FOUNDER
Apple on Wednesday announced the death of its visionary co-founder Steve Jobs.'We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today,' the company's board of directors said in a statement.'Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.'The Silicon Valley icon who gave the world the iPod and the iPhone resigned as CEO of the world's largest technology corporation in August, handing the reins to current chief executive Tim Cook.
Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Only Exxon Mobil, which makes it money extracting and refining oil instead of ideas, is worth more.Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health. He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries. For transformation of American industry, he ranks among his computer-age contemporary, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney that left an indelible imprint on the world. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.'s largest shareholder, a by-product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006.
Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist. Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, Calif., a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school.Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972 but dropped out after a semester.
Meanwhile, Microsoft copied the Mac approach and introduced Windows, outmaneuvering Apple by licensing its software to slews of computer makers while Apple insisted on making its own machines. Software developers wrote programs first for Windows because it had millions more computers . A Mac version didn't come for months, if at all. With Apple's stock price sinking, conflicts between Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Jobs out of his day-to-day role leading the Macintosh team. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months.
'What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating,' Jobs said in his Stanford speech. 'I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. 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.'He got into two other companies: Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer-animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million.Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then came 'Toy Story,' the first computer-animated full-length feature. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar's next two films. In 2006, Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock, making him Disney's largest individual shareholder and securing a seat on the board.
With Next, Jobs was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details of the cube-shaped computer, insisting on design perfection even for the machine's guts. He never managed to spark much demand for the machine, which cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000. Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software - a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers. By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows.
Larry Ellison, Jobs' close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the leader of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year.He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company's focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to 'Think different.''In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak,' he said. In his second stint, 'he clearly was much more mellow and more mature.'
In the decade that followed, Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products.Apple's popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget.ITunes, in 20XX, gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet-savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.
Jobs' command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone's launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad's debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance.The decade was not without its glitches. Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock-options backdating in the mid-2000s, a practice that artificially boosted the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC.
Jobs' personal ethos - a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy - was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology - a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals. For technology lovers, buying Apple products meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating - even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno-geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own.
Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as 'deeply moody and maddeningly erratic.' In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978. Few seemed immune to Jobs' charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything - even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off.'He always has an aura around his persona,' said Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. 'When you talk to him, you know you're really talking to a brilliant mind.'
But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman.In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford's graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near-repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then-girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Jobs relented.
Jobs started looking for his biological family in his teens, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997. He found his biological sister when he was 27. They became friends, and through her Jobs met his biological mother. Few details of their relationships have been made public.But the extent of Apple secrecy didn't become clear until Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagonosed with - and 'cured' of - a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. The company had sat on the news of his diagnosis for nine months while Jobs tried trumping the disease with a special diet, Fortune magazine reported in 2008.
In the years after his cancer was revealed, rumors about Jobs' health would spark runs on Apple stock as investors worried the company, with no clear succession plan, would fall apart without him. Apple did little to ease those concerns. It kept the state of Jobs' health a secret for as long as it could, then disclosed vague details when, in early 2009, it became clear he was again ill. Jobs took a half-year medical leave of absence starting in January 2009, during which he had a liver transplant. Apple did not disclose the procedure at the time; two months later, The Wall Street Journal reported the fact and a doctor at the transplant hospital confirmed it. In January 2011, Jobs announced another medical leave, his third, with no set duration. He returned to the spotlight briefly in March to personally unveil a second-generation iPad .
In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Jobs delivered Stanford University's commencement speech.'Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,' he said. 'Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.'
The end came Wednesday just a day after Tim Cook, the new CEO of world's leading tech company unveiled the iPhone 4S, a faster version of its best-selling smartphone that includes a virtual "personal assistant" you can talk to.The hard-driving Jobs, who resigned in August as CEO amid health concerns, pioneered the concept of the personal computer and of navigating them by clicking onscreen images with a mouse to lead a cultural transformation in the digital age.In more recent years, he introduced the iPod portable music player, the iPhone and the iPad tablet-all of which changed how we consume content in the digital age.
"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."Jobs who had battled cancer for years, had a secret liver transplant in 2009 in Tennessee during a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple.Born Feb 24, 1955, and then adopted, Jobs grew up in Cupertino, California, which would become home to Apple's headquarters.When he was 21, Jobs teamed with Steve Wozniak and two other men to launch Apple Computer Inc., building their first commercial product, the Apple 1, in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976.Jobs sold his Volkswagen van to help finance the venture. The primitive computer, priced at $666.66, had no keyboard or display, and customers had to assemble it themselves.The following year, Apple unveiled the Apple II computer at the inaugural West Coast Computer Faire. The machine was a hit, and the personal computing revolution was under way.
