Celebrity biographies
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24.02.16 10:02
His name during his lifetime became a household name, and after the untimely death of Steve Jobs, the biography of this genius became a tasty morsel for screenwriters: two full-length films have already been shot about him. Moreover, the title role in the biopic of Danny Boyle " Steve Jobs"brought Michael Fassbender an Oscar nomination. However, we are not talking about cinema at all! It is very difficult to present a detailed biography of Steve Jobs and talk about his personal life in one article, so we will highlight the main milestones in the life of this cult person.
Biography of Steve Jobs
unwanted child
From the very first days of his life, Steve was "not like everyone else." He was the fruit of the passion of a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin with German roots, Joanna Schible, and a Syrian who worked in the department, Abdulfattah Jandali. The Catholic Joan could not have an abortion, just as she could not keep the child: her parents were categorically against it. Much later (31 years later), Steve, who suffered from the fact that his mother abandoned him, found his biological family and kept in touch with his relatives.
In the meantime, the baby, born on February 24, 1955, was adopted by the childless Jobs family. Californians Paul and his wife (Armenian by nationality) Clara named the boy Steven Paul. They were pretty simple people- a mechanic and an accountant, but Steve grew up as a young inventor. He did not get along very well with his peers, but he was “on you” with technology.
Fateful acquaintance
One day, while on assignment for a research circle organized by Hewlett-Packard, Jobs realized that there were not enough parts for his frequency counter. Without thinking for a long time, he called the head of the company, William Hewlett - not at work, but at home. He was imbued with the persistence and intelligence of a 13-year-old teenager, shared the necessary details and invited him to work at Hewlett-Packard during the holidays. There was a fateful meeting - with an older guy, Steven Wozniak, the future companion of Jobs.
Steve did not do well in college - after the first semester he left Reed College (it was too expensive for his parents to pay for him, and Jobs decided not to strain them). But during this semester, Steve managed to make friends with some students, switched to a vegetarian diet and became interested in Eastern philosophy. He lived with his friends in Portland for almost a year, doing odd jobs.
The biography of Steve Jobs continued at Atari: by the time he returned to his native California, he had to decide on a profession. The work of a technician did not really appeal to him, so he took a break - for the sake of a pilgrimage to India. It was a time of experimentation - Jobs took stimulants (including LSD), was engaged in curative starvation, hippo. After a seven-month journey, he was back at Atari.
During this period, there is a funny story that surfaced after the arrival of worldwide fame to Jobs. He connected his friend Wozniak to one of Atari's projects: it was necessary to minimize the number of board chips for a video game, and there was a premium for savings. Wozniak completed 44 chips and received half of the payment - $ 350. Years later, it turned out that Steve had deceived his partner - in fact, he was paid not 700, but 5,000 dollars (each part cost 100 dollars).
Own business: ambitious partners without a penny
Soon, Jobs said goodbye to his previous work - Wozniak persuaded a friend to start creating home-made computers for sale (Stephen had already made one for himself). They started with PCBs and then moved on to PC assembly. In 1976, the two Steves, taking engineer Ronald Wayne as a third partner, registered Apple Computer Co. The starting capital was $1,300 (Jobs donated a van and Wozniak donated a programmable calculator). True, Wayne soon left the company.
Steve suggested the name (both for the company and computers) “Apple”, probably due to the fact that quite recently he lived in a hippie commune, worked there picking apples and sat on an apple diet. The first customer of friends was a small electronics store. For the sake of a trial batch (50 computers at $666.66 per unit), they took the components on credit. Soon the order was ready. In the same 1976, a computer for mass production was born.
Young millionaire
When Wozniak designed the Apple II model, a logo was developed and an advertising campaign for a new product was agreed upon, which the partners sold with an unprecedented “circulation”: 5 million. So the 25-year-old Jobs became rich (his fortune exceeded one million dollars).
The next stage of the corporation was the invention of a computer with an interface in which commands were given by the cursor. There was a model in development that was named after Jobs' daughter "Lisa". But friction began in the company, and as a result, Steve became the head of another project - "Macintosh", which later became a very popular PC in the electronics market. At the same time, Jobs managed to poach the talented marketer John Scully from Pepsi-Cola Corporation. He, in the end, headed Apple, but they never worked with Steve. This was the reason Jobs left the company. Following him, in 1985, Wozniak left Apple.
Head of animation studio
Jobs, of course, found something to his liking: first he organized the NeXT corporation (it produced hardware), and then, in 1986, headed the Pixar studio, a computer animation pioneer (its founder in the late 1970s was George Lucas). The studio cost Jobs $5 million: Lucas was in trouble (divorced from his wife) and needed money. It was at this studio that the cult franchise Toy Story, the animated masterpieces Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and others were born. The box office receipts for these films were simply crazy.
