On this day in history, October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs, the innovator and co-founder of Apple Inc, died at the age of 56 from complications related to pancreatic cancer.
The world's biggest company by market capitalization transformed the computer, music, and mobile communications industries with products, including the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
Steven Paul Jobs, born Abdul Lateef Jandali, was at the forefront of the personal computer revolution that took place in the 1970s and 1980s alongside his early business associate and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Jobs allegedly departed the company in 1985 after losing a boardroom dispute with John Sculley, a CEO he had hired from Pepsi a few years before.
The inventor felt compelled to leave the firm he established. Following his departure, Jobs brought several Apple colleagues with him to form NeXT Inc, his subsequent computer firm.
Jobs rejoined Apple as CEO after the firm purchased NeXT in 1997.
The tech CEO believed in the power of human creativity and innovation to change the world, a belief that was central to his leadership at Apple. His vision continues to inspire many people around the world.
One of Jobs' most memorable quotes is, "We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why are we here?"
How did Steve Jobs grow up?
Steven Paul Jobs came into the world on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. He was the child of Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, who were not married at the time and chose to give him up for adoption.
He was then adopted by a couple of modest means -- Paul and Clara Jobs. A few years after his adoption, they relocated to the suburban city of Mountain View.
Jobs dropped out of Reed College, a liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, after one semester in 1972, the year he graduated from high school in Cupertino, California.
Later, after taking a trip to India and studying Zen Buddhism, he temporarily worked in California for the groundbreaking video game company Atari.
How did Steve Jobs establish Apple?
In the year 1976, Steve Jobs, along with his friend and fellow computer engineer Stephen Wozniak, established Apple Computer. The foundation of this now-iconic company took place in the garage of Jobs’ parents’ house located in Los Altos, California.
Jobs lacked both formal technical background and practical business experience, as Bloomberg News would later observe.
Instead, he had a respect for "technology's elegance" and a notion that computers could be more than a hobbyist’s toy or a corporation’s workhorse. These machines could be "indispensable tools."
In 1977, the Apple II was introduced to the world by Jobs and Wozniak, marking the beginning of the personal computer’s popularity. By 1980, Apple had become a public company, and Jobs, who was in his mid-20s at the time, became a multimillionaire.
In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, one of the earliest personal computers to incorporate a graphical user interface. This innovation allowed users to navigate by using a mouse to point and click, rather than having to type commands.
Why is Steve Jobs important to Pixar?
Steve Jobs had a significant role in the development and success of Pixar. In February 1986, he purchased the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, Ltd and renamed it Pixar Animation Studios1. He invested $50 million of his own money in the company.
Despite initial financial struggles, Pixar went on to produce popular movies such as 'Toy Story', 'Finding Nemo', 'The Incredibles', 'Cars', and 'Up'. These successes were largely due to the team’s passion for filmmaking and their innovative use of computer animation
Jobs reportedly became Disney's top shareholder in 2006 when Walt Disney Company paid more than $7 billion to acquire Pixar, as per the New York Times.
Did Steve Jobs love his adoptive parents?
Clara acknowledged to Chrisann Brennan, Steve's high school sweetheart, that she "was too frightened to love [Steve] for the first six months of his life … I was scared they were going to take him away from me," according to 'The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs'.
"Even after we won the case, Steve was so difficult a child that by the time he was two I felt we had made a mistake. I wanted to return him," she said.
When Chrisann told Steve about this, he reportedly said that he was already aware and later noted that Paul and Clara had shown him a lot of affection and indulgence.
Jobs's wife Laurene said many years later that her husband "felt he had been really blessed by having the two of them as parents."
Jobs would "bristle" when Paul and Clara were mentioned as his "adoptive parents," and he considered them to be "1,000%" his parents.
"My sperm and egg bank," Jobs said of his biological parents. "That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more."
When did Steve Jobs officially leave Apple?
Jobs led Apple until August 24, 2011, when he resigned as the company's CEO despite a number of health difficulties, including surgery to remove a pancreatic tumor in 2004 and a liver transplant in 2009.
He suddenly died six weeks later at his Palo Alto, California, home. Jobs, a father of four, had a net worth believed to be more than $7 billion at the time of his death.
Who are Steve Jobs' children?
The journey of fatherhood for Steve Jobs began in 1978 with the birth of his daughter Lisa, whom he had with Chrisann Brennan.
In 1991, the tech CEO tied the knot with Laurene Powell and in the same year, they were blessed with a son named Reed. The family expanded with the arrival of a daughter Erin in 1995 and another daughter Eve in 1998, as per PEOPLE.
