Biography: Steve Jobs - by Darren Vader

Thursday, October 6, 2011 | Nepali at 10:45 AM |

Overview
Name: Steven Paul Jobs
Position: Co-Founder & CEO, Apple Computer | Co-Founder & CEO, Pixar
Born: February 1955
Parents: Steve was adopted as an infant by Paul and Clara Jobs. Paul Jobs was a machinist for a company that manufactured lasers and Clara Jobs was an accountant; both are deceased.
Siblings: Steve has a biological, younger sister Mona Simpson, whom he tracked down and now has a close relationship with.
Education: Graduated from Homestead High School, Los Altos, Calif. in 1972. Attended Reed College in Portland, Ore.; dropped out of the baccalaureate program after one semester.
Family: Wife: Laurene Powell. They met at Stanford University while he was speaking at a class. They married in 1991. Both are vegetarians. Daughter Lisa was born when Jobs was 23 (Jobs didn't marry her mother). Lisa lived with Jobs as a teen. He has three children with wife Laurene.
Residence: English style red-brick home in Palo Alto, Calif. built in 1930s. Valued between $3 million to $5 million. Sparsely decorated.
Appearance: Slender; wears jeans, usually with a black turtleneck and running shoes.
What's he like: People say he is a high-strung workaholic, motivates others with his enthusiasm, has a "reality distortion field," passionate about technology, a micromanager, arrogant and intolerant; can exude a Zen-like calm.
Heroes: Dave Packard, Bob Noyce, late co-founder of Intel, and Andy Grove and singer Bob Dylan.
Friends: Jerry Brown, former governor of California. Lawrence J. Ellison, billionaire software entrepreneur and chairman of Oracle. Sister and novelist Mona Simpson.
Net Worth: More than $1.2 Billion.
Honors & Awards: National Technology Medal from President Reagan in 1985, before founding NeXT. Jefferson Award for Public Service in 1987. Entrepreneur of the Decade by Inc. magazine in 1989.

Bio
Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple Computer, a leader in the field of personal computing which he co-founded in 1976, and Pixar, the Academy-Award-winning animation studio he co-founded in 1986. His innovative idea of what a personal computer should be led him to revolutionize the consumer computer hardware and software industry. When Jobs was twenty one, he and a friend, Steve Wozniak, built a personal computer that they called the Apple. The Apple changed people's idea of what a computer should be. Thanks to the Apple, people's image of computers changed from being a gigantic and inscrutable mass of vacuum tubes only used by big business and the government to a small box used by ordinary people. No company has done more to democratize the computer and make it user-friendly than Apple Computer. Steve Jobs software design for the Macintosh introduced the windows interface and the mouse which set a new standard for graphical interface applications and interface interaction.
Jobs was an unlikely candidate to have become the prototype of America's computer industry entrepreneur. While still in high school, Jobs attended lectures at the Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto. He was also hired as a summer employee for Hewlett-Packard. Another employee at Hewlett-Packard was Stephen Wozniak a recent dropout from the University of California at Berkeley and an engineering whiz with a passion for inventing electronic gadgets.
In 1972 Jobs graduated from high school and register at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Going to work for Atari after leaving Reed College, Jobs renewed his friendship with Steve Wozniak. The two designed computer games for Atari and a telephone "blue box", getting much of their impetus from the Homebrew Computer Club. Jobs was not interested in creating electronics and was nowhere near as good an engineer as Wozniak. Although he was not really interested in creating electronics, his business sense for the marketability of these products was the turning point. He asked his engineering friend Wozniak to help him build a personal computer.
Jobs sold his Volkswagen micro-bus and Wozniak sold his Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator, which raised $1,300 to start their new company. With that initial capital and credit lines with local electronics suppliers, they set up their first production line. Jobs encouraged Wozniak to quit his job at Hewlett-Packard and become the vice president in charge of research and development of the new enterprise.
Beginning work in the Job's family garage they managed to make their first big sale when the Byte Shop in Mountain View bought their first fifty fully assembled computers. On this basis the Apple Corporation was founded. The name is allegedly based on Job's favorite fruit and the logo chosen to play on both the company name and the word byte.
Steve Jobs was a true visionary who created the first truly personal computer, the Apple, in his garage. From calculating federal taxes to executing individual business operations, Jobs lead a hardware revolution by reducing the size of computers to small boxes and introducing them to the masses.
The development of the Macintosh re-introduced Xerox's innovative idea of a user-friendly interface with a mouse. The Macintosh used a windows interface which contained picture-like icons representing a function or a program to be executed. The user would use the mouse to move a cursor onto the icon and press the mouse button to execute the function or program. The Macintosh interface has since been copied by every operating systems manufacturer in the world and become the standard interface format for both personal computers and super-computers.
On September 12, 1985 Steve Jobs stood up in an Apple board meeting and after years of internal political turmoil and power struggles, said in a flay, unemotional voice, "I've been thinking a lot and it's time for me to get on with my life. It's obvious that I've got to do something. I'm thirty years old." Resigning as chairman, Steve said he intended to leave the company and start a new venture to address the higher education market. After leaving Apple, Jobs' new revolutionary ideas were not in hardware but in software of the computer industry. In 1989 Jobs tried to do it all over again with a new company called Next. He planned to build the next generation of personal computers that would put Apple to shame. It didn't quite happen that way. After eight long years of struggle and after running through $250 million in capital, Next closed down its hardware division in 1993. Jobs realized that he was not going to revolutionize the hardware industry; he had done that once already.
He turned his attention to the software side of the computer industry. Jobs envisioned that the NextStep operating system would revolutionize the computer. The core of the NextStep OS was a new technology called object-oriented programming (OOP). OOP lets programmers write complex software programs in a fraction of the usual time. NeXT Software was sold to Apple Computer in February 1997.
Steve Jobs is also Chairman and CEO of Pixar, the Academy-Award-winning computer animation studios which he co-founded in 1986. Pixar's first feature film, Toy Story, was released by Walt Disney Pictures in November 1995 and became the highest domestic grossing film released that year and the third highest grossing animated film of all time.
As the Chairman and CEO of Apple Computer, he pays himself an annual salary of $1 per year. Steve still lives with his wife and three children near where he grew up in the apricot orchard now known as Silicon Valley.

