A Short Biography Of Steve jobs

Born in the spring of 1955, Steve Jobs grew up in the area that would eventually become known as Silicon Valley. He was raised by adoptive parents Paul and Clara in comfortable circumstances. In high school he met his girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, and their relationship would last for several years. A college dropout, he tried his hand at various different potential career paths before settling on a video game design role with Atari in 1974. It was thanks to this job that he acquired sufficient personal savings to fund a soul-searching trip to India, where he first encountered Buddhism, which was to become his lifelong faith.

It was on his return to the US that he renewed his friendship with Steve Wozniak, whom he had known since high school. At that point, Wozniak was working for Hewlett-Packard, and was in the throes of developing his very own computer logic board. Buoyed by Wozniak's progress, Jobs proposed that the two of them. go it alone, and start up their own business. They eventually did this in 1976, funded by the sale of Jobs's VW camper van and Wozniak's programmable calculator.

The product of this initial creative period was the circuit board that became known as the "Apple I". But it was not until the following year, when Wozniak completed work on the significantly improved "Apple II", that things really began to fall into place for the entrepreneurial duo. One of Jobs's most distinctive features was his refusal to conform to conventional standards of business attire. He seldom wore suits, and throughout the '70s his hair was long and hippy like. But this unorthodox approach did not stop him from attaining sufficient support and funding to launch the incorporated company, Apple Computer. The company's flagship product- the aforementioned "Apple II"- was a major success, and Steve Jobs's business empire grew exponentially from there.

Of course, the growth of his company took its toll on his personal life, and he split from partner Chrisann Brennan in 1977, leaving her to raise the couple's young daughter Lisa, who was born in spring of 1978.

In fact, Jobs denied paternity of Lisa for a long time, prompting a considerable legal battle between the former romantic partners, as well as significant scandal in the media which dogged the early years of Apple. Steve Jobs would later acknowledge his fatherhood of Lisa, and endeavor to make amends with Chrisann, though the situation between them remained frosty.

The genius of Steve Jobs lay in his understanding that personal computing needed to be kept _simple_ in order to achieve mass-appeal. This can be traced back to an experience he and a group of engineers had when they visited the the Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center in 1979, and learned about technological developments to make computers both more efficient _and_user-friendly. This fundamental facet of his approach to business and development is what set him apart from his competitors. But for all his outward show of suaveness and unflappability, Jobs was an obsessive perfectionist. He famously demanded that his products be not only great but "insanely great." He also wanted their inner functionality to be reflected in the sleekness of their appearance, in one notorious instance discarding a circuit board design because it did not meet his aesthetic approval.

By 1983, Apple was a _Fortune _500 corporate giant, and the 1984 launch of the Apple "Macintosh" computer was a defining event not only in Steve Jobs's career, but in the history of technology. Jobs's personal introduction ensured that his personality and his product were inextricably linked from that point onward. Although the original Mac's limited

functionality meant that initial sales did not meet expectations, Jobs's dogged pursuit of excellence meant that significant improvements were made to subsequent models.

However, this was not enough to keep the board of directors happy, and in 1985 Steve Jobs was officially ousted from his role at Apple. Jobs refused to rest on his laurels though, and the following year he started up another all-new company called NeXT Inc. This time round, he opted to specialize in education technology. Though NeXT Inc. was not the world-beating enterprise that Apple had been,

it still effectively represented Jobs's eye for innovation. Take for example the fact that Tim Berners-Lee, famed developer of the world's first web browser, did the bulk of his work using a NeXT workstation. Jobs also acquired a major financial stake in Pixar, a graphics company which was a subsidiary of LucasFilm, the company founded by famous Hollywood director George Lucas, of _Star Wars_fame.

It was in early 1986 that Jobs's adopted mother Clara was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. During the time he spent with her in her final days,he found out more about the circumstances of his adoption, and made the decision to seek out his birth family. Following Clara's death, Jobs found out that his birth mother was a woman named Joanne Schieble, and he resolved to locate her and meet with her. Following an emotionally-charged initial meeting, the two became firm friends, and Jobs also found out he had a biological sister named Mona. His newly-found sister had a major effect on his personal life and outlook, and she even managed to help repair the relationship between Jobs and his daughter Lisa.

In 1989, during a lecture at Stanford University, Steve Jobs had his first encounter with the woman who would eventually become his wife- Laurene Powell. Their relationship developed quickly, and they were married in March of 1991. Their first child was born in September of that year, with two more born in 1995 and 1998 respectively.

Meanwhile, the years following Jobs's exodus from Apple had seen the tech firm experience significant losses. By the mid 1990s, Apple was in dire financial straits. In fact, the tech giant was on the verge of collapse. In an ironic twist of fate, Apple chief executive Gilbert Amelio oversaw the purchase of NEXTSTEP for over $400 million. NEXTSTEP was the new name for what had once been NeXT, Inc. This meant bringing Steve Jobs back into the fold at Apple. Now Jobs was acting as a consultant for the company which he himself co-founded. In a further dramatic turn of events, Amelio was ousted as chief executive by the board of directors, and Jobs was reinstated as chairman of the board in June 1997.