Latest successful projects
Ten years later, Steve sold Pixar to the Walt Disney Company, but retained his seat on the board of directors. At that time, he already served as the CEO of Apple: the “prodigal son” (no, rather, the founding father) is back!
He has always been a presentation genius - an excellent speaker who could win over any, even the most incredulous, audience to his side. So in 2001, Steve himself held a presentation of the IPOD player, the mass production of which brought sky-high profits. In 2007, a similar revolution was made by the iPhone mobile phone.
Personal life of Steve Jobs
Stormy romances: from hippie to respectable businessman
Steve's first strong passion was a girl of free morals - Chris Ann Brennan, with whom he ran away from his parents before graduation and hipped in the mountains for some time. Then he was only 17 years old. The novel lasted several years, and in 1978 Brennan gave birth to a child from Jobs - Lisa.
He did not want to admit paternity for a long time - they say, Chris met with other guys. And only years later, after a DNA test, he began to communicate with his daughter.
As Apple Computer Co. took off, Steve Jobs' personal life changed as well. He had to conform to the image of a businessman, so the hippie period was over. He became close to the beautiful advertiser Barbara Jasinski. A well-established life, an exquisite mansion - all this continued until 1982.
A brief affair with Joan Baez flattered Steve. The ex-lover of Bob Dylan, herself a famous country singer, she was 14 years older than Jobs and raised her son.
For almost four years, the relationship between Steve and another IT-schnitsa, Tina Redse, lasted. He considered the girl the most beautiful on earth and called the first true love. True, the obstinate Tina refused the marriage proposal that followed in 1989, and Steve backed down.
20 year marriage and three children
Steve was married only once. He met bank clerk Lauren Powell in the fall of 1989 - she healed the wounds inflicted by Tina. At the beginning next year the engagement took place, but then Steve got too carried away with new projects, and Lauren, unable to stand it, left. The quarrel was short-lived - a month later the groom gave the bride a ring, then they spent a vacation in Hawaii. And on March 18, 1991, a wedding ceremony was held in Yosemite Park by a Soto-Zen monk.
Lauren radically changed the personal life of Steve Jobs, became his "guiding star" and gave birth to three children in marriage: the eldest Reed (in the fall of 1991) and daughters Erin (in 1995) and Eve (in 1998). Jobs was not up to the offspring - he remained full of ideas to the end and brought them to life. Although he liked to talk with his son, and Eve considered his worthy successor.
He fought pancreatic cancer for a very long time - oncology was discovered in the fall of 2003. Steve delayed the operation, resorted to unconventional treatment. If not for this, the untimely end might have been avoided. But cancer still won - the genius of IT technologies, who loved worn jeans and black turtlenecks, died on October 5, 2011.
Steve Jobs- American businessman, talented leader, co-founder, its ideological inspirer, director and chairman of the board of directors. Until 2006, he was the director (CEO) of the animation studio Pixar(Pixar), it was Steve Jobs who gave it that name.
short biography
Steve Jobs (full name - Stephen Paul Jobs) was born February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, USA, California. His biological mother Joan Shible. Biological father - Abdulfattah Jandali.
Stephen was born to unmarried students. Joan's father was against their relationship and threatened to disinherit his daughter if she didn't break it off. That is why Steve's future mother went to give birth in San Francisco and gave her son up for adoption.
Adoptive parents
Joan set conditions for adoption: Stephen's adoptive parents had to be wealthy and have a college education. However, the Jobs family, who could not have children of their own, did not have the second criterion. Therefore, the future adoptive parents made a written commitment pay for a boy's college education.
The boy was adopted Paul Jobs and Clara Jobs, nee Agopian (American of Armenian origin). They were the ones who gave him his name. Stephen Paul.
Jobs always considered Paul and Clara to be father and mother, he was very annoyed if someone called them foster parents:
"They are my real parents 100%"
According to the rules of official adoption, the biological parents did not know anything about the whereabouts of their son, and Stephen Paul met with his birth mother and younger sister only after 31 years.
School education
Schoolwork disappointed Steve with its formalism. teachers elementary school Mona Loma characterized him as a prankster, and only one teacher, mrs hill, was able to see extraordinary abilities in her student and find an approach to him.
When Steve was in the fourth grade, Mrs. Hill gave him "bribes" for good studies, in the form of sweets, money and DIY kits, thereby stimulating his studies.
