Steve Jobs was an American technology entrepreneur, visionary and inventor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc., CEO and largest shareholder of Pixar Animation Studios, a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT Inc. Apart from revolutionising the computer, music and publishing industries in his lifetime, Steve Jobs’ death has pointed out that he may have transformed just one more… the leadership industry.
Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s, along with Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak. Shortly after his death, Jobs' official biographer, Walter Isaacson, described him as the "creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing."
Adopted at birth in San Francisco, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s, Jobs' countercultural lifestyle was a product of his time. As a senior at Homestead High School, in Cupertino, California, his two closest friends were the older engineering student (and Homestead High alumnus) Wozniak and his countercultural girlfriend, the artistically inclined Homestead High junior Chrisann Brennan. Jobs briefly attended Reed College in 1972 before dropping out, deciding to travel through India in 1974 and study Buddhism.
After traveling back to America, Jobs attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak in 1975. In 1976, Wozniak invented the Apple I computer. After Wozniak showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it, they and Ronald Wayne formed Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs' Los Altos home on Crist Drive. Wayne stayed only a short time, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the active primary co-founders of the company. A neighbor on Crist Drive recalled Jobs as odd, an individual who would greet his clients "with his underwear hanging out, barefoot and hippie-like."
Another neighbor, Larry Waterland, who had just finished his PhD at Stanford in chemical engineering, recalled dismissing Jobs' budding business: " 'You punched cards, put them in a big deck,' he said about the mainframe machines of that time. 'Steve took me over to the garage. He had a circuit board with a chip on it, a DuMont TV set, a Panasonic cassette tape deck and a keyboard. He said, 'This is an Apple computer.' I said, 'You've got to be joking.' I dismissed the whole idea.' "Jobs' friend from Reed College and India, Daniel Kottke, recalled that he "was the only person who worked in the garage ... Woz would show up once a week with his latest code. Steve Jobs didn't get his hands dirty in that sense." Kottke also stated that much of the early work took place in Jobs' kitchen, where he spent hours on the phone trying to find investors for the company. Jobs and Wozniak gained fame and wealth a year later for the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers.
Jobs was worth a Million dollars when he was 23 (1978), 10 Million when he was 24, and over 100 Million when he was 25. He was also one of the "youngest people ever to make the Forbes list of the nation's richest people – and one of only a handful to have done it themselves, without inherited wealth."
In 1979, after a tour of Xerox PARC, Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface (GUI). This led to development of the failed Apple Lisa in 1983, followed by the successful Macintosh in 1984. In addition to being the first mass-produced computer with a GUI, the Macintosh instigated the sudden rise of the desktop publishing industry in 1985 with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics. Following a long power struggle, Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985.
After leaving Apple, Jobs took a few of its members with him to found NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in state-of-the-art computers for higher-education and business markets. In addition, Jobs helped to initiate the development of the visual effects industry when he funded the spinout of the computer graphics division of George Lucas' company Lucasfilm in 1986. The new company, Pixar, would eventually produce the first fully computer-animated film, Toy Story—an event made possible in part because of Jobs' financial support.
In 1997, Apple purchased NeXT, allowing Jobs to become the former's CEO once again. He would return the company, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, back to profitability. Beginning in 1997 with the "Think different" advertising campaign, Jobs worked closely with designer Jonathan Ive to develop a line of products that would have larger cultural ramifications: the iMac, iTunes, Apple Stores, the iPod, the iTunes Store, the iPhone, the App Store, and the iPad. Mac OS was also revamped into Mac OS X, based on NeXT's NeXTSTEP platform.
"Basically Steve Wozniak and I invented the Apple because we wanted a personal computer. Not only couldn't we afford the computers that were on the market, those computers were impractical for us to use. We needed a Volkswagen. The Volkswagen isn't as fast or comfortable as other ways of traveling, but the VW owners can go where they want, when they want and with whom they want. The VW owners have personal control of their car."
—Steve Jobs.
Unlike most technologists and entrepreneurs who appear to succeed only once, Steve Jobs was distinctly different, in that he constantly repeated his success. He never gave up and steadfastly pursued his dreams, and is believed to have never been driven by the riches or the fame that followed his success. Jobs was clearly obsessed with the products that his company rolled out, and pursued them to the minutest detail. He was a perfectionist, and a strongly opinionated one at that.
No matter what dream you conceive, never forget that it's possible. Run after your dreams, if you can't run, then walk, if can't walk, then crawl, whatever you do just keep on moving, never stop.
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