subject: A Biography About Steve Jobs [print this page] Steve Jobs is a source of inspiration to many people mainly because of his innovations that made technology what it is today. He was the cofounder of Apple Inc was behind many of their products such as the iPhone and its early computers. Unfortunately he passed away on the 5th October 2011 after fighting a long term illness but his legacy still lives on today.
He was born on the 24th February 1955 in San Francisco to two university graduates. His parents families objected to their relationship and the birth of Jobs was relatively hidden and at birth he was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. Paul and Clara were not as educated as Jobs biological parents as Paul only attended high school whilst Clara did not even graduate from college. The adoption agreement was based around the fact that the adoptive parents would support the education of Steve.
When the family moved to Mountain view, California, when Jobs was 5 Years old, Paul Jobs started working for a company that manufactured lasers and this is the root of Steve Jobs hobby of electronics. When Paul had spare time he would be teach Jobs basic electronics and how he could rebuild electronics like TVs and radios. Clara worked as an accountant for one of the most High-Tec firms in the Silicon Valley. Clara taught Steve to read before he even started school and from then he showed great desire to learn and expand his knowledge.
At school Jobs was known for pranking people and would rarely concentrate at school and it is known that his fourth grade teacher had to bribe him to study. Jobs was still a bright spark and apparently tested extremely well. This led to the administrators of the school wanting to skip him to high school but his parents rejected this idea.
Homestead High School was one of the high schools that he attended and it is here that he became friends with his neighbour Bill Fernandez who also had an interest in electronics. As they became friends Bill introduced Steve Jobs to his later business partner Steve Wozniak. Wozniak and Fernandez had begun constructing a computer motherboard which they call The Cream Soda Computer which they later showed jobs who showed a great interest in this.
After graduating from high school in 1972 Jobs attended Reeds College which was rather expensive and his parents were spending most of their life savings sending him to this college until he dropped out 6 months later. He did carry on dropping in on creative classes. One of these classes was one on Calligraphy which he later claimed helped him design the Mac computer in his later years.
In 1974 jobs got his first job which was with Atari as a technician. He then moved to indie where he stayed for 7 months. Whilst in India he visited the Neem Karoli Baba, a Hindu guru. When he returned Jobs changed his appearance where he shaved his head and started wearing traditional Indian clothing. Upon his return he began working for Atari again where he was told to design a circuit board for their new games system. They offered jobs $100 for each chip he could eliminate in this system and he and Wozniak eliminated 50 chips meaning they were meant to be paid $5000 but Atari only paid $700 which angered jobs who later quit the company.
In 1976 Jobs and Wozniak decided to form their own company called Apple which released its first computer the Apple I straight away. This computer was manufactured in Jobs parents garage and was partly funded by Mike Markkula. The company rapidly grew from there and had to hire more staff to help with the running of the business. Jobs recruited John Sculley for Pepsi-Cola to act as the CEO for Apple and he helped significantly. As sales declined in 1985 Jobs organised a board meeting to try and remove Sculley from his position.
This did not happen though and many of the Apple employees found jobs erratic which is why the board sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial positions. This drew the line for Jobs who left the company immediately and formed a new company called NeXT Computers. This cost him $7 million and this business was hugely successful and released computers that were top of the range. In 1997 Apple found that NeXT were a very successful company and ended up purchasing the company and bringing Jobs back in to the business as an advisor.
Before Jobs founded NeXT he purchased animation company The graphics Group (later known as Pixar) for a reported $10,000,000. The first film to be produced with Jobs in charge was the famous film, Toy Story which Jobs was the executive producer. They later released many popular films that made millions over the next 15 years and not many people knew of Jobs involvement. The films were being released alongside Disney who had a contract with Pixar to co-release the films but in 2003 this contract was running out.
Jobs did try negotiating a new deal with Disney chief executive Michael Eisner but the two did not get on and they failed to agree a new contract. This led to Jobs announcing that they would seek a new partner to distribute their films. This did not happen though as Eisner was replaced at Disney by Bob Iger who desperately tried to get a new deal between the two. In 2006 Disney announced that they had finalised a deal with Pixar but not the deal everyone was expecting. Disney had in fact purchased Pixar for $7.4 Billion which is not a bad profit for Steve Jobs who had purchased the company for $10 Million 20 years ago. Jobs remained at Pixar and Disney as an advisor but his work was separated.
Jobs was constantly working with Apple whilst working at Pixar and was instrumental in the release of their Macintosh computers which featured a lot of his NeXT technology. As sales increased Jobs announced that he would be taking over as the permanent position as CEO in 2000. Apple began releasing IPods which were obviously very successful. He also helped release the iMac and later the various editions of the iPhone and iPad. In 2011 Jobs announced that he would resign as CEO to focus on health problems that he was facing but he would remain as chairman of the companys boards. When this happened shares in Apple dropped 5% in value as people began worrying about the future of Apple.
On the 5th October 2011 Steve Jobs passed away due to a long running health problem. His death came with millions of tributes at Apple stores around the world and 16-24 year olds voted him as the worlds 2nd most innovative man in history only behind Thomas Edison. Jobs left a legacy and whenever you pick up an Apple product it is because of the hard work that Steve Jobs did throughout his life.