This quickly bore fruit: soon Steve Paul began to study diligently without any reinforcement, and at the end of the school year he passed his exams so brilliantly that the director suggested transfer him from the fourth grade directly to the seventh. As a result, by decision of his parents, Jobs was enrolled in the sixth grade, that is, in high school.
Further education
When graduating from high school, Steve Jobs decided to apply to college reed in Portland, Oregon. Studying at such a prestigious liberal arts college was insanely expensive. But once Stephen's parents promised a young woman who gave birth to their son that the child would receive a good education.
Parents agreed to pay for their studies, but Stephen's desire to join the student's major life was enough for exactly one semester. The guy left college and delved into the search for his destiny. This stage of Jobs' life was influenced by the free ideas of the hippies and the mystical teachings of the East.
Birth of Apple
Stephen Paul became friends with his classmate Bill Fernandez, who was also interested in electronics. Fernandez introduced Jobs to an alumnus who was fond of computers, Stephen Wozniak ("Woz"), his senior by five years.
Two Stevens - two friends
In 1969 Woz and Fernandez began building a small computer they called "cream soda" and showed it to Jobs. This is how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak became best friends.
“We sat with him for a long time on the sidewalk in front of Bill's house and shared stories - we told each other about our practical jokes and about the devices we developed. I felt we had a lot in common. It's usually hard for me to explain to people all the subtleties electrical devices, which I collected, but Steve grabbed everything on the fly. I liked him right away.”
Memoirs of Steve Jobs
Apple Computer
Steve and Woz began work on computer boards. Wozniak at that time was a member of a circle of amateur computer scientists "Homebrew Computer Club". It was there that he was visited by the idea of creating his own computer. To implement the idea, he needed only one payment.
Jobs quickly realized that the development of a friend is a tasty morsel for buyers. The company was born Apple Computer. Apple began its ascent in Jobs' garage.
Apple II
A computer Apple II became the first mass-produced Apple product, created at the initiative of Steve Jobs. This happened in the late 1970s. Jobs later saw the commercial potential of the mouse-driven GUI, which led to the advent of computers. Apple Lisa and, a year later, Macintosh (Mac).
Departure from Apple - a new round of success
Lost a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT- a company that developed a computer platform for universities and businesses. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, turning it into .
He remained Pixar's CEO and major shareholder until the studio was acquired in 2006, making Steven Paul largest private shareholder and a member of the board of directors of Disney.
"Resuscitation" Apple
In 1996 the companyApple boughtNeXT. This was done to use the OS NeXTSTEP as the basis for Mac OS X. As part of the deal, Steve Jobs received an advisory position to Apple. By 1997 Jobs regained control of Apple leading a corporation.
Rapid development
Under the leadership of Steve Paul Jobs, the company was saved from bankruptcy and began to make a profit within a year. For the next decade, Jobs led the development iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone and iPad, as well as the development Apple Store, iTunes Store, App Store and iBookstore.
The success of these products and services, providing several years of stable financial profit, allowed Apple to become in 2011 the most valuable public company in the world.
Many call Apple's renaissance one of the greatest accomplishments in business history. At the same time, Jobs was criticized for his tough management style, aggressive actions towards competitors, the desire for total control over products even after they were sold to the buyer.
Merits of Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs has received public recognition and a number of awards for his impact on the technology and music industries. He is often referred to as a "visionary" and even "father of the digital revolution". Jobs was a brilliant public speaker and led presentations of innovative products on new level turning them into exciting shows. His instantly recognizable figure in a black turtleneck, faded jeans and sneakers is surrounded by a cult following.
October 5, 2011, after eight years of fighting pancreatic cancer, Steve Jobs died in Pal Alto at the age of 56 years old.
It would be strange to talk about the death of a person without explaining his biography. In the case of Jobs, there is no choice at all. His colorful life has become a source of inspiration for millions of people.
Childhood and youth
If the story of Steve Jobs does not impress you, then hardly anything else can surprise you. The future founder of Apple was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco. His parents gave the child to an orphanage, where he was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs. The baby was named Quotes suggest: he always considered his adoptive parents to be his family.
From childhood, the environment of his communication were programmers and engineers, who felt especially comfortable in California. In addition, his mother worked as an accountant in one of the pioneering companies of the future Steve's father was an auto mechanic. So he unwittingly introduced his son to the basics of electronics.
At school, Jobs became friends with Stephen Wozniak - his main colleague and partner for many years. Both were fond of new technologies and rock music of the 60s, primarily Bob Dylan. The hippie counterculture that emerged at that time had a huge impact on the character and worldview of Jobs.
Steve's first job was Atari, which was known for its video game machines. Under these conditions, he and Wozniak founded the "Homemade Computer Club", which gathered lovers of microcircuits and other tricks.
