12/6/21, 11:45 AM Steve Jobs - Movie, Daughter & Death - Biography
Steve Jobs
Biography
(1955–2011)
Steve Jobs co-founded Apple Computers
Photo: David Paul with Steve Wozniak. Under Jobs' guidance,
Morris/Bloomberg via Getty
Images the company pioneered a series of
Steve Jobs revolutionary technologies, including the
February 24, 1955 iPhone and iPad.
October 5, 2011
Growing up, Steve
Who Was Steve Jobs?
Jobs had a hard
time with formal Steven Paul Jobs was an American inventor, designer and
schooling (due to entrepreneur who was the co-founder, chief executive and
boredom) and chairman of Apple Computer. Apple's revolutionary products,
often had to be which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now seen as
bribed to do his dictating the evolution of modern technology.
work. Born in 1955 to two University of Wisconsin graduate
One of Jobs' first students who gave him up for adoption, Jobs was smart but
jobs was with Atari directionless, dropping out of college and experimenting
as a video game with different pursuits before co-founding Apple with Steve
designer. Wozniak in 1976. Jobs left the company in 1985, launching
If Jobs had not Pixar Animation Studios, then returned to Apple more than a
sold his Apple decade later. Jobs died in 2011 following a long battle with
pancreatic cancer.
shares in 1985,
when he left the
Steve Jobs’ Parents and Adoption
company he
founded for over a Jobs was born to Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and
decade, his net Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, two University of Wisconsin
worth would have graduate students. The couple gave up their unnamed son
been a staggering for adoption.
$36 billion. Jobs’ father, Jandali, was a Syrian political science professor.
Homestead High His mother, Schieble, worked as a speech therapist. Shortly
School, Reed after Jobs was placed for adoption, his biological parents
College married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not
San Francisco, until Jobs was 27 that he was able to uncover information on
California his biological parents.
Palo Alto, As an infant, Jobs was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and
California named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant and
Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist.
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12/6/21, 11:45 AM Steve Jobs - Movie, Daughter & Death - Biography
Steven Jobs Early Life
Steven Paul Jobs
Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. He lived with his adoptive
family in Mountain View, California, within the area that would later become known as Silicon
Valley.
As a boy, Jobs and his father worked on electronics in the family garage. Paul showed his son
how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby that instilled confidence, tenacity and
mechanical prowess in young Jobs.
Steve Jobs’ Education and College
While Jobs was always an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with
frustrations over formal schooling. Jobs was a prankster in elementary school due to boredom,
and his fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that
administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school — a proposal that his parents
declined.
After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking direction, he
dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative
classes at the school. Jobs later recounted how one course in calligraphy developed his love of
typography.
In 1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. Several months later he left
the company to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling further and experimenting with
psychedelic drugs.
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs
Back when Jobs was enrolled at Homestead High School, he was introduced to his future
partner and co-founder of Apple Computer, Wozniak, who was attending the University of
California, Berkeley.
In a 2007 interview with PC World, Wozniak spoke about why he and Jobs clicked so well: "We
both loved electronics and the way we used to hook up digital chips," Wozniak said. "Very few
people, especially back then, had any idea what chips were, how they worked and what they
could do. I had designed many computers, so I was way ahead of him in electronics and
computer design, but we still had common interests. We both had pretty much sort of an
independent attitude about things in the world.”
Founding and Leaving Apple Computer
In 1976, when Jobs was just 21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computer in the Jobs’ family
garage. They funded their entrepreneurial venture by Jobs selling his Volkswagen bus and
Wozniak selling his beloved scientific calculator. Jobs and Wozniak are credited with
revolutionizing the computer industry with Apple by democratizing the technology and making
machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive and accessible to everyday consumers.
Wozniak conceived of a series of user-friendly personal computers, and — with Jobs in charge
of marketing — Apple initially marketed the computers for $666.66 each. The Apple I earned
the corporation around $774,000. Three years after the release of Apple's second model, the
Apple II, the company's sales increased by 700 percent to $139 million.
In 1980, Apple Computer became a publicly-traded company, with a market value of $1.2
billion by the end of its very first day of trading. Jobs looked to marketing expert John Sculley of
Pepsi-Cola to take over the role of CEO for Apple.
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12/6/21, 11:45 AM Steve Jobs - Movie, Daughter & Death - Biography
The next several products from Apple suffered significant design flaws, however, resulting in
recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly surpassed Apple in sales, and Apple had
to compete with an IBM/PC-dominated business world.
In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the computer as a piece of a counterculture
lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative. But despite positive sales and performance superior to
IBM's PCs, the Macintosh was still not IBM-compatible.
Sculley believed Jobs was hurting Apple, and the company's executives began to phase him
out. Not actually having had an official title with the company he co-founded, Jobs was pushed
into a more marginalized position and thus left Apple in 1985.
NeXT
After leaving Apple in 1985, Jobs began a new hardware and software enterprise called NeXT,
Inc. The company floundered in its attempts to sell its specialized operating system to
mainstream America, and Apple eventually bought the company in 1996 for $429 million.
