Biography of Steve Jobs,The Incredible Ups and Downs of Steve Jobs: Biography

                                                         

                                 Biography of Steve Jobs

 In high school, a student interested in takingapart and rebuilding machines approached the CEO of Hewlett-Packard and asked for someparts to help him complete a class project. Duly impressed, the CEO made arrangementsfor the student to get the parts. And years later, he was probably thrilledto be able to say he took the time to do so. The confident, driven student who asked forthe parts was Steve Jobs, a man who would go on to become the CEO of Apple Computersand a pre-eminent figure in the tech industry…

                                                                 Early Life 

Steve Jobs was born to two unmarried graduatestudents in 1955 (curiously, just 9 months before Microsoft founder Bill Gates). His parents gave him up for adoption, andJobs was 30 years old and well in the midst of tech stardom before he learned about hisbirth parents, the Simpsons. Growing up, the only family he knew was hisadoptive parents, a couple from Mountain View, California who fostered his interest in takingapart and rebuilding machines. His father, Paul Jobs, was a machinist whotaught Jobs about electronics from an early age. Working in the family garage, the two spenthours tinkering on projects. During these work sessions in the garage,Jobs’ father taught him a lesson that has made its way into Apple products of all shapesand sizes. Jobs later described this, saying, “Whenyou’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a pieceof plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re goingto use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic,the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” Though Jobs showed an early interest in mechanicsand design, he did not show early promise in school. His mother had taught him to read as a toddler,but he was bored in school and often goofed off, a habit that frustrated one teacher tothe point of bribing him to behave.

 This teacher saw potential in a young Jobs,and Jobs later credited Mrs. Hill with being one of the “saints” of his life. Jobs so excelled in that fourth grade classwith Mrs. Hill that he skipped over the fifth grade entirely and headed straight for middleschool. This jump ahead was tough for him initially:he was bullied and became a bit of a loner. Indeed, he disliked middle school so muchthat he told his parents that if he couldn’t switch schools he would just stop going toschool altogether. To keep Jobs in school, the family moved fromMountain View to Los Altos, and Jobs settled into the Cupertino School District. It was here, that he met and befriended BillFernandez, another student interested in electronics. Fernandez later played a critical role inthe creation of Apple computers when he introduced Jobs to his neighbor - another electronicsaficionado, and someone you might have heard of… His neighbour was Steve Wozniak (more on himin a minute). Early Work By the time he entered high school, Jobs wasalready working at Hewlett-Packard, where a cold call to the CEO had earned him a joboffer. But while he was in high school his interestsbegan to diversify quite a bit. Jobs discovered a love for the classics andfor literature in general - Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare were particular favorites. 

During his senior year, Jobs was so excellingin English that he was able to take classes at Stanford. When it came time to attend college, though,Jobs opted to attend Reed State in Oregon. But, well, that didn’t last long. After only one semester, Jobs’ previousaversion to formal education reared its head and he dropped out. He continued dropping in on classes that interestedhim, though he wasn’t earning credits and wasn’t paying for anything. Interestingly, one of those drop-in classesgreatly affected his future. Something that he explained in his famous2005 Stanford commencement address (something, by the way, that is well worth watching). "If I had never dropped in on that singlecalligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionallyspaced fonts." Career Beginning Despite being a college dropout, Jobs wasable to secure a job with Atari computers in 1974. He worked as a tech, assisting the engineerswho were doing the heavy duty coding work. Jobs didn’t have a lot of money at thistime, and he was trying to scrape funds together to travel to India to study Eastern religion- his interests in things outside technology had stuck around. The head of Atari, Neil Bushnell, years latersaid he thought Jobs was saving money by actually living in the office... “I'm not sure about this but I actuallythink Steve was living there, so people used to complain that he didn't smell that well... I'd come in on the weekend and he'd be there,I'd come in late at night and he'd be there." 