Founding of Apple
It was then that Wozniak created his first computer. It was called the Apple I. Steve realized that the invention had a huge commercial potential. He persuaded a friend to start a company and start selling his products.
Already then there were different roles these two people in a future project. If Wozniak created the product, then Jobs gave it the form that would be most popular with customers. For example, this was the case with new technology user interface, where everything happens on the now familiar desktop with a cursor and folders. Before that, computers had only system directories and dull lists of their names. The Steve Jobs company combined, firstly, a huge creative technical potential, and secondly, an accurate commercial acumen.
1984
Apple's main success in its early years was the creation and promotion of the revolutionary new Macintosh computer (the abbreviation Mac is also often used in colloquial speech).
It had some of the most important innovations for the industry, from the already mentioned user interface to accessibility for every ordinary buyer. That's when computers became personal. They were purchased by ordinary buyers, and not just programmers and geeks. Another component of success is the advertising campaign that accompanied the start of sales.
It all happened in 1984, and Jobs suggested making a video with references to the novel by George Orwell, the name of which was this date. It was a book about a totalitarian society in a fantastic future. Jobs wrote a plot in which Apple customers with new technology in the hands were radically different from the backward majority in the novel. "Think different" (think different) - the main slogan of everything that Steve did.
Dismissal
However, things didn't go well for the company. Sales were down and new products were making losses. Jobs was fired from his own brainchild. He did not give up and created other projects - Next and Pixar. The last one has been successful and now it is the biggest studio producing popular cartoons on a regular basis. The revolution was the use of computer graphics in Pixar's animation. The first such cartoon was Toy Story in 1995.
Return
In the late 90s, Apple began to ask that Steve Jobs return. The reason for the "death" of the company - useless products and marketing. All this made many employees remember the founder. In 1997, he again became the head of the enterprise.
The decade that followed saw the emergence of several super-successful devices and services for which Apple is known to the masses today. These are smartphones with an operating system innovative for the zero years, the iTunes music service and much more. All this was somehow invented by Steve Jobs. Entrepreneur's quotes say that the thought of death made him become more active at 100% throughout each day. He demanded the same from his subordinates.
So what did Steve Jobs die of? Much from his busy daily schedule. However, this is not the main reason.
Deterioration of health
Since his youth, Steve has been fond of alternative medicine: herbal treatment, acupuncture, a vegan diet, etc. He was greatly influenced by Indian culture and the practice of yoga. Consider his hippie youth with drugs and LSD. Therefore, when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, he refused the traditional operation.
After nine months of self-treatment, he finally agreed to seek qualified professionals. He underwent surgery and excised the tumor that appeared. However, the examination showed that metastases appeared in Jobs' liver - new cancer cells that eventually develop and spread to other organs. They could only be treated with chemotherapy courses. The entrepreneur publicly announced that he had got rid of the disease, and in the meantime he himself began to undergo necessary procedures secretly.
That was all Steve Jobs. The cause of death (later it became cancer) gradually made itself felt more and more. First of all, it affected his appearance. Jobs lost a lot of weight and, shortly before his death, admitted that he had cancer. The public paid close attention to this also because he continued to make presentations to large audiences, where he presented the company's new products in a corporate bright style.
Steve was supported by his family - wife Lauren and three children. For all this he was eternally grateful to them.
Death
No matter how Steve Jobs left, the cause of the death of this man did not lead to the fact that his labors went in vain. He could certainly be convinced that he had not lived in vain, thanks to the fact that he built the largest corporation in the world, whose products appeared in almost every American and in the citizens of many other countries.
In August 2011, Steve announced that he was leaving his leadership position at Apple. He named Tim Cook as his successor, who is still in office today. Steve himself said he would remain on the board of directors. However, a couple of months later, on October 5, he died at home.
His attending physician stated that death was due to neglect of his own health. Despite this, the departure from life occurred peacefully and calmly. Of course, the outstanding entrepreneur already understood everything and was internally ready for the upcoming outcome.
In particular, he agreed with the writer and journalist Walter Isaacson that he would conduct many interviews with him in order to prepare material for a book biography. Isaacson recorded a large number of monologues written by Steve Jobs himself. Death interrupted this long cross-cutting interview, which continued until the last days of the businessman.
In addition, Walter interviewed about a hundred people who were in a close relationship with Steve. The book was supposed to be released in November 2011 during his lifetime, but due to his death, its release was postponed a month earlier. In particular, the biography contained an answer to the question of what Steve Jobs died from. The novelty immediately became a bestseller.