Over the next five years or so,Apple was firmly re-established as the tech giant it had once been. Profits were at an all-time high, and Steve Jobs's iconic (and somewhat eccentric) persona was fully codified in the public consciousness. For instance, the image of him wearing his trademark black sweater and rimless spectacles became virtually indistinguishable from the archetypal "Silicon Valley billionaire." It also became intrinsic to his marketing strategy, fostering a kind of cult of personality centered around himself and his products. As such, he did not believe invisual-centric presentations;

instead he used evocative language and his own charismatic presence to win supporters and to outline his vision. He sought to create not only customers, but individuals who could not live without Apple products. Really, the key to Jobs's success was in the simplicity of his ambition. He knew that it was better for Apple to do one thing well than to attempt to diversify into other, weaker areas. Apple continued to do what it did best to produce personal computers. Though it was not the first company to do so, Jobs was determined to make it the best.

The iMac, the iBook and the G4 were a string of triumphs for Apple which helped to re establish market dominance, and to demonstrate Jobs's unique knack for marketing. The iMac set the benchmark for Apple's future desktop production- it was an all-in-one creation that was also the world's first "legacy-free" PC, meaning it had a USB port but completely eschewed the floppy disk drive which was a common feature of personal computers up until that point. As such, Apple proved itself to be a trend-setter.

In 2001, though, the company

made its biggest step forward

yet thanks to iTunes- a program used for the distribution and sale of music in MP3 format. Essentially, iTunes was a music library, but also a media player and broadcasting service. It allowed users to purchase and download music, TV programs, movies and other media all in one place for the very first time.

That same year Apple also produced the iPod, the MP3 player which set the bar for portable music devices. Perhaps the most impressive feature of the iPod was its size, which was a scant few inches but boasted

up to 10 GB capacity. This

product also revolutionized the

music industry, and the way art

is distributed and perceived in

the 21st century. Essentially, the

iPod was the very first device

which allowed users to

transport thousands of songs

around with them, effectively

rendering physical copies of

albums altogether obsolete.

Just after the dawn of the

millennium, Jobs's health began

to decline. In 2003 he was

diagnosed with pancreatic

cancer, however he resisted

conventional medical treatment

for over nine months, instead relying on homeopathic

remedies of limited efficacy. It

has been suggested that his

stubborn refusal to acquiesce to

the recommendations of his

doctors had a major impact on

his overall health and life

expectancy. However, he did

finally undergo surgery to

remove the tumor from his

pancreas in 2004.

By 2004, however, his cancer

had returned. This was not

common knowledge (Jobs kept

his personal life and medical

history private), but his thin,

almost skeletal appearance

prompted considerable rumor

mongering in the press. This,coupled with his apparently

uninspired keynote address at

the Apple Worldwide

Developers Conference in

summer 2006, led to significant

underlying speculation

concerning his health.

However, Steve Jobs's personal

problems did not affect Apple's

relentless innovation. In 2007,

the company released one of its

signature creations: the iPhone.

It's hard to quantify quite how

extraordinary the impact of this

new device was on the world of

telecommunications. Up until

that point, a portable device with such an immense array of features was simply unheard of.

It was the first mobile phone to

offer internet connectivity, as

well as both audio and video

capabilities. However,

contemporary criticism

indicated that the product was

simply too expensive to achieve

mass appeal.

This problem was remedied the

following year, when the iPhone

3G (the successor to the original

device) was released. This

product combined heightened

functionality with a lower cost.

The advancements continued,

and the next product was twice

as fast at half the cost.

Successive models offered yet

more dazzling features and enhanced connectivity. The next generation of Apple products introduced the iPad, which was the world's first mass-marketed tablet computer, complete with virtual keyboard. Yet another of Apple's major creations was the voice activated virtual assistant, "Siri," which has been praised for its ability to recognize and differentiate between user voices, to adapt to certain patterns of speech, and to provide a wealth of useful information. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs himself would not live to see the Siri technology reach its full potential. Though Apple continued its rise to

market dominance, this was

paralleled by its CEO's own

personal decline.

Jobs underwent a liver

transplant in 2009, and reports

indicated that his prognosis was

good. However, less than two

years later, in January 2011,

Steve Jobs took a leave of

absence from Apple for

unspecified medical reasons. In

August of that same year, he

officially resigned as CEO.

Finally, on October 5th, 2011,

Steve Jobs passed away

peacefully at his home in Palo

Alto, California, aged 56.

Though Steve Jobs's life was tragically cut short by illness, there is no getting away from the fact that his contributions to technology and world history were immense. His legacy is assured, and the continued prominence of Apple means that his name will never be forgotten. Apple remains at the forefront of communication technology, and still offers considerable innovation in the name of its enigmatic co founder.