Apple's pioneering Macintosh computer launched in early 1984 with a now-iconic, Orwellian-themed Super Bowl ad. The boxy beige Macintosh sold well, but the demanding Jobs clashed frequently with colleagues, and in 1986, he was ousted from Apple after a power struggle.Then came a 10-year hiatus during which he founded NeXT Computer, whose pricey, cube-shaped computer workstations never caught on with consumers.In 1996, Apple bought NeXT, returning Jobs to the then-struggling company he had co-founded. Within a year, he was running Apple again.And in 2001, he took the stage to introduce the original iPod, the little white device that transformed portable music and kick-started Apple's furious comeback. Thus began what the CNN called one of the most remarkable second acts in the history of business.Over the next decade, Jobs wowed launch-event audiences, and consumers, with one game-changing hit after another: iTunes (2003), the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and the iPad (2010).
Steve Jobs had no formal schooling in engineering, yet he’s listed as the inventor or co-inventor on more than 300 U.S. patents. These are some of the significant products that were created under his direction.
1. Apple I (1976) Apple’s first product was a computer for hobbyists and engineers, made in small numbers. Steve Wozniak designed it, while Jobs orchestrated the funding and handled the marketing.
2. Apple II (1977) One of the first successful personal computers, the Apple II was designed as a mass-market product rather than something for engineers or enthusiasts. It was still largely Wozniak’s design. Several upgrades for the model followed, and the product line continued until 1993.
But with astonishing regularity, Jobs did something that few people accomplish even once: he reinvented entire industries. He did it with ones that were new, like PCs, and he did it with ones that were old, such as music. And his pace only accelerated over the years.
He was the most celebrated, successful business executive of his generation, yet he flouted many basic tenets of business wisdom. (Like his hero and soulmate, Polaroid founder Edwin Land, he refused to conduct focus groups and other research that might tell him want his customers wanted.) In his many public appearances as the head of a large public corporation, he rarely sounded like one. He introduced the first Macintosh by quoting Bob Dylan, and took to saying that Apple sat "at the intersection of the liberal arts and technology." (See photos of the long and extraordinary career of Steve Jobs.)
Jobs' confidence in the wisdom of his own instincts came to be immense, as did the hype he created at Apple product launches. That might have been unbearable if it weren't for the fact that his intuition was nearly flawless and the products often lived up to his lofty claims. St. Louis Cardinals pitching great Dizzy Dean could have been talking about Jobs rather than himself when he said "It ain't bragging if you can back it up."
Jobs' eventual triumph was so absolute — in 2011, Apple's market capitalization passed that of Exxon Mobil, making it the planet's most valuable company — that it's easy to forget how checkered his reputation once was. Over the first quarter-century of his career, he was associated with as many failed products as hits. Having been forced out of Apple in 1985, he was associated with failure, period. Even some of his admirers thought of him as the dreamer who'd lost the war for PC dominance with Microsoft's indomitable Bill Gates.
Until the iPod era, it seemed entirely possible that Jobs' most lasting legacy might be the blockbuster animated features produced by Pixar, the company which he founded after acquiring George Lucas's computer-graphics lab in 1986. Instead, Pixar turned out to be, in Jobs' famous phrase, just one more thing. Born in 1955 in San Francisco to an unmarried graduate student and adopted at birth by Paul and Clara Jobs, Steven Paul Jobs grew up in Silicon Valley just as it was becoming Silicon Valley. It proved to be a lucky break for everyone concerned.He was only 21 when he started Apple — officially formed on April Fool's Day 1976 — with his buddy Steve "Woz" Wozniak, a self-taught engineer of rare talents. (A third founder, Ron Wayne, chickened out after less than two weeks.)But Jobs had already done a lot of living, all of which influenced the company he built. He'd spent one unhappy semester at Portland's Reed College and 18 happy months of "dropping in" on Reed classes as he saw fit. He'd found brief employment in low-level jobs at Silicon Valley icons HP and Atari. He'd taken a spiritual journey to India, and dabbled with both psychedelic drugs and primal scream therapy.
Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO who invented and masterfully marketed ever—sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology, from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, died on Wednesday. He was 56. The world lost a showman, whose flair for the dramatic there was always “one more thing” was as keen as his knack for divining what people wanted before they even seemed to realize it themselves. Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause. He died peacefully, according to a statement from family members who said they were present. “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” Apple’s board said in a statement. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve”.