Timeline
1970s
1974: Video game designer for Atari; worked there several months; used savings to travel to India; returned to California and spent a brief time on a communal farm.
1975: Attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, Calif., attended by friend and engineering genius, Stephen Wozniak; they joined forces and built a marketable table-top computer in Jobs' parents' garage; co-founded Apple Computer Inc.
1976: Introduced Apple I computer for $666; first single-board computer with onboard Read Only Memory (ROM) that told the machine how to load programs from an external source and had a video interface.
1977: Introduced Apple II; first mass-marketed personal computer; had a plastic case and included color graphics; Jobs encouraged programmers to create applications for the Apple II; this resulted in 16,000 programs from games to farm budgets; former Intel marketing manager Mike Markkula became Apple chairman and secured venture capital of $600,000.
1979: Development of a computer named Lisa, which would redefine personal computing; Jobs removed as project manager; he began working on the Macintosh personal computer.
1980s
1980: Initial public offering of Apple; market value of company rose to $1.2 billion; Apple III introduced with eight applications, including text and graphics; initial problems forced a recall; once fixed, it became popular with professional customers; situation created a management shakeup; Markkula became president, Jobs became chairman.
1981: Stephen Wozniak took leave of absence after being injured in a private plane crash; IBM sold its first personal computer, four years after Apple II; Apple's sales continued to rise
1983: Public debut of Lisa, a powerful, more intuitive computer controlled by hand-held mouse; designed for computer illiterate; smaller, less expensive version called Macintosh also introduced; Jobs recruited former PepsiCo President John Sculley as new Apple president and CEO.
1985: Jobs essentially ousted from Apple in a boardroom coup after a power struggle with Sculley; resigned with $150 million but personally hurt; formed NeXT Software to develop computer hardware and software; Microsoft sold its first Windows 1.0 operating system
1986: Bought Pixar computer animation studios from George Lucas for less than $10 million 1989: NeXT produced a powerful but expensive computer, which was rejected by the arketplace; Pixar won an Academy Award for computer-animated film "Tin Toy"
1990s
1993: Still unprofitable NeXT ended hardware division to focus on software for programmers and building Internet sites; Sculley resigned as CEO of Apple
1995: Walt Disney Pictures released Pixar's first feature film, "Toy Story," first animated feature created entirely on computer; was highest domestic grossing film that year
1996: Jobs contacted Apple; Apple acquired NeXT; Jobs returned as non-salaried adviser to chairman Gilbert F. Amelio
1997: Apple's revenues dropped significantly; Jobs negotiated deal with longtime competitor Bill Gates of Microsoft; Apple made deal to include Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser on Macintosh operating system; Microsoft agreed to invest $150 million of non-voting Apple stock and to develop Mac versions of popular Microsoft Office software; Amelio ousted by Apple board; Jobs offered CEO and chairman position, and he agreed to serve on an interim basis
1998: Apple Computer rebounded with three profitable quarters in a row