No matter how Steve Jobs assured him before, the cause of death was his own alternative treatment, while with such a serious diagnosis, it was immediately necessary to turn to professionals. The stubborn nature that distinguished him did not allow him to admit his mistake.
Steve Jobs was born in 1955. It happened on February 24 in the sun-kissed state of California. The biological parents of the future genius were still very young students, for whom the child was so burdensome that they decided to abandon him. As a result, the boy ended up in a family of office workers named Jobs.
From early childhood, Steve grew up in the field of computer technology. The boy felt at home. A common sight in this growing area were garages filled to the brim with all sorts of appliances. Such a specific environment led to the fact that Steve Jobs from an early age had a genuine interest in progress in general and in technological innovations in particular.
Soon the boy had a bosom friend - Steve Wozniak. Even a five-year age difference did not interfere with their communication.
Studies
After graduation, the young man decided to apply to Reed College (Portland, Oregon). Education in this educational institution cost a lot of money. However, during the adoption, the Jobs promised the boy's biological parents that he would receive a decent education. Steve only lasted one semester of college. Further education in a prestigious place with fellow majors was not at all interesting for a computer genius.
An unexpected turn of events
The young man begins to look for himself, his destiny in this world. The story of Steve Jobs turns in a new direction. He becomes infected with the free ideas of the hippies and is carried away by the mystical teachings of the East. At nineteen, Steve travels to distant India with Jobs, hoping to find himself on the other side of the planet.
Return to native shores
In his native California, the young man began working on boards for computers. Steve Wozniak helped him with this. Friends liked the idea of creating a home computer very much. This was the impetus for the emergence of Apple Computer.
The future legendary company developed in Jobs' garage. It was this unsightly room that became the springboard for the development of new motherboards. There, ideas were born to promote products in the nearest specialized stores. At the same time, Wozniak was thinking about an improved version of the first version of the PC. In 1997, the innovative development made a splash. The Apple II computer was a unique gadget, which had no equal at that time. This was followed by numerous contracts, mutually beneficial cooperation with different companies and, of course, the development of new computer products.
By the age of twenty-five, Steve Jobs already owned a fortune of two hundred million dollars. The year was 1980...
Life's work is at stake
Danger loomed on the horizon as early as 1981, when the industrial giant IBM took over the development of the computer market. If Steve Jobs had sat idly by, he would have missed out on the top spot in just a few years. Naturally, the young man did not want to lose the business. He accepted the challenge. At that time, the Apple III was already on sale. The company enthusiastically embarked on a new project called Lisa, the idea of which belonged to Jobs. For the first time instead of the already familiar command line users are faced with a graphical interface.
Macintosh Time
Much to Steve's dismay, his colleagues removed him from the Lisa project. The reason for this was the raging emotions of the computer genius, because Lisa is not just the name of the project, but the name of her daughter ex-lover Jobs. In an effort to take revenge on the offenders, he decided to create a simple inexpensive computer. The Macintosh project debuted in 1984. Unfortunately, a few months after the release of the "Mac" began to rapidly lose ground.
The company's management noted that Jobs's conflicting behavior endangers the entire business. By decision of the board of directors, he was deprived of all leadership functions. Thus, the rebellious qualities of Steve Jobs played a cruel joke on him - he became just a formal co-founder of his offspring.
New turn
In an effort to find a way to realize his ideas, Steve bought a promising project in the field of computer graphics. This was the start of Pixar. However, for the time being, this undertaking was forgotten. The reason was NeXT. The author of this idea was, of course, Steve Jobs himself.
The Apple empire is reborn
By 1998, Jobs' first brainchild was suffocating in a sea of competition. Steve's return to the company allowed Apple to begin to regain its position in the computer market. For this, the genius of his craft took only six months.
iPod enters the arena
A huge success awaited Apple after the appearance of the music MP3 player. Its release was timed to coincide with the onset of 2001. Users were simply crazy about the attractive streamlined design, to the well-thought-out interface, quick synchronization with the iTunes application and the unique circular joystick.
Revolutionary step: the union of Disney and Pixar
It is noteworthy that the iPod has had a significant impact not only on the world of music, but also on the development of Pixar. By 2003, she already had several super-popular cartoon hits in her luggage - Finding Nemo, Toy Story (two parts) and Monsters, Inc. All of them were made in collaboration with the Disney company. In October 2005, the process of merging the two giants began. Cooperation brought them incredible income.
And again Apple
2006 was a very important year for the company. Sales were up. It seemed like it couldn't get any better. However, the debut of iPone in 2007 cannot be compared with any previous event in the entire period of the company's existence. The new brainchild of Steve Jobs was not just a bestseller, it represented a fundamental innovation in the world of communications. The iPhone conquered the mobile gadget market once and for all, leaving all Apple competitors behind in one fell swoop. The sensational novelty was followed by a contract with AT&T for the provision of subscription services.