Mr. Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January his third since his health problems began before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Mr. Jobs became Apple’s chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand—picked successor, Tim Cook. It didn’t take long for the people who loved their iPhones, iPods, iPads and Macs to begin gathering to pay their respects to the man who made it all happen. Scott Robbins, a barber and Apple fan for nearly 20 years, came to Apple’s San Francisco store as soon as he heard about Jobs’ death Wednesday afternoon. “To some people, this is like Elvis Presley or John Lennon t’s a change in our times,” Robbins, 34, said. “It’s the end of an era, of what we’ve known Apple to be. It’s like the end of the innovators.” Outside Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, three flags an American flag, a California state flag and an Apple flag were flying at half—staff late Wednesday.
“Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor.” Mr. Cook wrote in an email to Apple’s employees. “Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.” The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest version of the iPhone, just one in a procession of devices that shaped technology and society while Jobs was running the company. Mr. Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Almost all that wealth has been created since Mr. Jobs’ return. Cultivating Apple’s countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Mr. Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late—2000s recession and his own failing health. He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist’s obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries. For transformation of American industry, he has few rivals He has long been linked to his personal computer—age contemporary, Bill Gates, and has drawn comparisons to other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney. Mr. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.’s largest shareholder, a by—product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006.
Perhaps most influentially, Mr. Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered “1,000 songs in your pocket.” Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb—dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch. In 2007 came the touch—screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple’s App Store, where developers could sell iPhone “apps” which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet—sized, all—touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one. By 2011, Apple had become the second—largest company of any kind in the United States by market value. In August, it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company. Under Mr. Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Mr. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand didn’t exist, he leveraged a cult—like following to create it. When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda “One more thing” before introducing its latest ambitious idea.
In later years, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues about his health. Mr. Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a very rare form of pancreatic cancer an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He underwent surgery and said he had been cured. In 2009, following weight loss he initially attributed to a hormonal imbalance, he abruptly took a six—month leave. During that time, he received a liver transplant that became public two months after it was performed. He went on another medical leave in January 2011, this time for an unspecified duration. He never went back and resigned as CEO in August, though he stayed on as chairman. Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, he didn’t reference his illness in his resignation letter. Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Mr. Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist. Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, California, a working—class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA’s Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett—Packard before he had finished high school. Mr. Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon, in 1972 but dropped out after six months.
“All of my working—class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it,” he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.” When he returned to California in 1974, Mr. Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club a group of computer hobbyists with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older. Wozniak’s homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple Computer Inc. in Jobs’ parents’ garage in 1976. According to Wozniak, Jobs suggested the name after visiting an “apple orchard” that Wozniak said was actually a commune. Their first creation was the Apple I essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor. The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25.
During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Mr. Jobs again spotted mass potential in a niche invention- a computer that allowed people to control computers with the click of a mouse, not typed commands. He returned to Apple and ordered the team to copy what he had seen. It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people’s concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products. Under Jobs, Apple didn’t invent computers, digital music players or smartphones it reinvented them for people who didn’t want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working. “We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas,” Mr. Jobs said in an interview for the 1996 PBS series “Triumph of the Nerds.” The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier Lisa the same name as his daughter launched to a cool reception in 1983. The less—expensive Macintosh, named for an employee’s favorite apple, exploded onto the scene in 1984.
The Mac was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referenced George Orwell’s “1984” and captured Apple’s iconoclastic style. In the ad, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother—like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track uniform burst into the hall and launched a hammer into the screen, which exploded, stunning the drones, as a narrator announced the arrival of the Mac. There were early stumbles at Apple. Mr. Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial spike, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programs had been written for it. With Apple’s stock price sinking, conflicts between Mr. Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Mr. Jobs out of his day—to—day role leading the Macintosh team. Mr. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months. “What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating,” Mr. Jobs said in his Stanford speech. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. 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.” He got into two other companies -- Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer—animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million. Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then in 1995 came “Toy Story,” the first computer—animated full—length feature. Mr. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar’s next two films, “A Bug’s Life” and “Toy Story 2.” Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock in a deal that got him a seat on Disney’s board and 138 million shares of stock that accounted for most of his fortune. Forbes magazine estimated Mr. Jobs was worth $7 billion in a survey last month.
With Next, Mr. Jobs came up with a cube—shaped computer. He was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details, insisting on design perfection even for the machine’s guts. The machine cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000, and he never managed to spark much demand for it. Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers. By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows. Larry Ellison, Mr. Jobs’ close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the CEO of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year. He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company’s focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to “Think different.”
