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Steve Jobs |
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Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the CEO of Apple Computer and a leading figure in the computer industry. As co-founder (with Steve Wozniak) of Apple in 1976, he helped popularize the concept of the home computer with the Apple II. Later, he was one of the first to see the commercial potential of the GUI and mouse developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, and saw that these technologies were incorporated into the Apple Macintosh. Jobs is also chairman and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, a leading producer of computer-animated feature films.
Early years
Born to Joanne Simpson and an Egyptian Arab father (name unknown) in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Steven Paul was adopted soon after birth by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California. His biological sister is the novelist Mona Simpson.
In 1972, Jobs graduated from Homestead High School in Cupertino, California and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but he dropped out after one semester.
In the autumn of 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings of the "Homebrew Computer Club" with Wozniak. He and Wozniak both took jobs at Atari Inc., a popular manufacturer of computer games, as game designers. During this time, it was discovered that a slightly modified toy whistle included in every box of Cap'n Crunch cereal was able to reproduce the 2600 Hz supervision tone used by the AT&T long distance telephone system. Jobs and Wozniak went into business briefly in 1974 to build "blue boxes" based on the idea which allowed for free long distance calls.
In 1976, Jobs, then 21, and Wozniak, 26, founded Apple Computer Co. in the Jobs family garage. The first personal computer Jobs and Wozniak introduced was called the Apple I. It sold for $666.66, in reference to the phone number of Wozniak's Dial-A-Joke machine, which ended in -6666.
In 1977, Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II, which became a huge success in the home market and made Apple an important player in the nascent personal computer industry. In 1980, Apple Computer became a publicly traded corporation, and with the successful IPO, Jobs' stature rose further. That same year, Apple Computer released the Apple III, but it met with less success.
As Apple continued to grow, the company began looking for corporate management talent to help manage its expansion. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley, an executive with Pepsi-Cola, to serve as Apple's CEO, challenging him, "Do you want to just sell sugared water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?" That same year, Apple also released the technologically advanced but commercially unsuccessful Apple Lisa.
1984 saw the introduction of the Macintosh, the first commercially successful computer with a graphical user interface. The development of the Mac was started by Jef Raskin and the team drew heavily on technology developed elsewhere, such as at Xerox's PARC, but had not yet been commercialized. The success of the Macintosh led Apple to abandon the Apple II in favor of the Mac product line, which continues to this day.
Departure from Apple
While Jobs was persuasive and charismatic evangelist for Apple, critics also claimed he was an erratic and tempestuous manager. In 1985, after an internal power struggle, Jobs was stripped of his duties by Sculley and ousted from Apple.
After leaving Apple, Jobs founded another computer company, NeXT Computer Like Lisa, NeXT was technologically advanced, but it never became popular, except in the scientific research environment. (Tim Berners-Lee developed the original World Wide Web system at CERN on a NeXT workstation.) NeXT did, however, help the advancement of technologies such as object-oriented programming, PostScript, and magneto-optical devices.
Return to Apple
In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $402 million, bringing Jobs back to the company he founded. In 1997 he became Apple's interim CEO after the departure of Gil Amelio.
With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs' guidance the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac. It was the first computer that was marketed primarily on its looks (though the iMac did utilize other state-of-the-art features). Since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple.
In recent years, the company has branched out. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, the iTunes Music Store, the company is making forays into personal electronics and online music. While stimulating innovation, Jobs also reminds his employees that "real artists ship," by which he means that delivering working products on time is as important as innovation and killer design.
Jobs worked at Apple for several years with an annual salary of $1, and this earned him a listing in Guinness World Records as the "Lowest Paid Chief Executive Officer". After Apple returned to profitability, the company dropped the "interim" from his title. His current salary at Apple officially remains $1 per year, although he has traditionally been the recipient of a number of lucrative "executive gifts" from the board, including a $90 million jet in 1999, and just under 30 million shares of restricted stock in 2000-2002.
Jobs is much admired for his consummate skills of persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the "reality distortion field" and is particularly evident during his keynote speeches at Apple expos. At the same time, his missionary zeal has also failed him. Jobs' arrogance was thought to have cost Apple the chance to be the leader in personal computers. His refusal to allow the Macintosh to be cloned by other vendors was disastrous for Apple's market share. Hardware vendors and software authors subsequently adopted en masse the open IBM PC platform that ran Microsoft operating systems. Microsoft further diminished Apple's technological lead by later developing its own GUI, Microsoft Windows.
Pixar
In 1986 Jobs co-founded (with Edwin Catmull) Pixar, an Emeryville, California computer animation studio. It was formed around what was originally Lucasfilm's computer graphics division, which Jobs bought from its founder, George Lucas, for $10 million. Pixar became famous and successful nearly a decade later with the breakthrough feature movie Toy Story. It has since produced the award-winning films A Bug's Life in 1998, Toy Story 2 in 1999, Finding Nemo in 2003 and The Incredibles in 2004. Their next release, Cars (movie), is due for a 2006 summer release.
The Incredibles received the Academy Award for the best animation film in 77th annual Academy Awards function.
Personal life
Jobs has been married to Laurene Powell since 1991 and has three children with her. He also has a daughter, Lisa Jobs from a woman whom he didn't marry.
On July 31, 2004 Jobs underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. He had a very rare form of pancreatic cancer, called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which did not require chemotherapy or radiation therapy. During his absence, Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company.
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