The iPhone has triumphantly entered the history of the technological development of mankind. This gadget is endowed with the functions of a player, computer and mobile phone. Jobs' unique project is the first converged mobile product in the world.
The aforementioned 2007 was a landmark year for the company for another reason: at the direction of Steve, Apple was renamed Apple Inc. This meant the demise of the local computer company and the formation of a new IT giant.
Sunset of a star named Steve Jobs
Young programmers knew the quotes by heart (the phrase “Think different” alone became millions), sales of products brought excellent income - it seemed that nothing could disrupt Jobs' plans ... The news of his serious illness amazed everyone. A malignant tumor in the pancreas was discovered back in 2003. Then it could still be removed without any special consequences, but Steve decided to seek healing in spiritual practices. He gave up completely traditional medicine, sat on a strict diet and constantly meditated. A year later, Jobs admitted that all these attempts to overcome the disease were in vain. He underwent surgery to remove the tumor, but the moment was irretrievably lost. In 2007, only the lazy did not discuss the fact that Steve is slowly dying. The deterioration of the condition was eloquently confirmed by the significant weight loss discussed in many media.
In 2009, Jobs was forced to take a vacation to lie down on the operating table again. This time he needed a liver transplant.
In 2010, it seemed that Steve was able to fight the disease. He presented another super-development - a tablet on the iOS platform, and in March 2011 - iPadII. However, the forces were rapidly leaving the computer genius: he appeared less and less at corporate events. In August of that year, Steve resigned. In his place, he recommended Tim Cook.
Steve Jobs died on October 5th. This is an irreparable loss for the entire world community.
Steven Paul Jobs (Steven Paul Jobs, 1955-2011) - American engineer and entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. He is considered one of the key figures in the computer industry, a man who largely determined its development.
Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. It cannot be said that he was a desired child. Just a week after his birth, his unmarried mother, graduate student Joanna Shible, gave up the baby for adoption. The adoptive parents of the child were Paul and Clara Jobs (Paul Jobs, Clara Jobs) from Mountain View, California. They named him Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked for an accounting firm, and Paul Jobs was a mechanic for a company that made laser machines.
Childhood
When Steve Jobs was 12 years old, on a whim of a child and not without an early display of teenage impudence, he called William Hewlett, then president of Hewlett-Packard, on his home phone number. Then Jobs was assembling some kind of electrical appliance, and he needed some parts. Hewlett chatted with Jobs for 20 minutes, agreed to send the necessary details and offered him summer job at Hewlett-Packard, the company that gave birth to the entire Silicon Valley industry. It was at work at Hewlett-Packard that Steve Jobs met a man whose acquaintance largely determined his future fate - Stephen Wozniak. He got a job at Hewlett-Packard, leaving the boring classes at the University of California, Berkeley. Work in the company was much more interesting to him due to his passion for radio engineering.
Studies
In 1972, Steve Jobs graduated from high school and entered Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but dropped out after his first semester. Steve Jobs explains his decision to drop out this way: “I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my parents' savings went to college tuition. Six months later, I didn't see the point. I didn't know at all what I was going to do with my life, and I didn't understand how college would help me figure it out. I was pretty scared at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.”
Dropping out of school, Jobs focused on what was really interesting to him. However, it was not easy to remain a free student at the university now. “It wasn't all romantic,” Jobs recalls. – I didn’t have a dorm room, so I had to sleep on the floor in my friends’ rooms. I used Coke bottles for five cents each to buy myself food and walked seven miles across town every Sunday night to have a proper meal once a week at a Hare Krishna temple.”
The adventures of Steve Jobs on the college campus after the expulsion continued for another 18 months, after which in the fall of 1974 he returned to California. There he met up with an old friend and technical genius, Stephen Wozniak. On the advice of a friend, Jobs got a job as a technician at Atari, a popular video game company. Steve Jobs did not have any ambitious plans then. He just wanted to earn money for a trip to India.
But in addition to the then fashionable interest in India and the hippie subculture, Steve Jobs had an interest in electronics, which grew stronger every day. Together with Wozniak, Jobs came to the Homebrew computer club in Palo Alto, which at that time united many young people who were keenly interested in computers and electronics. The club gave a lot to the future founders of Apple. In particular, thanks to the club, they began their "collaboration" with the telephone giant AT & T (T), however, not in the way that this company would like. Steve Jobs read about an interesting discovery by American radio amateurs, which made it possible to illegally connect to the AT&T telephone network and make free calls over long distances, and caught fire with a new and promising business. Meeting with John Draper, who was then actively popularizing this discovery, Jobs and Wozniak decided to start making the so-called “blue boxes”, special devices that made it possible to make free calls over long distances. So Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started tinkering with electronics together in Jobs' parent garage.