Apple’s first new product under his direction, the brightly colored, plastic iMac, launched in 1998 and sold about 2 million in its first year. Apple returned to profitability that year. Jobs dropped the “interim” from his title in 2000. He changed his style, too, said Tim Bajarin, who met Mr. Jobs several times while covering the company for Creative Strategies. “In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak,” he said. In his second stint, “he clearly was much more mellow and more mature.” In the decade that followed, Mr. Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products. Apple’s popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget. The arrival of the iTunes music store in 2003 gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet—savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.
Mr. Jobs’ command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone’s launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad’s debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance. The decade was not without its glitches. In the mid—2000s, Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock options backdating, a practice that artificially raised the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC. Mr. Jobs’ personal ethos a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals.
For technology lovers, buying Apple products has meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno—geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own. Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as “deeply moody and maddeningly erratic.” In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978. Few seemed immune to Mr. Jobs’ charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off. “He always has an aura around his persona,” said Bajarin, who met Mr. Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. “When you talk to him, you know you’re really talking to a brilliant mind.” But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.
Mr. Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman. In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford’s graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near—repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then—girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Mr. Jobs relented. Mr. Jobs started looking for his biological family in his teens, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997. He found his biological sister when he was 27. They became friends, and through her Jobs met his biological mother. Few details of those relationships have been made public. But the extent of Apple secrecy didn’t become clear until Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagonosed with and “cured” of a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. The company had sat on the news of his diagnosis for nine months while Jobs tried trumping the disease with a special diet, Fortune magazine reported in 2008.
In the years after his cancer was revealed, rumors about Jobs’ health would spark runs on Apple stock as investors worried the company, with no clear succession plan, would fall apart without him. Apple did little to ease those concerns. It kept the state of Jobs’ health a secret for as long as it could, then disclosed vague details when, in early 2009, it became clear he was again ill. Mr. Jobs took a half—year medical leave of absence starting in January 2009, during which he had a liver transplant. Apple did not disclose the procedure at the time; two months later, The Wall Street Journal reported the fact and a doctor at the transplant hospital confirmed it. In January 2011, Mr. Jobs announced another medical leave, his third, with no set duration. He returned to the spotlight briefly in March to personally unveil a second—generation iPad and again in June, when he showed off Apple’s iCloud music synching service. At both events, he looked frail in his signature jeans and mock turtleneck.
Less than three months later, Mr. Jobs resigned as CEO. In a letter addressed to Apple’s board and the “Apple community” Mr. Jobs said he “always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.” In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Mr. Jobs delivered Stanford University’s commencement speech. “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said. “Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” Mr. Jobs is survived by his biological mother, sister Mona Simpson; Lisa Brennan—Jobs, his daughter with Brennan; wife Laurene, and their three children, Erin, Reed and Eve.
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Apple on Wednesday announced the death of its visionary co-founder Steve Jobs.'We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today,' the company's board of directors said in a statement.'Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.'The Silicon Valley icon who gave the world the iPod and the iPhone resigned as CEO of the world's largest technology corporation in August, handing the reins to current chief executive Tim Cook. Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January, his third since his health problems began, before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Jobs became Apple's chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest version of the iPhone, just one in a procession of devices that shaped technology and society while Jobs was running the company.
Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Only Exxon Mobil, which makes it money extracting and refining oil instead of ideas, is worth more.Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health. He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries. For transformation of American industry, he ranks among his computer-age contemporary, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney that left an indelible imprint on the world. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.'s largest shareholder, a by-product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006. Perhaps most influentially, Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered '1,000 songs in your pocket.' Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch. In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple's App Store, where developers could sell iPhone 'apps' which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one.
Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist. Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, Calif., a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school.Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972 but dropped out after a semester. 'All of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it,' he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. 'I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.'When he returned to California in 1974, Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older. Wozniak's homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. Their first creation was the Apple I - essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor.
The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25. Time magazine put him on its cover for the first time in 1982.During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Jobs again spotted mass potential in a niche invention: a computer that allowed people to access files and control programs with the click of a mouse, not typed commands. He returned to Apple and ordered the team to copy what he had seen.It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people's concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products. Under Jobs, Apple didn't invent computers, digital music players or smartphones - it reinvented them for people who didn't want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working.'We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas,' Jobs said in an interview for the 1996 PBS series 'Triumph of the Nerds.'
The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier one, called Lisa, launched to a cool reception in 1983. A less-expensive model called the Macintosh, named for an employee's favorite apple, exploded onto the scene in 1984.
