Steve Jobs
From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.
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 founding and leadership of Pixar. He is also regarded as a pioneer in computing 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.
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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
- Steve Jobs' Weblog (parody)
- Steve Jobs Bio
- Steve Paul Jobs by Lee Angelelli
- Steve Jobs' Executive Profile at Apple
- Steve Jobs' Resume
- Creating Jobs: Apple's Founder Goes Home Again (New York Times Magazine, Sunday January 12, 1997)
- Guinness World Records's entry on Steve Jobs, listing him as the "Lowest Paid Chief Executive Officer"
- Anecdotes from Steve Jobs early days in Apple as reported by Andy Hertzfeld
Books
- 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.
Interviews
- Smithsonian Institution Oral History Interview - April 20, 1995
- Rolling Stone: Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview - December 03, 2003
- BusinessWeek: The Seed of Apple's Innovation - October 12, 2004
| Preceded by: Gil Amelio | Apple CEOs | As of 2004, current CEO |
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