The time at Atari also marked a key pointin the friendship between Jobs and his old friend Steve Wozniak. Jobs was assigned to design a circuit boardfor the video game Breakout, and he approached Wozniak to help because Atari was offeringa bonus if it could be designed using fewer chips. Jobs also needed the project completed inonly four days. What Jobs didn’t tell Wozniak was that Atarihad offered Jobs a large bonus for using fewer chips - a bonus Jobs received and kept forhimself even though Wozniak did the majority of the work. When Wozniak found out about the lie ten yearslater, he is reported to have cried. But Wozniak didn’t know of Jobs’ deceitat the time, and the two continued experimenting with technology together. 

But, their tinkering was put on hold for sevenmonths, though, when Job’s alleged living in the office had saved him enough money totravel to India. He went to India in search of spiritual enlightenment,something that was rather in fashion in the 60s and 70s. He did this trip on an incredibly tight budget- he slept on the street, sweated on crowded buses, and ate the bare minimum… He also must have eaten some pretty sketchyfood, reportedly getting dysentery and losing forty pounds. During this time he was also meditating andlearning about Zen Buddhism. He wanted to go to Tibet, but after his travelers’checks were stolen he decided to head home to the U.S. Back home, he continued his practice of meditation,as well as another habit he’d picked up... his use of psychedelic drugs. Jobs was a big fan of LSD, a drug he startedusing in college and would credit with expanding his creativity and vision of the world: “Taking LSD was a profound experience, oneof the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another sideto the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creatinggreat things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history andof human consciousness as much as I could.” The Beginning of Apple Back in the United States, Jobs had no moneyand lived in his parents’ toolshed that he had converted to a bedroom. But he and Wozniak continued to work on computers,with Jobs convincing Wozniak that at least one of Wozniak’s early products was sellable.

 Wozniak had built a product, known as a ‘bluebox’ that could mimic the tones of a telephone system and essentially trick a phone intomaking a free long distance call for the user. With technology today we don’t think twiceabout calling someone on the other side of the planet, but In the 1970s this was a bigdeal. Now, as you might have guessed, these blueboxes were totally illegal, but they still sold well. Yep, Steve Job’s first business… Selling illegal devices to make long distancephone calls for free! Now, the next brainchild that Wozniak hadwas much more legitimate... It was a product that would become the AppleI. In 1976, Jobs suggested selling it, and heand Wozniak officially started Apple Computers. The company was first run out Jobs’ parents’garage, and most of their customers were hobbyists. But enough computer hobbyists were layingout money for the Apple I that Jobs and Wozniak had cash in their pockets. Jobs began searching for investors, and Wozniakkept designing. In 1977, just a year after the company launched,they put out another version of their computer, the Apple II. This time, it had color graphics and was muchmore user-friendly allowing for it to be used outside of just the hobbiest market.

 They sold $3 million of the Apple II in theirfirst year alone, but this figure was about to become dwarfed... Two years later, they had sold $200 millionworth,but again, this seemingly huge number was about to be dwarfed again... In 1980, only four years after their launch,Jobs and Wozniak went public. By the end of Apple’s first day of publictrading the company was worth an astounding $1.2 BILLION. Steve Jobs was only twenty-five years old. Family During the nascent years of Apple, Jobs wasdealing with much personal turmoil. His longtime on-again, off-again girlfriendChrisann Brennan had moved in with him, and she got pregnant. Jobs was, by all accounts, not thrilled aboutthis news. He later told Brennan: “I never wanted toask that you get an abortion. I just didn't want to do that." Brennan had been offered a job at Apple, butgiven Jobs’ reaction to her pregnancy she did not want to take it. She left him and their house, and began workingas a cleaner. Despite asking for support from Jobs, he didnot provide any support for his child until a paternity confirmed that he was the father. Even then, despite his company being worthover a billion dollars, he was only required to provide $500 a month in child support.

