Steve Jobs - Chairman and CEO of Apple Inc

Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc. Born : Steven Paul Jobs February 24,1955 San Francisco, California, U.S. Died : October 5, 2011 (aged 56) Palo Alto, California, U.S. Cause of death : Pancreatic cancer Nationality : American Ethnicity : Syrian, German Alma mater : Reed College (dropped out) Occupation : Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc. Co-founder and CEO, Pixar Founder and CEO, NeXT Inc. Years active : 1974–2011 Board member of : The Walt Disney Company Spouse : Laurene Powell (1991–2011, his death) Signature :

Synopsis Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for adoption. Smart but directionless, Jobs experimented with different pursuits before starting Apple Computers with Stephen Wozniak in the Jobs's family garage. Apple's revolutionary products, which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now seen as dictating the evolution of modern technology. Steve Jobs - Early Life Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, to Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave their unnamed son up for adoption. His father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a Syrian political science professor and his mother, Joanne Schieble, worked as a speech therapist. Shortly after Steve was placed for adoption, his biological parents married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that he was able to uncover information on his biological parents. As an infant, Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant and Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist. The family lived in Mountain View within California's Silicon Valley. As a boy, Jobs and his father would work on electronics in the family garage. Paul would show his son how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby which instilled confidence, tenacity and mechanical prowess in young Jobs. While Jobs has always been an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. In elementary school he was a prankster whose 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 his parents declined. After he did enroll in high school, Jobs spent his free time at Hewlett-Packard. It was there that he befriended computer club guru Steve Wozniak. Wozniak was a brilliant computer engineer, and the two developed great respect for one another. Apple's origins Woz, whose interest in electronics had grown stronger, was regularly attending meetings of a group of early computer hobbyists called the Homebrew Computer Club. They were the real pioneers of personal computing, a collection of radio jammers, computer professionals and enlightened amateurs who gathered to show off their latest prowess in building their own personal computer or writing software. The club started to gain popularity after the Altair 8800 personal computer kit came out in 1975. The knowledge that Woz gathered at the Homebrew meetings, as well as his exceptional talent, allowed him to build his own computer board — simply because he wanted a personal computer for himself. Steve Jobs took interest, and he quickly understood that his friend's brilliant invention could be sold to software hobbyists, who wanted to write software without the hassle of assembling a computer kit. Jobs convinced Wozniak to start a company for that purpose: Apple Computer was born on April 1, 1976. The following months were spent assembling boards of Apple I computers in the Jobses' garage, and selling them to independent computer dealers in the area. However, Wozniak had started work on a much better computer, the Apple II — an expandable, much more powerful system that supported color graphics. Jobs and Wozniak knew deep down it could be hugely successful, and therefore Jobs started to seek venture capital. He eventually convinced former Intel executive turned business angel Mike Markkula to invest $250,000 in Apple, in January 1977. Markkula was a big believer in the personal computing revolution, and he said to the young founders that, thanks to the Apple II, their company could be one of the Fortune 500 in less than two years. Macintosh However, because of his hot temper and his relative inexperience in technology or management, Steve Jobs was thrown out of the Lisa project. He felt absolutely crushed by this decision. As a revenge, he took over a small project called Macintosh, a personal computer that was supposed to be a cheap appliance, 'as easy to use as a toaster'. In 1981, Steve Jobs became head of the Macintosh project, and decided to make it a smaller and cheaper version of the Lisa, complete with a GUI of folders, icons and drop-down menus, and a mouse. The three years it took to develop Macintosh were some of the most productive and intense for Steve Jobs. He formed a small group of dedicated, young, brilliant engineers who stood fully behind his vision of a computer 'for the rest of us'. They saw themselves as 'pirates' against the rest of Apple, 'the Navy'. The team antagonized both the Apple II group and the Lisa group, because the Mac was competitive of both. Yet in 1983, after it became clear the Lisa was turning into another major flop for Apple, all of the company's hope started to rest on the Macintosh. Steve was supported in his mission by John Sculley, Apple's new CEO whom he hired in 1983 to help him run the company and groom him into a future chief executive. Leaving Apple On January 24 1984, after Apple had run a very memorable TV commercial for the SuperBowl ('1984'), Steve Jobs introduced Macintosh at the company's annual shareholders meeting. The product was launched in great fanfare and for the first few months, it was very successful. However, by early 1985, sales were plummeting, but Steve Jobs refused to acknowledge it and continued to behave as if he had saved Apple. This created a lot of tension within the company, especially between Steve and the CEO, John Sculley, who used to be very close but now stopped talking to one another. In May 1985, Steve Jobs started trying to convince some directors and top executives at Apple that Sculley should go. Instead, many of them talked to Sculley, who took the matter to the