He is an innovator who has greatly shaped the world as we know it today. The Apple co-founder led a turbulent life and would celebrate his 67th birthday today. However, he suffered from cancer and died on October 5, 2011.
Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 to a Syrian political student and an American woman of German and Swiss descent. Since the two could not afford the upkeep of the newborn, Steve Jobs was put up for adoption. However, only under one condition: he should study. Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs then adopted him and gave him the name Steven Paul Jobs. Since Steve Jobs' parents lived right in Mountain View, California, he was pretty close to the tech industry and engineers in the neighborhood who worked for Intel or Hewlett-Packard.
Steve Jobs was a fast learner, so his teacher offered him to skip a class. In 1972, he graduated from high school at Homestead Hogh School and enrolled at Reed College in Portland. He dropped out of college during his first semester, however, he stayed on campus and went to some classes. While in college, he ingested LSD and said, "Taking LSD is one of the two or three most important things I've done in my life." He eventually worked at Atari, a video game manufacturer for a few months until he traveled India and discovered Buddhism and Hinduism. After his little trip, he returned to the U.S. and continued working at Atari, where he procured an order for the game Breakout. Steve Wozniak developed the game in four days. Jobs got $700 and gave $350 of it to Wozniak, although the fee was $5000.
In 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded the Apple Computer Company in Steve Jobs' garage. The first product was the Apple I, which sold for $666,666. In 1977, the Apple II was presented, which was important for home computers. Then in 1980 the Apple III was presented, but was not a great success. In 1983, Steve Jobs offered the Pepsi manager John Sculley to take over the leadership position at Apple. During this time, Steve Jobs made a strong case for personal computers and promised in the New York Times that Apple computers would be seen in every American school. In 1984, the Macintosh was introduced, which introduced a graphical user interface and a mouse. After a power struggle with Sculley, Jobs left the company in 1985 and a year later founded NeXT, a company that also dealt with computers. Because Sculley was very worried that NeXT would use the same technology as Apple, the former Pepsi executive sued the company. The lawsuit ended with Jobs agreeing to allow insight into NeXT developments. Then in 1987 came the NeXT workstation, which was way ahead of the market. However, the machine never became popular. Steve Jobs then sold the company to the investor Canon.
Parallel to the NeXT foundation, he was also a major investor in Pixar. When the company went public in 1995, Jobs became a billionaire. When Disney bought out the studio, Steve Jobs joined the board of directors and held 6% of all Disney shares.
Apple then bought out NeXT for half a billion then, bringing Jobs back to the top of Apple. NeXT's technology was then transferred to Apple products. The iPhone was then introduced in 2007 and then the iPad in 2010. Over the years, Steve Jobs was paid an annual salary of one dollar. However, he received gifts from the company such as 30 million Apple shares, a $35 million jet that he rented out. Then in 2011, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple due to health reasons. He handed over the office to Tim Cook, who is still Apple's CEO today. On October 5, 2011, Jobs succumbed to his cancer.
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