 Despite these early problems, Lisa and Jobslater reconciled, and Lisa even lived with Jobs during her high school years. She then attended Harvard, and today worksas a writer in New York City. Though it took him years to admit to it, Jobsnamed one of Apple’s early products after his daughter. But the LISA computer was not as successfulas the Apple II had been. This failure was followed by another - theApple III, which again failed to live up to expectations (and not just Job’s expectations,but everyones). Getting Sent to “Siberia” Despite Apple being Job’s company, the factthat is was public, meant that the Apple board had the power to oust him as CEO. And in 1983, they did just that. They didn’t fire him though, they just senthim to “Siberia” (not literally of course, but he referred to the office he was put inas Siberia, illustrating well the fact that he was in some sort of exile.) Most Apple employees were probably pleasedto see him go.... He was notoriously difficult to deal with,and a former Apple employee described Jobs’ attitude toward work as "management by characterassassination." By 1985, he was tired of hanging out in Siberiaand decided to leave the company he had founded and start a brand new one. "What had been the focus of my entire adultlife was gone, and it was devastating," Jobs said of this experience. "I even thought about running away from thevalley. But something slowly began to dawn on me-Istill loved what I did. And so I decided to start over.” 

He started “Next Computer Company,” whichbrought its first product to market in 1988. That computer, though, it had a price of $10,000,a price way higher than most consumer were willing to pay. Needless to say, it didn’t sell well. It wasn’t a good start for Job’s fledgingcompany and so he decided to shift the company to building software. Pixar But Jobs’ focus was drawn elsewhere... somewhererather unusual - the movies. In 1986, he bought Pixar from George Lucas. As part of his dream for this company, Jobswanted to be responsible for the first movie done entirely with computer-animation. It took four years, but he eventually achievedthat dream. That movie was Toy Story. It was released in November 1995 it becamea favorite film for kids and adults, and to this day maintains a perfect 100% score onRotten Tomatoes.. A year after the release of Toy Story, therewas even better news... Jobs took Pixar public and in something ofa deja vu situation, his shares were worth one BILLION dollars after the first day oftrading. This first day of trading was the first ina string of good days for Jobs. Shortly after Pixar went public, Apple putout the welcome mat for Steve Jobs to return. When he returned in 1997 the company was operatingat a loss, and they needed Jobs’ vision and drive back at the helm.

 Apple also announced that they would buy thestruggling Next Computer Company - turning a previous failure of Jobs into a success... Return to Apple Jobs triumphantly returned to the companythat he founded. The company wanted him to bring Apple to theforefront of the personal computer market. Within months of his return, Jobs was namedCEO. He paid himself a salary of only one dollara year, and in exchange brought both business acumen and creative design ideas to the companyHe negotiated a financial deal with Microsoft that brought Apple cash flow it needed tostay afloat, while helping Microsoft avoid the perception that they were a monopoly. Then, he envisioned the big idea that helpedbring Apple back to profitability in its own right - the iMac. It was in 1998 that Apple released the brightlycolored, egg-shaped desktop computer called the iMac. The iMac is even still made today… althoughit looks rather different today! From the iMac forward, Apple and Jobs justcouldn’t miss. They revolutionized the way people listento music in 2001 with the iPod, and then the way they communicated in 2007 with the iPhone,and then were pioneers in the tablet market with the 2010 release of the iPad. Jobs once said of Apple, "We started out toget a computer in the hands of everyday people, and we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams." Today, it’s nearly impossible to walk downthe street without seeing someone with an Apple-made device in their hands. Through these years of professional success,Jobs had still found the time to focus on his family. In 1986 his adoptive mother was diagnosedwith lung cancer, and this, for the first time, prompted Jobs’ interest in his biologicalparents. 

When his adoptive mother passed away, Jobsspoke to his father about contacting his birth parents, whose names he had on documents fromhis parents. Jobs met both his birth mother, Joanna Scheible,and his biological sister, Mona Simpson, shortly after his adoptive mother died. Scheible and Jobs’ birth father had divorcedin 1962 when the Syrian migrant opted to return to Syria after earning his PhD. When Jobs was introduced to Mona, she wasstill searching for their father. Jobs joined her in the search, and what theyfound out was surprising. Their father was not in Syria working in academia... Rather, their father was living in Californiaand running a restaurant. Incredibly, Jobs said he had met the man Monaidentified as their father, he had shaken his hand, had eaten in his restaurant... butnever knew he was his father. 

