion. They always
Brennan and his parents in their living room. believed that what they were doing was important
and, most of all, fun. Working at Apple was never
just a job; it was also a crusade, a mission, to bring
better computer power to people. At its roots, that