The Mac was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referenced George Orwell's '1984' and captured Apple's iconoclastic style. In the ad, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother-like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track uniform burst into the hall and launched a hammer into the screen, which exploded, stunning the drones, as a narrator announced the arrival of the Mac. There were early stumbles at Apple. Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial spike, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programs had been written for the new graphical user interface .Meanwhile, Microsoft copied the Mac approach and introduced Windows, outmaneuvering Apple by licensing its software to slews of computer makers while Apple insisted on making its own machines. Software developers wrote programs first for Windows because it had millions more computers . A Mac version didn't come for months, if at all. With Apple's stock price sinking, conflicts between Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Jobs out of his day-to-day role leading the Macintosh team. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months.
'What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating,' Jobs said in his Stanford speech. 'I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. 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.'He got into two other companies: Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer-animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million.Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then came 'Toy Story,' the first computer-animated full-length feature. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar's next two films. In 2006, Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock, making him Disney's largest individual shareholder and securing a seat on the board.
With Next, Jobs was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details of the cube-shaped computer, insisting on design perfection even for the machine's guts. He never managed to spark much demand for the machine, which cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000. Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software - a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers. By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows.
Larry Ellison, Jobs' close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the leader of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year.He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company's focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to 'Think different.''In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak,' he said. In his second stint, 'he clearly was much more mellow and more mature.'
In the decade that followed, Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products.Apple's popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget.ITunes, in 20XX, gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet-savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.
Jobs' command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone's launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad's debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance.The decade was not without its glitches. Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock-options backdating in the mid-2000s, a practice that artificially boosted the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC.
Jobs' personal ethos - a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy - was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology - a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals. For technology lovers, buying Apple products meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating - even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno-geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own.
Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as 'deeply moody and maddeningly erratic.' In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978. Few seemed immune to Jobs' charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything - even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off.'He always has an aura around his persona,' said Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. 'When you talk to him, you know you're really talking to a brilliant mind.'
But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman.In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford's graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near-repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then-girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Jobs relented.
Jobs started looking for his biological family in his teens, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997. He found his biological sister when he was 27. They became friends, and through her Jobs met his biological mother. Few details of their relationships have been made public.But the extent of Apple secrecy didn't become clear until Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagonosed with - and 'cured' of - a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. The company had sat on the news of his diagnosis for nine months while Jobs tried trumping the disease with a special diet, Fortune magazine reported in 2008.
In the years after his cancer was revealed, rumors about Jobs' health would spark runs on Apple stock as investors worried the company, with no clear succession plan, would fall apart without him. Apple did little to ease those concerns. It kept the state of Jobs' health a secret for as long as it could, then disclosed vague details when, in early 2009, it became clear he was again ill. Jobs took a half-year medical leave of absence starting in January 2009, during which he had a liver transplant. Apple did not disclose the procedure at the time; two months later, The Wall Street Journal reported the fact and a doctor at the transplant hospital confirmed it. In January 2011, Jobs announced another medical leave, his third, with no set duration. He returned to the spotlight briefly in March to personally unveil a second-generation iPad .
In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Jobs delivered Stanford University's commencement speech.'Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,' he said. 'Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.'
The end came Wednesday just a day after Tim Cook, the new CEO of world's leading tech company unveiled the iPhone 4S, a faster version of its best-selling smartphone that includes a virtual "personal assistant" you can talk to.The hard-driving Jobs, who resigned in August as CEO amid health concerns, pioneered the concept of the personal computer and of navigating them by clicking onscreen images with a mouse to lead a cultural transformation in the digital age.In more recent years, he introduced the iPod portable music player, the iPhone and the iPad tablet-all of which changed how we consume content in the digital age.
"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."Jobs who had battled cancer for years, had a secret liver transplant in 2009 in Tennessee during a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple.Born Feb 24, 1955, and then adopted, Jobs grew up in Cupertino, California, which would become home to Apple's headquarters.When he was 21, Jobs teamed with Steve Wozniak and two other men to launch Apple Computer Inc., building their first commercial product, the Apple 1, in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976.Jobs sold his Volkswagen van to help finance the venture. The primitive computer, priced at $666.66, had no keyboard or display, and customers had to assemble it themselves.The following year, Apple unveiled the Apple II computer at the inaugural West Coast Computer Faire. The machine was a hit, and the personal computing revolution was under way.
Apple's pioneering Macintosh computer launched in early 1984 with a now-iconic, Orwellian-themed Super Bowl ad. The boxy beige Macintosh sold well, but the demanding Jobs clashed frequently with colleagues, and in 1986, he was ousted from Apple after a power struggle.Then came a 10-year hiatus during which he founded NeXT Computer, whose pricey, cube-shaped computer workstations never caught on with consumers.In 1996, Apple bought NeXT, returning Jobs to the then-struggling company he had co-founded. Within a year, he was running Apple again.And in 2001, he took the stage to introduce the original iPod, the little white device that transformed portable music and kick-started Apple's furious comeback. Thus began what the CNN called one of the most remarkable second acts in the history of business.Over the next decade, Jobs wowed launch-event audiences, and consumers, with one game-changing hit after another: iTunes (2003), the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and the iPad (2010).