Jobs had no interest in getting to know hisfather as he had gotten to know his mother and Mona, though, explaining his decisionby saying, “I learned a little bit about him and I didn’t like what I learned.” While getting to know his birth family, Jobsalso decided to start a family of his own. In 1989, Jobs gave a lecture at Stanford BusinessSchool and he was riveted by a woman in the front row. "She was right there in the front row in thelecture hall, and I couldn't take my eyes off of her ... kept losing my train of thought,and started feeling a little giddy," this is how he described feeling when he firstsaw Laurene Powell. Laurene Powell was an MBA student at Stanford,and Jobs struck up a conversation with her after the lecture. He invited her out to dinner that night, andthe two began a romantic relationship. A Zen Buddhist monk presided over their weddingceremony at Yosemite National Park in 1991, and over the next seven years the couple hadthree children. They remained married until Jobs’ deathin 2011. Sickness Amidst all of the successes of the early yearsof the 21st Century, Jobs was not free from worry. And neither was Apple Computers. In 2003, Jobs received the news all of usdread - he had cancer.

 His doctors had found a cancerous tumor inhis pancreas, and though operable it was a rare form of cancer... Jobs refused to listen to his doctors andhave an operation right away, though. Instead he opted to explore other options,namely veganism and acupuncture. In 2004, with these alternative methods notimproving his condition, Jobs opted to have the tumor surgically removed. Several cancer specialists have since saidthat period of waiting may have cost Jobs years of his life. In 2005, Jobs gave a commencement addressat Stanford University that frankly and poignantly discussed his thoughts on life and death nowthat he had to confront the matter head-on. The fifteen minute speech reflected on threemoments in his life that helped get him to where he was, and in telling those storieshe imparted a message to the graduates - and to the world - to do what you love, rememberyou are going to die, and have trust in your inner voice. "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is themost important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. 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. Remembering that you are going to die is thebest way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.

 There is no reason not to follow your heart,"he said. He closed the speech with simple words fromthe 1970s counter-cultural magazine The Whole Earth Catalog: “Stay hungry. Stay Foolish.” The commencement address struck a chord aroundthe world. It has been viewed over 27 million times onYouTube and serves as an inspiration, and a stark reminder of our limited time on Earth. It is a speech that truly every human canrelate to, given by a man whose mind and drive were far more extraordinary than most humans… Death Jobs continued to work at Apple followingthe surgery, but in 2008 people began asking questions about his health as his appearancebegan to show his illness. He was gaunt, graying, and just didn’t seemhealthy. The company continued to explain this away... After questions were raised at one tech eventApple attributed his appearance to a simple bug and said he was taking antibiotics. Shareholders continued to worry, and in 2009the truth came out - Jobs was suffering from ill health and ended up having a liver transplant. Tim Cook, Apple’s head of Worldwide Sales,filled in as CEO while Jobs was recovering from the procedure. Jobs managed to return to his post and continuedto be involved in the day-to-day operations of Apple with his prognosis being describedas “excellent”.

 But it was not to be. Only a year and a half after returning tothe helm of Apple Jobs had to step down as CEO. In providing his reasons to the company’sboard, he stated: “"I have always said if there ever camea day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would bethe first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come." Though he stepped down as CEO and handed TimCook the reins of his company, Jobs did serve as Chairman of the Apple Board. Sadly, it was for only six weeks that he wouldwork for Apple in this capacity. On October 4, 2011, Jobs lost consciousness. He stayed at home, surrounded by his family,and died of complications from his pancreatic cancer on October 5th. He was only 56 years old. The world greeted the death of this technologyicon with shock and grief. California’s Governor issued a proclamationfor a Steve Jobs Day to be celebrated, and the companies with which he was associatedall issued statements about the life, creativity, and innovation of their founder and partner. His family held a private funeral, the detailsof which are still unknown. In 56 years of life and 30 years in the techindustry, Steve Jobs was at the helm of guiding the world into the future. He was certainly a difficult man to deal with,but he was an innovator, a businessman, and a visionary whose ideas shaped the world welive in today.