First business
However, they did not deal with the “blue boxes” for long. Jobs was already packing for a philosophy tour of India, as planned. From India, Jobs returned with rich impressions, a shaved head and in traditional Indian clothes. At this time, an interesting incident occurred with the founders of Apple, which especially vividly describes the technical talent of Steven Wozniak and the business acumen of Steve Jobs. At Atari, Jobs was given the task of designing the circuitry for the Breakout video game. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, the company asked Jobs to minimize the number of chips on the board and pay $100 for each chip he could remove from the circuit. Steve Jobs was not very well versed in the construction of electronic circuits, so he offered Wozniak to split the bonus in half if he took up this business. Atari was quite surprised when Jobs presented them with a board that had 50 chips removed. Wozniak created such a dense scheme that it was impossible to recreate it with mass production. Jobs then told Wozniak that Atari had only paid $700 (not $5,000 as it actually was), and Wozniak got his cut, $350.
However, from the very first meeting, Jobs admired Steven Wozniak. “He was the only person who understood computers better than me,” Steve Jobs admits a few years later. There is no doubt that Wozniak played an important role in the life of his friend, without his engineering genius there would be neither Apple nor the triumph of Steve Jobs, solemnly presenting the company's new product.
Apple
Steve Jobs was only 20 years old when he saw the computer that Wozniak had built for his own use. The idea of having a personal—personal—computer struck Jobs, and he persuaded Wozniak to start building computers to sell. Initially, both planned to deal only with the manufacture of printed circuits - the basis of a computer, but in the end they came to assembling finished computers.
In early 1976, Jobs asked draftsman Ronald Wayne, with whom he had once worked at Atari, to join their business. Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne founded Apple computer co. April 1, 1976 in the form of a partnership. It must be said that only young people who had not yet left the rebellious age could come up with the idea of naming a computer company “Apple” (Apple means “apple” in English).
The start-up company needed start-up capital, and Steve Jobs sold his van and Wozniak sold his beloved Hewlett Packard programmable calculator. As a result, they helped out about $1300. Jobs convinced Wozniak to leave Hewlett Packard to become vice president and head of product development at the new company.
Soon they also received the first large order from a local electronics store - 50 pieces. However, the young company did not then have the money to buy parts to assemble such a large number of computers. Then Steve Jobs convinced component suppliers to provide materials on credit for 30 days. After receiving the parts, Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne assembled the cars in the evenings, and within 10 days they delivered the entire batch to the store. The company's first computer was called the Apple I. The store that ordered the machines sold it for $666.66 because Wozniak liked numbers with the same digits. But despite this large order, Wayne lost faith in the success of the undertaking and left the company, taking $800.
Already in the fall of the same year, Wozniak completed work on the Apple II prototype, which became the first mass-produced personal computer in the world. It had a plastic case, a floppy disk reader, and support for color graphics. To ensure successful sales of the computer, Jobs ordered the launch of an advertising campaign and the development of a beautiful and standard packaging for the computer, on which the company's new logo, a rainbow bitten apple, was clearly visible. According to Jobs, the colors of the rainbow should emphasize the fact that the Apple II is capable of supporting color graphics. Since the release of the Apple II lineup, more than 5 million computers have been sold, for which programmers have created about 16,000 applications. At the end of 1980, Apple held a successful initial public offering that resulted in Steve Jobs becoming a millionaire at 25.
In December 1979, Steve Jobs and several other Apple employees gained access to the Xerox Research Center (XRX) in Palo Alto. There, Jobs first saw the company's prototype, the Alto computer, which used a graphical interface that allowed the user to issue commands by hovering over a graphic object on the monitor. As colleagues recall, this invention struck Jobs, and he immediately began to confidently say that all future computers would use this innovation. And no wonder, because it contained three things through which the path to the heart of the consumer lies. Steve Jobs already then understood that it was simplicity, ease of use and aesthetics. He immediately got excited about the idea of creating such a computer.
Then the company has been developing for several months new computer Lisa, named after Jobs' daughter. In 1980, Steve tried to lead this project, in which he hoped to embody the revolutionary innovation that he saw in Xerox Laboratories. However, Apple President Michael Scott (Michael Scott) refused Jobs. The project was led by another person. A few months later, Jobs begged Scott to put him in charge of another project on a less powerful mainstream computer, the Macintosh. Largely at the instigation of Jobs, a competition unleashed between the Lisa and Macintosh development teams.