Quotes
"I was lucky to get into computers when it was a very young and idealistic industry. There weren't many degrees offered in computer science, so people in computers were brilliant people from mathematics, physics, music, zoology, whatever. They loved it, and no one was really in it for the money."
(Fortune)
"The personal computer was created by the hardware revolution of the 1970s. The next change will come from a software revolution."
(Current Biography)
"The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians who also happened to be excellent computer scientists."
(The New York Times)
"We started out to get a computer in the hands of everyday people, and we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."
(Time)
"I'm not a hostile-takeover kind of guy."
(The New York Times)
"I am at a stage where I don't have to do things just to get by. But then I've always been that way, because I've never really cared about money that much."
(Fortune)
"Woz[niak] was the first person I met who knew more about electronics than I did."
About Jobs: "Like the Bhagwan, driving around Rancho Rajneesh each day in another Rolls-Royce, Jobs kept his troops fascinated and productive. The joke going around said that Jobs had a 'reality distortion field' surrounding him. He'd say something, and the kids in the Macintosh division would find themselves replying 'Drink poison Kool-Aid? Yeah, that makes sense."
Robert X. Cringely, 1992.

Fun Facts
Mr. Jobs purchased the computer division of Lucasfilm, Ltd. in 1986 and incorporated it as an independent company under the name Pixar.
He was co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of NeXT Software, Inc. NeXT Software was sold to Apple Computer in February 1997.
Before founding NeXT, Mr. Jobs co-founded and was chairman of Apple Computer, Inc. He guided Apple as it grew to a $2 billion company, during which time he co-designed the Apple II and led the development, manufacturing and marketing of the Macintosh and LaserWriter printer.
In recognition of his pioneering work in technology, he was awarded the National Technology Medal by President Reagan in 1985 and the Jefferson Award for Public Service in 1987. In 1989, he was named Entrepreneur of the Decade by Inc. magazine.
Brushes with Fame: Dated Joan Baez in his 20s; Ella Fitzgerald sang at his 30th birthday party; entertained President Clinton at his home in Palo Alto, Calif.
Apple Stock Holdings: Now owns only a symbolic one share; he's paid $1 a year from Apple so that he can be on the health plan.
Email: Receives about 300 per day.
Raising Early Capital: After receiving an order for 25 Apple I computers, Jobs and Wozniak raised needed capital by selling Jobs' Volkswagen van and Wozniak's Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator
Phenomenal Growth: Sales of Apple II computer in the late 1970s totaled $139 million after three years, growing by 700 percent.

References
Conant, Jennet and Marbach, William, D. 1984. "It's the Apple of His Eye".
NewsWeek, 30 (January): 54-57. Gelman, Eric and Rogers, Michael. 1985. "Showdown in Silicon Valley". NewsWeek, 30 (September): 46-50.
Goodell, Jeff. 1994. "Eve Jobs". Rolling Stone, 16 (June): 73-79.
Halliday, David. 1983. "Steve Paul Jobs". Current Biography 5 (February): 204-207.
Morrison, Ann, M. 1984. "Apple Bites Back". Fortune 20 (February): 86-100.
Scott, Linda, M. 1984. "For the Rest of Us: a Reader-Oriented Interpretation of Apple's 1984 Commercial". Journal of Popular Culture (Summer): 71-78.
Sculley, John. 1987. "Odyssey". Personal Computing, (December): 201-209.
Uttal, Bro. 1985. "The Adventures of Steve Jobs". Fortune, 14 (October): 119-124.