Steve Jobs had no formal schooling in engineering, yet he’s listed as the inventor or co-inventor on more than 300 U.S. patents. These are some of the significant products that were created under his direction.
1. Apple I (1976) Apple’s first product was a computer for hobbyists and engineers, made in small numbers. Steve Wozniak designed it, while Jobs orchestrated the funding and handled the marketing.
2. Apple II (1977) One of the first successful personal computers, the Apple II was designed as a mass-market product rather than something for engineers or enthusiasts. It was still largely Wozniak’s design. Several upgrades for the model followed, and the product line continued until 1993.
3. Lisa (1983) Jobs’ visit to Xerox Corp.’s research centre in Palo Alto inspired him to start work on the first commercial computer with a graphical user interface, with icons, windows and a cursor controlled by a mouse. It was the foundation for today’s computer interfaces, but the Lisa was too expensive to be a commercial success.
4. Macintosh (1984) Like the Lisa, the Macintosh had a graphical user interface. It was also cheaper and faster and had the backing of a large advertising campaign behind it. People soon realized how useful the graphical interface was for design. That led “desktop publishing,” accomplished with a Mac coupled to a laser printer, to soon become a sales driver.
5. NeXT computer (1989) After being forced out of Apple, Jobs started a company that built a powerful workstation computer. The company was never able to sell large numbers, but the computer was influential- The world’s first Web browser was created on one. Its software also lives on as the basis for today’s Macintosh and iPhone operating system.
6. iMac (1998) When Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, the company was foundering, with an ever shrinking share of the PC market. The radical iMac was the first step in reversing the slide. It was strikingly designed as a bubble of blue plastic that enclosed both the monitor and the computer. Easy to set up, it captured the imagination just as people across the world were having their eyes opened to the benefits of the Internet and considering getting their first home computer.
7. iPod (2001) It wasn’t the first digital music player with a hard drive, but it was the first successful one. Apple’s expansion into portable electronics has had vast ramifications. The iPod’s success prepared the way for the iTunes music store and the iPhone.
8. iTunes store (2003) Before the iTunes store, buying digital music was a hassle, making piracy the more popular option. The store simplified the process and brought together tracks from all the major labels. The store became the largest music retailer in the U.S. in 2008.
9. iPhone (2007) The iPhone did for the phone experience what the Macintosh did for personal computing it made the power of a smartphone easy to harness. Apple is now the world’s most profitable maker of phones, and the influence of the iPhone is evident in all smartphones.
10. iPad (2010) Dozens of companies, including Apple, had created tablet computers before the iPad, but none caught on. The iPad finally cracked the code, creating a whole new category of computer practically by itself
Steve Jobs, whose death was announced on Wednesday night, 5th October, 2011, wasn't a computer scientist. He had no training as a hardware engineer or an industrial designer. The businesses that Apple entered under his leadership — from personal computers to MP3 players to smartphones — all existed before the company got there.
Steve Jobs, whose death was announced on Wednesday night, 5th October, 2011, wasn't a computer scientist. He had no training as a hardware engineer or an industrial designer. The businesses that Apple entered under his leadership — from personal computers to MP3 players to smartphones — all existed before the company got there.
But with astonishing regularity, Jobs did something that few people accomplish even once: he reinvented entire industries. He did it with ones that were new, like PCs, and he did it with ones that were old, such as music. And his pace only accelerated over the years.
He was the most celebrated, successful business executive of his generation, yet he flouted many basic tenets of business wisdom. (Like his hero and soulmate, Polaroid founder Edwin Land, he refused to conduct focus groups and other research that might tell him want his customers wanted.) In his many public appearances as the head of a large public corporation, he rarely sounded like one. He introduced the first Macintosh by quoting Bob Dylan, and took to saying that Apple sat "at the intersection of the liberal arts and technology." (See photos of the long and extraordinary career of Steve Jobs.)
Jobs' confidence in the wisdom of his own instincts came to be immense, as did the hype he created at Apple product launches. That might have been unbearable if it weren't for the fact that his intuition was nearly flawless and the products often lived up to his lofty claims. St. Louis Cardinals pitching great Dizzy Dean could have been talking about Jobs rather than himself when he said "It ain't bragging if you can back it up."