Reinventing Apple
In 1997, Jobs returned to his post as Apple's CEO. Just as Jobs instigated Apple's success in the
1970s, he is credited with revitalizing the company in the 1990s.
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With a new management team, altered stock options and a self-imposed annual salary of $1 a
year, Jobs put Apple back on track. Jobs’ ingenious products (like the iMac), effective branding
campaigns and stylish designs caught the attention of consumers once again.
In the ensuing years, Apple introduced such revolutionary products as the Macbook Air, iPod
and iPhone, all of which dictated the evolution of technology. Almost immediately after Apple
released a new product, competitors scrambled to produce comparable technologies.
Apple's quarterly reports improved significantly in 2007: Stocks were worth $199.99 a share—a
record-breaking number at that time — and the company boasted a staggering $1.58 billion
profit, an $18 billion surplus in the bank and zero debt.
In 2008, Apple became the second-biggest music retailer in America — second only to Walmart,
fueled by iTunes and iPod sales. Apple has also been ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine's list
of "America's Most Admired Companies," as well as No. 1 among Fortune 500 companies for
returns to shareholders.
Steve Jobs and Pixar
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12/6/21, 11:45 AM Steve Jobs - Movie, Daughter & Death - Biography
In 1986, Jobs purchased an animation company from George Lucas, which later became Pixar
Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar's potential, Jobs initially invested $50 million of his own
money in the company.
The studio went on to produce wildly popular movies such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The
Incredibles; Pixar's films have collectively netted $4 billion. The studio merged with Walt Disney
in 2006, making Jobs Disney's largest shareholder.
In 2011, Forbes estimated the majority of Jobs’ net worth at around $6.5 billion to $7 billion
from his sale of Pixar to the Walt Disney Company in 2006. However if Jobs had not sold his
Apple shares in 1985, when he left the company he founded and helmed for over a decade, his
net worth would have been a staggering $36 billion.
Wife and Children
Jobs and Laurene Powell married on March 18, 1991. The pair met in the early 1990s at
Stanford business school, where Powell was an MBA student. They lived together in Palo Alto,
California, with their three children: Reed, Erin, and Eve.
Jobs also fathered a daughter, Lisa, with girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978, when he was 23.
He denied paternity of his daughter in court documents, claiming he was sterile.
Lisa Brennan Jobs later wrote of her childhood and relationship with Jobs in her book Small Fry,
published in 2018. In 1980, Lisa wrote, DNA tests revealed that she and Jobs were a match, and
he was required to begin making paternity payments to her financially struggling mother. Jobs
did not initiate a relationship with his daughter until she was 7 years old. When she was a
teenager, Lisa came to live with her father.
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Battle with Cancer
In 2003, Jobs discovered that he had a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare but operable form of
pancreatic cancer. Instead of immediately opting for surgery, Jobs chose to alter his pesco-
vegetarian diet while weighing Eastern treatment options.
For nine months, Jobs postponed surgery, making Apple's board of directors nervous.
Executives feared that shareholders would pull their stock if word got out that their CEO was ill.
But in the end, Jobs' confidentiality took precedence over shareholder disclosure.
In 2004, Jobs had successful surgery to remove the pancreatic tumor. True to form, in
subsequent years Jobs disclosed little about his health.
Early in 2009, reports circulated about Jobs' weight loss, some predicting his health issues had
returned, which included a liver transplant. Jobs responded to these concerns by stating he
was dealing with a hormone imbalance. Days later, he went on a six-month leave of absence.
In an email message to employees, Jobs said his "health-related issues are more complex" than
he thought, then named Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, as “responsible for Apple's
day-today operations."
After nearly a year out of the spotlight, Jobs delivered a keynote address at an invite-only Apple
event on September 9, 2009. He continued to serve as master of ceremonies, which included
the unveiling of the iPad, throughout much of 2010.
In January 2011, Jobs announced he was going on medical leave. In August, he resigned as CEO
of Apple, handing the reins to Cook.
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12/6/21, 11:45 AM Steve Jobs - Movie, Daughter & Death - Biography
Steve Jobs’ Death and Last Words
Jobs died in Palo Alto on October 5, 2011, after battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a decade.
He was 56 years old.
In a eulogy for Jobs, sister Mona Simpson wrote that just before dying, Jobs looked for a long
time at his sister, Patty, then his wife and children, then past them, and said his last words: “OH
WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
Movies
Jobs' life was the subject of two films: 2013's Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher as Jobs, and 2015's
Steve Jobs, with Michael Fassbender playing the Apple co-founder.
Citation Information
Article Title
Steve Jobs Biography
Author
Biography.com Editors
Website Name
The Biography.com website
URL
https://www.biography.com/business-figure/steve-jobs
Access Date
December 6, 2021
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
February 4, 2021
Original Published Date
April 2, 2014
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12/6/21, 11:45 AM Steve Jobs - Movie, Daughter & Death - Biography
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