“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 1955 – October 2011) was an American inventor and entrepreneur. He was co-founder of Apple Inc., and NeXT. Extreme success is achieved by extreme personality. Steve Jobs was such an extreme personality who led a life of commitment and vision to translate his thought into reality. He will be remembered as a strong man who was never discouraged despite the challenges he went through. Under his guidance, Apple Inc. pioneered and invented technologies like the iPhone and iPad. Steve Jobs along with his partner Steve Wozniak is known as the pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Apparently, He was one of the youngest to make to Forbes list of nation’s richest people without inherited wealth.
The early life
Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California. Steve Jobs biological parents were Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble, and his adoptive parents were Paul Jobs and Clara Hagopian. By the time he was ten, he was profoundly involved in electronics. He found school boring and faced problems in making friends of his own age. Instead he had good rapport with many engineers who lived in his neighbourhood. He did his schooling from Homestead High School in 1972 and has attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In 1975 Jobs got associated with a group known as the Homebrew Computer Club. Jobs met Steve Wozniak there, who was then working to design a small computer. He was fascinated with the idea and got along well with Woznaik.
His Work
In 1976 he and Wozniak formed their own company “Apple Computer Company” (now called Apple Inc.). The company was established in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in the garage of Steve Jobs’ Los Altos house. Apple I was succeeded by Apple II and Macintosh computers. Steve Jobs was forced to leave Apple on September 17, 1985 after which he founded NeXT Inc. NeXT first workstations were released in 1990 and were used by Tim Berners-Lee to invent the World Wide Web. Later NeXT launched second generation NeXTcube, NeXTMail multimedia email system, NeXTSTEP/Intel, WebObjects etc.
His journey did not stopped here and in 1986, Steve Jobs funded $10 million to the spinout of the Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division. The first film produced by Pixar and Disney partnership was Toy Story in 1995 and Steve Jobs was credited as the executive producer. Over the next 15 years, the company produced various box-office hits and the company received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for six movies produced in these years.
In February 1997, Apple acquired NeXT for $427 million after which Steve Jobs came back to Apple and was made the de facto chief at Apple Inc. He was a board member at Gap Inc. from 1999 to 2002.
On January 2006, Disney acquired Pixar in a transaction worth $7.4 billion. After the acquisition, Steve Jobs was included in the board of directors of Walt Disney company.
Deteriorating Health and Death
In October 2003, Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer for which he underwent a surgery in July 2004. During his absence, Tim Cook managed and ran the company. On January 14, 2009 Tim Cook became acting CEO of Apple, while Steve Jobs was still involved with major strategic decisions of the company. In April 2009, Steve Jobs underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee.
On August 24, 2011, Steve Jobs resigned as Apple’s CEO and became the chairman of the board. He also named Tim Cook as his successor as CEO. Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011 at his Palo Alto home due respiratory arrest.
Achievements and Awards
His conviction and imperishable hard work to reach to the top of his career had earned him various awards and applauds. In 1985, Steve Jobs along with Steve Wozniak was awarded National Medal of Technology by then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan. In 1987 he was felicitated with Jefferson Award for Public Service.
In 1989 he was awarded “Entrepreneur of the Decade” by Inc. Magazine. Later in 2007, Steve Jobs was named as the “Most Powerful Person” in business by Fortune Magazine and inducted into the California Hall of Fame located at the California Museum for History, Women and the Art. In 2012 he also received Grammy Trustees Award.
Steve Job is an immortal personality whose brilliance can be felt in every technology that is persisting in today’s generation. He was a visionary and an inventor who always moved ahead to discover something new or better. Mankind will always be grateful to this brilliant mind of his time.
Steve Jobs Birthday, Age, Family, Awards/Achievements & Biography
Dr. Smita Kapoor is a freelance content writer for last 6 years with hands-on experience in academic writing, article writing, web content and market research reports. She was formerly associated with a CSIR institute as a senior research fellow and holds a doctorate degree.