Jobs' eventual triumph was so absolute — in 2011, Apple's market capitalization passed that of Exxon Mobil, making it the planet's most valuable company — that it's easy to forget how checkered his reputation once was. Over the first quarter-century of his career, he was associated with as many failed products as hits. Having been forced out of Apple in 1985, he was associated with failure, period. Even some of his admirers thought of him as the dreamer who'd lost the war for PC dominance with Microsoft's indomitable Bill Gates.
Until the iPod era, it seemed entirely possible that Jobs' most lasting legacy might be the blockbuster animated features produced by Pixar, the company which he founded after acquiring George Lucas's computer-graphics lab in 1986. Instead, Pixar turned out to be, in Jobs' famous phrase, just one more thing. Born in 1955 in San Francisco to an unmarried graduate student and adopted at birth by Paul and Clara Jobs, Steven Paul Jobs grew up in Silicon Valley just as it was becoming Silicon Valley. It proved to be a lucky break for everyone concerned.He was only 21 when he started Apple — officially formed on April Fool's Day 1976 — with his buddy Steve "Woz" Wozniak, a self-taught engineer of rare talents. (A third founder, Ron Wayne, chickened out after less than two weeks.)But Jobs had already done a lot of living, all of which influenced the company he built. He'd spent one unhappy semester at Portland's Reed College and 18 happy months of "dropping in" on Reed classes as he saw fit. He'd found brief employment in low-level jobs at Silicon Valley icons HP and Atari. He'd taken a spiritual journey to India, and dabbled with both psychedelic drugs and primal scream therapy.
Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO who invented and masterfully marketed ever—sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology, from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, died on Wednesday. He was 56. The world lost a showman, whose flair for the dramatic there was always “one more thing” was as keen as his knack for divining what people wanted before they even seemed to realize it themselves. Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause. He died peacefully, according to a statement from family members who said they were present. “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” Apple’s board said in a statement. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve”.
Mr. Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January his third since his health problems began before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Mr. Jobs became Apple’s chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand—picked successor, Tim Cook. It didn’t take long for the people who loved their iPhones, iPods, iPads and Macs to begin gathering to pay their respects to the man who made it all happen. Scott Robbins, a barber and Apple fan for nearly 20 years, came to Apple’s San Francisco store as soon as he heard about Jobs’ death Wednesday afternoon. “To some people, this is like Elvis Presley or John Lennon t’s a change in our times,” Robbins, 34, said. “It’s the end of an era, of what we’ve known Apple to be. It’s like the end of the innovators.” Outside Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, three flags an American flag, a California state flag and an Apple flag were flying at half—staff late Wednesday.
“Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor.” Mr. Cook wrote in an email to Apple’s employees. “Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.” The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest version of the iPhone, just one in a procession of devices that shaped technology and society while Jobs was running the company. Mr. Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Almost all that wealth has been created since Mr. Jobs’ return. Cultivating Apple’s countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Mr. Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late—2000s recession and his own failing health. He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist’s obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries. For transformation of American industry, he has few rivals He has long been linked to his personal computer—age contemporary, Bill Gates, and has drawn comparisons to other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney. Mr. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.’s largest shareholder, a by—product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006.
Perhaps most influentially, Mr. Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered “1,000 songs in your pocket.” Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb—dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch. In 2007 came the touch—screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple’s App Store, where developers could sell iPhone “apps” which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet—sized, all—touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one. By 2011, Apple had become the second—largest company of any kind in the United States by market value. In August, it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company. Under Mr. Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Mr. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand didn’t exist, he leveraged a cult—like following to create it. When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda “One more thing” before introducing its latest ambitious idea.
In later years, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues about his health. Mr. Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a very rare form of pancreatic cancer an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He underwent surgery and said he had been cured. In 2009, following weight loss he initially attributed to a hormonal imbalance, he abruptly took a six—month leave. During that time, he received a liver transplant that became public two months after it was performed. He went on another medical leave in January 2011, this time for an unspecified duration. He never went back and resigned as CEO in August, though he stayed on as chairman. Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, he didn’t reference his illness in his resignation letter. Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Mr. Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist. Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, California, a working—class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA’s Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett—Packard before he had finished high school. Mr. Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon, in 1972 but dropped out after six months.
“All of my working—class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it,” he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.” When he returned to California in 1974, Mr. Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club a group of computer hobbyists with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older. Wozniak’s homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple Computer Inc. in Jobs’ parents’ garage in 1976. According to Wozniak, Jobs suggested the name after visiting an “apple orchard” that Wozniak said was actually a commune. Their first creation was the Apple I essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor. The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25.