In the end, Jobs lost the race when the Lisa came out in 1983, becoming the first mainstream computer with a graphical interface. However, the commercial failure of this project followed, mainly due to the high price ($9995) and the limited set of software applications for this computer. Therefore, the second round was for Jobs and his Macintosh. Like the Lisa, the Macintosh used an innovation peeped from the Xerox labs - a graphical interface and a mouse. But unlike the Lisa, the Macintosh was a commercially successful computer that revolutionized the industry. The interface of the Macintosh operating system became the standard, its principle was used in all operating systems that have been created since then.
When Jobs urged John Scully to leave Pepsi-Cola to become Apple's CEO in 1983, he pointed out that Apple employees were writing new pages of history: "Do you really want to sell soft drinks for the rest of your life or you want to try to change the world?” This time, Jobs' ability to convince him did not fail, and Sculley became the director of Apple. However, over time it turned out that his vision of the computer business is very different from the vision of Jobs, who was then too impatient for a different point of view. The conflict between Sculley and Jobs grew, and eventually led to the fact that Jobs was forced to leave Apple, being removed from project management.
In 1985, against the backdrop of the release of a number of unsuccessful computer models (the commercial failure of the Apple III), the loss of a significant market share and ongoing conflicts in the leadership, Wozniak left Apple, and some time later Steve Jobs also left the company. Also in 1985, Jobs founded NeXT, a hardware and workstation company.
In 1986, Steve Jobs co-founded the Pixar animation studio. Under Jobs, Pixar produced films such as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. In 2006, Jobs sold Pixar to Walt Disney Studios for $7.4 million in company stock. Jobs remained on the board of directors of Pixar and at the same time became the largest individual shareholder of Disney, having received at his disposal 7 percent of the shares of the studio.
The return of Steve Jobs to Apple took place in 1996, when the company founded by Jobs decided to acquire NeXT. Jobs joined the board of directors of the company and became the interim manager of Apple, which was going through a serious crisis at that moment.
In 2000, the word “temporary” disappeared from the title of Jobs’s position, and the founder of Apple himself entered the Guinness Book of Records as the CEO with the most modest salary in the world (according to official documents, Jobs’s salary at that time was $ 1 a year; subsequently, a similar the salary scheme used by other corporate executives).
In 2001, Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod player. Within a few years, iPod sales became the company's main source of income.
In 2006, the company introduced the Apple TV network media player.
In 2007, sales of the iPhone mobile phone began.
In 2008, Steve showed off the thinnest laptop in the world, called the MacBook Air.
Being engaged in a business that completely captured his life, he barely noticed that his daughter was born. As Jobs himself admits, since 1977, when Lisa was born (that was the name of his daughter), he gave work “150%” of his time and effort. Lisa lived with her mother, who never married Steve Jobs. He began to recognize his daughter, communicate with her only years later.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
Jobs's relationship with competitors in his market has always been ambiguous. He stole ideas from someone without a twinge of conscience, maliciously mocked someone. One of them is .
These two legendary people have a lot in common, but they are completely different. Born in the same year, with similar life histories, they worked hard to succeed and break through to the top of the computer industry. But, if Jobs was not afraid to take risks and relied on innovation, then Gates moved to the top in standard scheme business multiplication. Having taken a monopoly in software, licensing Microsoft, he almost simply began to receive money from sales, developing very slowly and not making any revolutionary innovations.
But, despite their different attitudes to doing business, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will forever go down in the history of the modern development of personal computers and software.
Lost interview:
Ever since the birth of Apple, Steven Jobs knew for sure that he had a special mission on Earth, and he could change the world. “He always believed,” recalls Stephen Wozniak, “that he would lead all of humanity.” The attitude towards the “messiah in jeans” is by no means unambiguous and, as a rule, is very far from colorless indifference. In addition to friends and fans who call him the best manager, there are those who openly dislike him, finding him overly self-confident and self-centered. The sharp nature of Jobs is legendary. Entering into a business or personal relationship with Jobs, intelligent and well-mannered businessmen, accustomed to conduct polite business dialogue, find themselves in an extremely uncomfortable environment. I must say, the public loves scandals, and people like Jobs have the unique ability to generate them around them with regular frequency, bringing sharpness and novelty to life.
Death of Steve Jobs
Undoubtedly, he was a man of genius in his field. His death was a great loss not only for his family, friends and employees. The world has lost this enterprising man who changed society's perceptions of personal computer. Steve Jobs' cause of death was pancreatic cancer. He struggled with the disease for eight long years, remaining active to the last. Steve Jobs' date of death is October 5, 2011.
