Biography of Steve Jobs
Steve Paul Jobs was an American inventor and entrepreneur, co-founder of Apple Inc. He made history initially by revolutionizing the personal computer with the introduction of the graphical user interface. He then transformed the music industry with the invention of the iPod and iTunes. Finally, with the creation of the iPhone and later the iPad, Apple became a leader in the mobile device market.Childhood
Steve was born in 1955 in San Francisco. His biological parents were the unmarried couple, Syrian Abdul Fattah (John) Jandali, a political science professor, and German Joanne Schieble, who met at the University of Wisconsin. Joanne's family opposed the relationship and threatened to disinherit her, so she decided to give the child up for adoption.When Steve was in the 7th grade, due to increased crime in their new neighborhood, his parents had to spend their last savings to buy a house in the more affluent Los Altos. They could only afford a modest three-bedroom bungalow on Crist Drive. The house, where Steve assembled the first Macintosh, is now part of the popular tourist routes, and the city itself has become part of Silicon Valley, the world's most progressive area.
Education and Early Steps
After high school, Steve Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but soon dropped out because the tuition was too expensive. During his brief time there, Steve met Daniel Kottke, who became his best friend. He received a job offer from Hewlett-Packard and accepted it. At work, Jobs met his namesake, Steve Wozniak, with whom he would make history.Since his student days, Steve was interested in the hippie subculture, and later his mind was captivated by the concept of Zen Buddhism. Therefore, after working at Atari for six months, he traveled to India. The journey was challenging: Jobs contracted dysentery and lost 33 pounds. Later, Kottke joined him on his trip, and together they searched for a guru and spiritual enlightenment. Years later, Steve admitted that he went to India to resolve the inner turmoil caused by his biological parents abandoning him. In 1975, Jobs returned to Los Altos and to Atari, volunteering to create a circuit board for the video game Breakout in record time. Steve had to minimize the number of chips on the board, with a reward of $100 for each chip eliminated. Jobs convinced Wozniak that he could do the job in four days, though such work typically took several months. In the end, Jobs succeeded, and Wozniak gave him a $350 check, lying that Atari had paid him $700 instead of the actual $5,000. After receiving a substantial sum for those times, Jobs quit his job.
The Creation of Apple
At 20, Steve Jobs was shown a homemade computer by Steve Wozniak, who convinced him to start manufacturing computers for sale. It all began with circuit board production, but eventually, the young men moved on to assemble computers.The friends also sold phone hacking equipment to phreakers, the predecessors of computer hackers. To hack, a 2600Hz tone was needed. Using simple children's whistles, former U.S. Air Force radio operator John Draper invented a gadget dubbed the "blue box," which emitted the required sound and allowed for free long-distance calls. Jobs and Wozniak connected with Draper and sold his invention, raising enough money to create their first batch of computers. However, Draper was unlucky and ended up in jail.
A month later, in July 1976, the first batch of computers named Apple I, each priced at $666.66, was delivered to the store.
At that time, the Lisa computer was being developed, named after Steve Jobs' daughter. The inventor planned to incorporate all of Xerox's developments and lead the innovative computer project, but his colleagues, Mark Markkula, who had invested more than $250,000 in Apple, and Scott Forstall reorganized the company and sidelined Jobs.
Revolution in the World of Gadgets
In 2001, Steve Jobs introduced the first Apple player named iPod. Later, the sales of this product became the company's main source of income, as the MP3 player was the fastest and most capacious player of its time.Simultaneously, starting from 2004, Apple launched the iPod Mini (which later transformed into the iPod Nano) and the ultra-portable iPod Shuffle without a screen.
In 2007, the touchscreen mobile phone iPhone went on sale. It was far from being the first phone with a touchscreen. For instance, Ericsson released its first touch-sensitive phone back in 2000, long before merging with Sony. In 2004, Philips launched the model 550 with a stylus-responsive screen. Three years before the first iPhone, Nokia, then the leading mobile device market player, introduced the touch phone 7710 based on the Symbian OS.
Jobs had a keen sense of what consumers wanted, so he aimed to create a compact machine capable of satisfying the whims of modern users. Steve's ideas were not always innovative; he skillfully utilized existing third-party developments, but he perfected them and "packaged them in an attractive wrapper." After his death, new Apple products, such as the Apple Watch, have not been revolutionary.
Steve Jobs' Personal Life
Steve Jobs called Chrisann Brennan his first love. He met the hippie girl in 1972 after running away from their parents. Together, they studied Zen Buddhism, took LSD, and hitchhiked.At a lecture at the Stanford Business School in 1989, Steve accidentally met a banking employee named Laurene Powell. A year later, the young couple got married, and in 1991 they had a son named Reed. Laurene later gave birth to two daughters - Erin (1995) and Eve (1998).
Illness and Death
In August 2004, doctors diagnosed Steve Jobs with pancreatic cancer, a disease that is difficult to treat. Typically, tumors in this location are considered inoperable, but Jobs was fortunate, in relative terms, to have a neuroendocrine tumor, which grows much slower and responds better to treatment; this occurs in one out of 20 cases.Despite the doctors continuing treatment and providing optimistic forecasts, in August 2011, the inventor resigned, and on October 5, 2011, Steve passed away from respiratory failure.Jobs underwent chemotherapy, but the tumor continued to grow. In 2009, Jobs had his liver, which was infected with cancer cells, completely removed and received a transplant. Immunosuppressive drugs were used to help his body accept the new liver, but this led to the metastases growing.
Legacy
After Steve's death, Tim Cook, the former COO, became the CEO of Apple. The company continues to thrive, releasing new models of smartphones, tablets, and computers.In 2013, the film "Jobs: The Man in the Machine" was released, featuring Ashton Kutcher as Steve, depicting the inventor's college years. Two years later, the biographical drama "Steve Jobs" hit the theaters, starring Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet in the lead roles. His son Reed studied history at Stanford University and after graduating, joined the investment fund Emerson Collective, founded by his mother. Soon after, he established the Yosemite Fund, supporting new cancer research methods.
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