Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the co-founder (with Steve Wozniak) of Apple Computer. He is also regarded as a pioneer in computing for seeing the potential in a Xerox PARC demonstration of the GUI and mouse, thus causing Apple Computer to unleash the Apple Lisa and later, the Apple Macintosh.
Born to Joanne Simpson and an Egyptian Arab father (name not known). His biological sister is the novelist Mona Simpson. Steve was adopted soon after birth by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California.
After graduating from Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, in 1972 Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where 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 Stephen Wozniak. He took a job at Atari Inc., designing computer games with his friend, Wozniak.
During this time period, it was discovered that a toy whistle included in every box of Cap'n Crunch cereal was able to faithfully reproduce the tones generated by the AT&T long distance telephone system. Jobs and Wozniak went into business briefly to build "blue boxes" based on this which allowed for free long-distance calls.
In 1976, Jobs, then 21, and Wozniak, 26, founded Apple Computer Co in the Jobs' family garage. Jobs and Wozniak put together their first computer, called the Apple I. They marketed it at a price of $666.66, in reference to the phone number of Wozniak's Dial-A-Joke machine, which ended in -6666. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley from Pepsi-Cola to run Apple, challenging him, "Do you want to just sell sugared water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?"
1984 saw the introduction of the Macintosh, a project initiated by Jef Raskin that Jobs ultimately led. The Macintosh was the first commercially successful computer with a graphical user interface (the first commercially available GUI was the Apple Lisa). The success of the Macintosh led Apple to abandon the Apple II product line in favor of the Mac product line, which continues to this day.
In 1985, after an internal power struggle, Jobs was stripped of his duties by Sculley and ousted from Apple. He departed to found NeXT Computer later that decade, based upon the principle of object-oriented programming, another concept Jobs had discovered at Xerox PARC.
In 1986 Jobs bought Pixar, an Emeryville, California computer animation studio, from its founder George Lucas for $10 million. In 1991 Jobs married Laurene Powell; they have three children. In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $400 million, and in 1997 Jobs returned to Apple as interim CEO after the departure of Gil Amelio. In 2000, Apple dropped the "interim" from Jobs' title after he had worked for several years at an annual salary of $1 and Apple returned to profitability. Jobs still works at Apple for an annual salary of $1, and the company has branched out into the area of music. Apple's iPod portable music player and iTunes digital music software and store are instrumental in the ongoing digital music revolution in which Apple is trying to balance the interests of users, artists, and record labels.
