Apple is known as one of the biggest tech companies in the entire world. Alongside with Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs has become one of the most influential inventors in the past two decades. Apple has taken part in revolutionizing the smart phone, so let’s take a look at one of the co-founders of the company, Steve Jobs.
Photo: The Film Stage
On February 24th, 1955 Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California. Jobs was given up for adoption by his biological parents, Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah “John” Jandali. Soon after he was born, Jobs was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs. At a young age Steve began showing an interest in electronics when he and his father Paul would work on them together. Jobs learned how to take apart and reconstruct various electronics, teaching him a valuable skills that Steve would later use in his life.
While Steve was a young child, he struggled with formal education. Jobs was an extremely smart and talented young child, but found himself bored consistently. Jobs would act out and play pranks on his teacher and fellow classmates to prevent this boredom. Despite him acting out, Jobs tested so well in every subject that the school wanted to push him up a few grades into high school. However, his parents declined this opportunity and kept Steve where he was.
In 1968, Jobs began attending Homestead High School, during this time Jobs was also introduced to Steve Wozniak. The two bonded very well over their love for electronics and began a friendship that would become so much more. After he graduated from high school, Jobs enrolled and began attending Reed College in Portland, Oregon. After six short months Jobs dropped out of Reed College, but continued to attend by dropping in and auditing certain classes. One specific class he loved was a calligraphy class, which sparked his love for typography.
In 1976, when Jobs was only 21, Jobs and Wozniak began working on the first Apple Computer. The duo worked on the computer in the Jobs family garage, selling precious items to get enough money to fund their beloved project. Wozniak and Jobs wanted to create something smaller and cheaper for consumers, and they did so. When they first started selling their computers, they only charged around $660 per unit. The Apple I earned them around $774,000 dollars. After three years of being on the market, the Apple II sales increased by 700 percent. By 1980 Apple was worth over $1.2 billion dollars.
Over the next few years Apple products began to suffer from design flaws. Eventually, their competitor IBM surpassed their sales and Apple began to suffer. After the company had earned it’s first success, John Sculley had stepped in to become the CEO of Apple. Unfortunately, after the Macintosh was released John Sculley and Steve Jobs began to have extremely different views of how the company was supposed to be run. Eventually, Sculley believed that Steve Jobs presence was doing more harm to the company than good and Sculley tried to phase him out.
By 1985, Sculley decided to remove Steve Jobs from working on the Macintosh and put him in charge of product development. On September 17th, 1985 Steve Jobs left Apple because of these differences.
After Jobs left he purchased a new technology company called NeXT, Inc. In addition to this big purchase, Jobs also purchased what is now known as Pixar. Steve Jobs invested around $50 million dollars into the company to help them get on their feet. When Pixar merged with Disney in 2006, Steve Jobs was still a shareholder and today his wife is still Disney’s largest shareholder.
Unfortunately for Jobs, NeXT Inc. didn’t do as well as he’d hoped. In 1996 Apple bought NeXT for $429 million dollars and Steve Jobs returned as Apple’s CEO. With his old position back, Jobs began to rework Apple in an attempt to give the company new life.
As Apple began to get back into the game, Steve’s health began to decline. Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer ins 2003. Jobs refused the recommendations his doctors offered, and tried to naturally heal his illness. As his health kept declining, in 2009 Jobs took a leave of absence to focus on healing himself. At this time, current CEO, Tim Cook had taken over as the CEO for this short leave of absence. Finally in the Spring of 2009, Jobs had a liver transplant at the Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
On August 24th, 2011 Steve Jobs officially announced his resignation as Apple’s CEO. He named Tim Cook as the acting CEO, but Steve Jobs did continue to work for Apple. Jobs was still committed to his company that he continued to work until six weeks before his death. On October 5th, 2011 Steve Jobs passed away from a relapse of his pancreatic cancer at the age of 56.
Steve Jobs revolutionized the modern day computer and created what is now one of the biggest tech companies in the world. He will always be remembered for his amazing achievements and Apple continues to impress and awe consumers all around the world.