board of directors. The board sided with Sculley and a few days later, announced a reorganization of the company where Steve Jobs had no operational duties whatsoever — he was only to remain chairman of the board. Steve was aghast: Apple was his life, and he was effectively kicked out of it. After four months spent traveling and trying out new ideas, he came back in September with a plan: he would start a new computer company aimed at higher education, with a small group of other ex-Apple employees. When Apple learned of the plan, they declared they would sue him as he was taking valuable information about the company to compete with it. As a result, Steve Jobs resigned in September 1985, and sold all but one of his Apple shares, in disgust. He went ahead with his plan anyway, and incorporated NeXT. Apple dropped its lawsuit a few months later. Pixar To understand how Steve Jobs got out of his nadir, let's go back eight years earlier, in late 1985. At the time, George Lucas, who was in the middle of an expensive divorce, was selling the computer graphics division of his Lucasfilm empire. Steve Jobs had millions in the bank, after having sold all his Apple stock, and was interested. In early 1986, he bought the small group of computer scientists, and incorporated it as Pixar. The founders of Pixar, Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith, had gotten together in the late 1970s with a common vision of making films using computer animation only. But they also knew no computer was powerful enough at the time, and they would have to hold out for a couple decades before their dream could materialize. For the first five years of Pixar, Steve Jobs set a goal for the company to sell high-end computer graphics workstations for institutions, such as hospitals or even the army. The animations group led by John Lasseter was very small at the time, and only survived because it provided good publicity for the power of the Pixar rendering software. Steve Jobs understood this when the studio won an Academy Award for its short movie 'Tin Toy' in 1989. However, just like NeXT's, sales of Pixar hardware were microscopic, and the company went software-only in 1990. Back to Apple Business wasn't all sunshine and roses at Apple. In the decade following Steve's departure, the computer maker had milked all the cash it could from the Macintosh and its successors, surfing on the wave of the desktop publishing revolution that the Mac and the laser printer had made possible. But in 1995, after Microsoft had released Windows 95, which was a pale but working copy of the Mac OS, sales of Macintosh computers started plummeting. The Amelio-Jobs cooperation didn't last long, though: Apple lost $700 million in the first quarter of 1997, and the board decided to get rid of its CEO. Jobs effectively organized a board coup with the complicity of his billionaire friend Larry Ellison, and after a tenure that lasted exactly 500 days, Amelio was gone. In August 1997, Jobs took the stage at Macworld Boston to explain his plan for Apple: he had gotten rid of the old board of directors, and made a deal with Microsoft to settle patent disputes and invest $150 million in the struggling Silicon Valley icon. One month later, on September 16, 1997, Jobs accepted to become Apple's interim CEO. iPod nation The first digital music player that people loved, iPod was a commercial success from the day it debuted. It was released, of course, as Mac-compatible only, because its goal, just like iMovie or iDVD, was to help sales of Macs. But it came at a time when a lot of people needed a good MP3 player, and despite its rather high price tag, a lot of PC users ended up buying it too, hacking it so they could use it on their machines. This had Steve Jobs and his team think a great deal: should they keep making a Mac-only iPod, or should they open it to Windows, too? Although Jobs was opposed to the latter idea, he eventually relented, and the first Windows iPods were introduced in July 2002 at Macworld New York. Steve posing with iPod minis, 2004 Although iPod changed the music industry and the way everybody listen to music, the most important change it carried was probably that of Apple. The wild success of iPod proved to all the company's employees, starting with Jobs himself, that they were right to strive for perfection and ease of use — unlike the Mac, which still didn't make it past the 5% marketshare, iPod garnered Microsoft-like numbers of 80% of sales of MP3 players. It was iPod that revealed the future of Apple, not only as a PC manufacturer, but as a consumer electronics powerhouse. It was also iPod that broadened the company's expertise in the manufacturing, logistics and distribution of a mainstream digital device in gigantic proportions. Finally, it was iPod which, through the crowds it attracted to the company's retail stores, finally helped the Mac business of Apple, whose growth rate outpaced that of Windows PCs starting in 2005. Apple Inc. iPhone was not only a breakthrough digital convergence device ("an iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator" all in one), it was also a force of disruption of the traditional phone business. Just like for the iTunes Store, Steve Jobs had negotiated landmark deals with wireless carrier AT&T before he introduced iPhone — without ever showing it to them! In exchange for exclusivity, the carrier would pay Apple a share of all their iPhone subscription revenues. And of course, AT&T could not put any software on the iPhone, and no logo either. This was an inversion of the traditional master-slave relationship that carriers entertained with phone manufacturers. In the long run, it really put the phone industry upside down. Unlike iPod, all of Apple understood that iPhone would be a successful and rules-changing device, starting with their own company. That's why Steve Jobs announced that its name would change from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. Macs still mattered, but accounted for a minority of Apple's revenues already, and this decline would not stop any time soon. Apple had become the most prominent digital device company. The original iPhone was successful