Steve Jobs - Biography, Achievements and Quotes

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs was an American entrepreneur and inventor, best known as the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields, transforming "one industry after another, from computers and smartphones to music and movies..." Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. He also played a role in introducing the LaserWriter, one of the first widely available laser printers, to the market.

After a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off as Pixar. He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer. He served as CEO and majority shareholder until Disney's purchase of Pixar in 2006. In 1996, after Apple had failed to deliver its operating system, Copland, Gil Amelio turned to NeXT Computer, and the NeXTSTEP platform became the foundation for the Mac OS X. Jobs returned to Apple as an advisor, and took control of the company as an interim CEO. Jobs brought Apple from near bankruptcy to profitability by 1998.

As the new CEO of the company, Jobs oversaw the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and on the services side, the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store. The success of these products and services provided several years of stable financial returns, and propelled Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company in 2011. The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business history.

In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine tumor. Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone imbalance, underwent a liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively thinner as his health declined. On medical leave for most of 2011, Jobs resigned in August that year, and was elected Chairman of the Board. He died of respiratory arrest related to his metastatic tumor on October 5, 2011.

Jobs received a number of honors and public recognition for his influence in the technology and music industries. He has been referred to as "legendary", a "futurist" or simply "visionary", and has been described as the "Father of the Digital Revolution", a "master of innovation", and a "design perfectionist".

Achievement and Superb Facts about Steve Jobs

• Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. Although Steve’s biological mom wanted her son to be adopted by college graduates and Paul and Clara were not. They promised Steve would go to college when he grew up.
• Steve dropped out of college after one semester to save his parent’s money. He did drop-in though for 18 months.
• While dropping in on classes, he slept on the floors of his friends’ places, turned in coke bottles for 5 cents to use the money to eat with, and hiked 7 miles across town once a week to get a decent meal at the Hare Krishna temple in town.
• Steve’s original aspiration was to become a Buddhist Monk. After traveling toIndiawith one of his best friends fromReed College. Upon his return with shaved head, he became a Buddhist.
• He worked with Steve Wozniak for Atari game systems before Apple Computers. They reportedly were paid $5,000 for their work of which he shared $375 with Wozniak.
• We all probably know that Steve Jobs began Apple Computers, Inc., in 1976 with Steve Wozniak in his parents’ garage. But there was a third member, Ronald Wayne. After two weeks Ronald left for a one time payment of $800 for his share of Apple stock. Reportedly this stock would be worth $22 billion today.
• He was a vegetarian: PETA praised Jobs for his vegetarianism and his support of animals.
• He was Disney's largest shareholder: He became Disney's largest shareholder when the company bought Pixar in 2006.
• Steve isn't a fan of Google or Microsoft, but the man tipped his hat to young CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Calling Facebook a "dominating" social network, the Apple cofounder said that he admired mark "for not selling out … for wanting to make a company."
• With millions of books available on the iBookstore, you'd wager Steve had a least a couple dozen of them. But in fact, his iPad 2 held just a single work: An Autobiography of a Yogi, which he read once a year for decades.
• In the 1980s, Steve frequented a certain restaurant managed by a "balding Syrian" man, as Steve put it. This man was in fact Steve's biological father, though neither of them knew it at the time (his biological sister Mona Simpson would later connect the dots). The pair actually shook hands, too—all the while being unaware that they were father and son.
• Steve Jobs was indeed plotting an Apple television.
• Apple TV is a few years old now, but it's not actually a television—it's a tiny square that streams iTunes content onto one. Since its inception, rumours have come and gone (and come again) that Apple would release its own branded television, integrated deeply with Apple software. This has yet to materialize, but Steve said before he died that he "finally cracked it," referring to bringing such a product to market. He envisioned a simple remote, simple interface, iCloud syncing, and… well, I guess we'll have to find out, as this product could very likely end up a real thing in 2012 or 2013.
• The iPad turned out to be one of the best-selling consumer items in history, not just in tech and not just in North America, and the iPad 2 has continued its amazing legacy. But initial reviews were critical—underwhelming features, unnecessary gap filled, awful name, so the pundits roared. Steve said the flames "knocked me back a bit." Surely, though, he got back on his feet after the initial hate faded and incredible sales surged.
• Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted shortly after his birth and reared near Mountain View, California by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. His adoptive father — a term that Jobs openly objected to — was a machinist for a laser company and his mother worked as an accountant.
• In his famous 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University, Jobs said of his time at Reed: "It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple."
• He was reportedly offered $750 for his development work, with the possibility of an extra $100 for each chip eliminated from the game's final design. Jobs recruited Steve Wozniak (later one of Apple's other founders) to help him with the challenge. Wozniak managed to whittle the prototype's design down so much that Atari paid out a $5,000 bonus — but Jobs kept the bonus for himself, and paid his unsuspecting friend only $375, according to Wozniak's own autobiography.
• For all of his single-minded dedication to the company he built from the ground up, Jobs actually skipped a meeting to take Laurene on their first date: "I was in the parking lot with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, 'If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?' I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we've been together ever since."
• In 1991, Jobs and Powell were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park, and the marriage was officiated by Kobin Chino, a Zen Buddhist monk.
• Steve’s original aspiration was to become a Buddhist Monk. After traveling toIndiawith one of his best friends fromReed College. Upon his return with shaved head, he became a Buddhist.
• He worked with Steve Wozniak for Atari game systems before Apple Computers. They reportedly were paid $5,000 for their work of which he shared $375 with Wozniak.
• We all probably know that Steve Jobs began Apple Computers, Inc., in 1976 with Steve Wozniak in his parents’ garage. But there was a third member, Ronald Wayne. After two weeks Ronald left for a one time payment of $800 for his share of Apple stock. Reportedly this stock would be worth $22 billion today.
• Steve lured John Sculley from Pepsi-Cola to become Apple’s CEO in 2003. Coincidently it was John Sculley who then fired Jobs in 2005. Steven would later comment on it saying “the heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
• Jobs and Wozniak named the company Apple because they were huge Beatles fans.
• He had four children, one out of wedlock that he at first denounced, but later claimed and went on to have a great relationship with and even named a computer after her.
• Steve had over 300 patents.
• Jobs bought Pixar for 5 million and transformed it with their first movie Toy Story. Jobs was credited as an executive producer on the film Toy Story.
• When he was 23, Jobs and his high school girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan conceived a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. She was born in 1978, just as Apple began picking up steam in the tech world. He and Brennan never married, and Jobs reportedly denied paternity for some time, going as far as stating that he was sterile in court documents. He went on to father three more children with Laurene Powell. After later mending their relationship, Jobs paid for his first daughter's education at Harvard. She graduated in 2000 and now works as a magazine writer.
• Presentation is no doubt important to Steve Jobs and Apple carries a very specific and consistent aesthetic, from its packaging to its website and everything in between. Steve gave author Walter full control over the content but insisted that the cover be awesome. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think the cover is perfect.
• He was homeless: "I didn't have a dorm room," he said in a commencement address given at Stanford in 2005, "so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple."

Superb Quotes by Steve Jobs

• Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.
• Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
• Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.
• If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away.
• I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things
• Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.
• What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
• I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous.
• I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It purges the system of these old models that are obsolete.
• People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
• My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.
• If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away.
• Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
• My model for business is the Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.
• I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
• Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.
• The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again
• I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery.
• By the way, if you get mad at your Mac laptop and wonder who designed this demonic device, notice the manufacturer's icon on top: an apple with a bite out of it.