During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Mr. Jobs again spotted mass potential in a niche invention- a computer that allowed people to control computers with the click of a mouse, not typed commands. He returned to Apple and ordered the team to copy what he had seen. It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people’s concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products. Under Jobs, Apple didn’t invent computers, digital music players or smartphones it reinvented them for people who didn’t want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working. “We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas,” Mr. Jobs said in an interview for the 1996 PBS series “Triumph of the Nerds.” The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier Lisa the same name as his daughter launched to a cool reception in 1983. The less—expensive Macintosh, named for an employee’s favorite apple, exploded onto the scene in 1984.
The Mac was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referenced George Orwell’s “1984” and captured Apple’s iconoclastic style. In the ad, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother—like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track uniform burst into the hall and launched a hammer into the screen, which exploded, stunning the drones, as a narrator announced the arrival of the Mac. There were early stumbles at Apple. Mr. Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial spike, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programs had been written for it. With Apple’s stock price sinking, conflicts between Mr. Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Mr. Jobs out of his day—to—day role leading the Macintosh team. Mr. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months. “What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating,” Mr. Jobs said in his Stanford speech. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. 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.” He got into two other companies -- Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer—animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million. Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then in 1995 came “Toy Story,” the first computer—animated full—length feature. Mr. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar’s next two films, “A Bug’s Life” and “Toy Story 2.” Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock in a deal that got him a seat on Disney’s board and 138 million shares of stock that accounted for most of his fortune. Forbes magazine estimated Mr. Jobs was worth $7 billion in a survey last month.
With Next, Mr. Jobs came up with a cube—shaped computer. He was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details, insisting on design perfection even for the machine’s guts. The machine cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000, and he never managed to spark much demand for it. Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers. By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows. Larry Ellison, Mr. Jobs’ close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the CEO of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year. He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company’s focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to “Think different.”
Apple’s first new product under his direction, the brightly colored, plastic iMac, launched in 1998 and sold about 2 million in its first year. Apple returned to profitability that year. Jobs dropped the “interim” from his title in 2000. He changed his style, too, said Tim Bajarin, who met Mr. Jobs several times while covering the company for Creative Strategies. “In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak,” he said. In his second stint, “he clearly was much more mellow and more mature.” In the decade that followed, Mr. Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products. Apple’s popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget. The arrival of the iTunes music store in 2003 gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet—savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.
Mr. Jobs’ command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone’s launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad’s debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance. The decade was not without its glitches. In the mid—2000s, Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock options backdating, a practice that artificially raised the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC. Mr. Jobs’ personal ethos a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals.
For technology lovers, buying Apple products has meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno—geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own. Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as “deeply moody and maddeningly erratic.” In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978. Few seemed immune to Mr. Jobs’ charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off. “He always has an aura around his persona,” said Bajarin, who met Mr. Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. “When you talk to him, you know you’re really talking to a brilliant mind.” But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.
Mr. Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman. In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford’s graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near—repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then—girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Mr. Jobs relented. Mr. Jobs started looking for his biological family in his teens, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997. He found his biological sister when he was 27. They became friends, and through her Jobs met his biological mother. Few details of those relationships have been made public. But the extent of Apple secrecy didn’t become clear until Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagonosed with and “cured” of a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. The company had sat on the news of his diagnosis for nine months while Jobs tried trumping the disease with a special diet, Fortune magazine reported in 2008.
In the years after his cancer was revealed, rumors about Jobs’ health would spark runs on Apple stock as investors worried the company, with no clear succession plan, would fall apart without him. Apple did little to ease those concerns. It kept the state of Jobs’ health a secret for as long as it could, then disclosed vague details when, in early 2009, it became clear he was again ill. Mr. Jobs took a half—year medical leave of absence starting in January 2009, during which he had a liver transplant. Apple did not disclose the procedure at the time; two months later, The Wall Street Journal reported the fact and a doctor at the transplant hospital confirmed it. In January 2011, Mr. Jobs announced another medical leave, his third, with no set duration. He returned to the spotlight briefly in March to personally unveil a second—generation iPad and again in June, when he showed off Apple’s iCloud music synching service. At both events, he looked frail in his signature jeans and mock turtleneck.
Less than three months later, Mr. Jobs resigned as CEO. In a letter addressed to Apple’s board and the “Apple community” Mr. Jobs said he “always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.” In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Mr. Jobs delivered Stanford University’s commencement speech. “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said. “Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” Mr. Jobs is survived by his biological mother, sister Mona Simpson; Lisa Brennan—Jobs, his daughter with Brennan; wife Laurene, and their three children, Erin, Reed and Eve.
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Prof. John Kurakar
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