already: despite its $399 price tag, Apple sold 6 million of them during its existence. But sales really started to skyrocket in 2008, after Apple introduced the cheaper iPhone 3G (at a subsidized $199 price) and the App Store. Just like the Windows-compatible iPod, Steve Jobs was originally opposed to letting third-party software on the iPhone. But the demand was so high that he eventually relented, and introduced the iPhone SDK and the App Store in March 2008. It is impossible to overestimate the impact of the iPhone App Store, which ushered in a new era in mobile software. Thousands of developers started writing apps for the iPhone platform, which became a competitive advantage for Apple that no other company has been able to catch up with to this day. Apple proudly showed off this rich choice of software in its TV ad campaign 'There's an app for that' that ran for over two years. Ushering in the Post-PC era WWDC 2011 The iPhone had spun off the idea for a tablet device back in 2005, and it was time to restart that project, which of course led to the introduction of iPad. Although some speculated it would run Mac OS X, it was decided that iPad would in fact run the same operating system as iPhone, now called iOS. It would therefore benefit from the rich variety of apps already present in the iPhone App Store. Although iPad was welcomed by mixed reviews when it was introduced in January 2010 (some dubbed it a "larger iPod touch"), it was always clear to Steve Jobs that it was 'the biggest thing [he'd] ever done' — the ultimate post-PC device, an eventual replacement of PCs for the average user. He laid out his vision clearly at the D8 conference in May 2010, where he compared PCs to trucks, which still existed after cars were invented but were only for professional, niche use. This perspective on iPad was reiterated in a series of TV commercials where the narrator, the 'Apple voice', explained how revolutionary iPad was and how the revolution had 'only just begun'. Steve Jobs keynotes Apple is famous for its entertaining, world-class product presentations, that attract press coverage (read: free advertising) from the entire world — and there is no debate as to who built this reputation. Steve Jobs's celebrity and charisma made him "the closest thing to a rock star in the world of business". During his second tenure at Apple, between 1997 and 2011, he appeared 4 to 7 times a year (when he was healthy, of course) to unveil new products during one of his trademark 'keynotes'. While he was notoriously a capricious speaker who refused to rehearse in his late twenties, he perfected his art at NeXT, and came back to Apple as the best showman of the industry. The Apple keynotes were more common in the early 1990s, because broadband Internet and video streaming were far from mainstream yet, making it necessary for Steve Jobs to physically go and preach the Apple gospel in several cities, and for the company to hold conferences to show off their new products. At the time, Jobs spoke at Macworld San Francisco in January, at Macworld Tokyo in February, at WWDC in May or June, at Macworld New York in July, and at the Paris Apple Expo in September. He also spoke at discrete media events and often at the desktop publishing conference Seybold. Steve Jobs typically started his keynotes by some corporate news, such as the company's revenues or retail store numbers. Then a series of mini-segments would follow, either introduction of minor products such as software upgrades or product line refreshes, guest speakers (e.g. developers), product demos, or new commercials. Then, at the end, would come the biggest announcement (typically preceded by Steve's 'One More Thing…' joke) where the most important new product was unveiled. At some events, the audience was also treated with a musician's guest performance to close the show. You can see some of these 'tricks' in our video page Steve-isms Steve Jobs & Money Steve Jobs used to say: "I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over ten million dollars when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and… it wasn't that important — because I never did it for the money". The truth is that although he never spent his money lavishly, Jobs often used it politically in the course of his career. Steve's sister Mona Simpson said during her eulogy "This is not to say that [Steve] didn't enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there. And he did." There was a little more to that. Steve received a private jet (a Gulfstream V) as a gift from the Apple board in 2000, which he used to take his family to Kona Village in Hawaii almost every year. He bought a new model of the same car every 6 months (a Mercedes SL55 AMG in his later years), so he wouldn't have the legal obligation to get a license plate — and he was a reckless driver to boot. And in 2010-2011, he spent a considerable of time designing a yacht with a glass deck, which he hoped to use to take his family on vacation, and to eventually retire. Yet all these millionaire perks where nothing compared to what he could afford with his $8.3 billion dollar net worth (in 2011)… compare and contrast with his good friend Larry Ellison, multi-billionaire co-founder of Oracle. After Jobs's death, a controversy arose again about his lack of any philanthropic initiatives. The refrain goes that Jobs never gave money to philanthropy, and that after shutting down Apple's philanthropic arm in 1997, when the company was in dire straits, he never reinstated it later. He wouldn't talk about it to his biographer Walter Isaacson either. The truth is that he made donations to a couple of institutions, including the Stanford Hospital, and that he was a big help in the (RED) campaign by creating a red iPod. However, he did not spend his time picking up charities, feeling he served a better cause by working for Apple and creating money that his shareholders could distribute. He actually started a foundation in 1986, but closed it after 15 months, as he spent all his time at NeXT. Final Years On October 5, 2011, Apple Inc. announced that co-founder Steve Jobs had died. He was 56 years old at the time of his death. - r@j