Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is best known as the co-founder (with Steve Wozniak) and CEO of Apple Computer, and somewhat less so for his leadership of Pixar. He is also regarded as a pioneer in computing for the incredibly sucessful Apple II computer, and also for seeing the commercial potential
of the GUI and mouse in a Xerox PARC demonstration and leading Apple Computer to unleash the
successful and very influential Apple Macintosh.
Brief history
Born to Joanne Simpson and an Egyptian Arab
father (name unknown) in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Steven Paul was adopted soon after birth
by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California. His biological sister is the novelist Mona Simpson.
In 1972, Jobs graduated from Homestead High School in Cupertino, California and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but he dropped out after one semester. In 1976 Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer, which became a significant player in the
personal computer industry with the highly successful Apple II and Apple Macintosh. Jobs was perhaps the most famous person in the
personal computer industry to the general public. In 1985 Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT Computer. In 1986 Jobs purchased Pixar from LucasFilm, which later became famous for a series of highly
successful computer animation feature movies. In 1997 Jobs returned to Apple, which was in a failing condition,
and turned the fortune of the company around beginning with the introduction of
the iMac.
Jobs' first daughter, Lisa, was born in 1978. Jobs married Laurene Powell in 1991 with whom he has three children. She is not the mother of
Lisa.
On July 31, 2004 Jobs underwent a surgical operation to remove a cancerous
tumor in his pancreas. He had a very rare form of pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He
spent the following August recovering, though he stated he would not require chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Tim Cook, head
of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company during his absence. Notably, in his email
to staff at Apple informing them of his operation, Jobs managed to find time to
note that he had sent his email via a 17-inch PowerBook using AirPort Express.
Business ventures
In the autumn of 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings
of the "Homebrew Computer Club" with Stephen Wozniak. He took a job at Atari Inc., designing computer games with his friend, Wozniak. During this time
period, it was discovered that a slightly modified toy whistle included in every box of Cap'n Crunch cereal was able to reproduce the 2600 Hz supervision tone used by the AT&T long distance telephone system. Jobs and Wozniak went into business briefly in 1974 to build "blue boxes" based on the idea which allowed for free long-distance calls.
In 1976, Jobs, then 21, and Wozniak, 26, founded Apple Computer Co. in the Jobs family garage. The first personal
computer Jobs and Wozniak introduced was called the Apple I. They marketed it at a price of $666.66, in reference to
the phone number of Wozniak's Dial-A-Joke machine, which ended in -6666. In 1977, Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II, which became a huge success in the home market. The
Apple II made Apple Computer a top company in the personal computer industry. In
1980, Apple Computer became a publicly traded corporation, and
with the successful IPO, Jobs' stature rose further. In the same year, Apple
Computer released the unsuccessful Apple III. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley from Pepsi-Cola to run Apple, challenging him, "Do you want to just
sell sugared water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the
world?" In the same year, Apple Computer released the highly technologically
advanced but commercially unsuccessful Apple Lisa. 1984 saw the introduction of the Macintosh, the first
commercially successful computer with a graphical user interface, initiated by
Jef Raskin that Jobs ultimately led. The success of the
Macintosh led Apple to abandon the Apple II product line in favor of the Mac product line, which
continues to this day.
In 1985, after an internal power struggle, Jobs was stripped of his
duties by Sculley and ousted from Apple. He departed to found NeXT Computer later that decade. Like Lisa, NeXT was
technologically advanced, but it never became popular. NeXT did, however, help
the advancement of technologies such as object-oriented programming, PostScript, and magneto-optical devices. Tim Berners-Lee developed the original World Wide Web system on a NeXT workstation.
In 1986 Jobs co-founded (with Edwin Catmull) Pixar, an Emeryville, California computer animation studio. It was formed around what was
originally Lucasfilm's computer graphics division, which Jobs bought from
its founder, George Lucas, for $10 million. Pixar became very famous and
successful nearly a decade later with the breakthrough feature movie Toy Story.
In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $402 million, bringing Jobs back to the company he
founded. In 1997 he became Apple's interim CEO after the departure of Gil Amelio. With the purchase, much NeXT technology found its
way into Apple products (notably NeXTSTEP which morphed into Mac OS X). Under Jobs' guidance the company increased sales
significantly with the introduction of the iMac. It was the first computer that was marketed primarily on
its looks (though the iMac did utilize other state-of-the-art features). Since then,
appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. In 2000, Apple dropped the "interim" from Jobs' title after he had
worked for several years at an annual salary of $1 and Apple returned to
profitability. Jobs still works at Apple for an annual salary of $1 (albeit with
valuable stock options and numerous perks). Steve Jobs is listed by Guinness World Records as the "Lowest Paid Chief Executive
Officer". In recent years, the company has branched out, most notably into the
areas of personal electronics and music, with the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Music Store.
Jobs is also known for his "reality distortion field", best seen during his keynote speeches at Apple expos, and his philosophy that "real
artists ship," by which he means that innovation and killer designs aren't as
important as meeting deadlines.
External links
Books and articles
- Cringely, Robert X (1996). Accidental Empires.
HarperBusiness. ISBN 0887308554.
- Freiberger, Paul; & Swaine, Michael (1999). Fire in the Valley: The
Making of The Personal Computer McGraw-Hill Trade. ISBN 0071358927.
- Deutschman, Alan (2001). The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. Broadway. ISBN
0767904338.
- Caddes, Carolyn. 1986. Portraits of Success: Impressions of Silicon
Valley Pioneers, Tioga Publishing Co., Palo Alto CA.
- Denning, Peter J. and Karen A. Frenkel. April 1989. "A Conversation with
Steve Jobs", Comm. ACM, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 437-443.
- Levy, Steven. 1984. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution,
Anchor Press/Doubleday, Garden City, NY.
- Slater, Robert. 1987. Portraits in Silicon, MIT Press, Cambridge
MA, Chapter 28.
- Stross, Randall E., Steve Jobs and The NeXT Big Thing, NY:Atheneum,
1993. ISBN 0689121350
- Young, Jeffrey S. 1988. Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward,
Scott, Foresman and Co., Glenview IL.
Interviews
