Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is known all over the world for being the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple computer, CEO and largest shareholder of Pixar Animation Studios, a member The Walt Disney Company's board of Directors, and founder, chairman and CEO of NeXT Inc. I read a book titled Steve Jobs insanely great. It is a graphic biography written by Jessie Hartland. I learnt quite a lot from this book, and I would like to share this new knowledge with you all.

Steve Jobs was born on 24 of February in 1955 to Joanne Schieble Simpson and Abdufattah Jandali in San Francisco, California. His parents are unmarried college students. They put Steve up for adoption. Later, they marry and have a daughter named Mona Simpson that they raise, then they divorce. Steve is adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs. Unable to have their own children, they are very excited. Clara and Paul later adopt a girl named Patty. Steve grows up in the Santa Clara Valley/Silicon Valley. 

From a young age, Steve is very mischievous. He is a rule-breaker. His father Paul is a machinist. He makes prototypes in the technology industry. He likes to fix cars in his free time. Sometimes Steve likes to help. They like to tinker. They visit the junkyard many times in the weekends to pick up odds and ends for projects they make in their garage. Steve even has his own workbench.

His hometown in the 1960's is a busy, buzzing place with hundreds of technology companies employing thousands of people. The United States is in a Cold War and a space race with the Soviet Union, the Russians currently winning the race with the launch of Sputnik, the first ever satellite. Trying to catch up, the government of the US is funding hundreds, if not thousands of defence contractors who are experimenting with new space and weapons technology. These businesses are part of the Military - industrial complex. His neighbourhood is filled with engineers who work at places like NASA, Westinghouse and Lockheed Missile. 

Companies that started small inside home garages like HP (Hewlett-Packard) are becoming giant. Tiny new companies and organisations are starting to appear in his neighbourhood. Steve and his father make good use of their garage.

He learns at a young age that he is adopted. He thinks that his biological parents didn't want him. With all the promises and words of encouragement from Clara and Paul, the idea of his parents leaving him will traumatise him forever.

He is a very naughty boy in Middle School. He is very bored and mischievous. He is sent home many times. However, his fourth-grade maths teacher notices his brilliance, and keeps him occupied with a challenge . Her name was Imogene Hill. 

As an outgoing and curious child, Steve makes friends with some of the neighbourhood's engineers. He learns a lot from them, always telling his parents what he learns. He is a very bright, intelligent child.

When Steve was twelve, he decided to build a frequency counter to assist him with electronic projects. Because he was missing much needed parts, he contacts his neighbour, the co-funder of HP, Bill Hewlett. Bill gives him the parts, and offers him a Summer Job making frequency counters. He gladly accepts. He also has a newspaper route job, works at an electronics store, and works at the mall entertaining kids. He saves some money, and at age 15 buys his first car, a Nash Metropolitan. He also smoke pot and took drugs like LSD.

Through a friend in the class, he meets Steve Wozniac, or Woz for short. They find out that they have a lot in common with each other, and decides to become friends. At this time, Steve is a High School senior. Woz is four years older, and attends UC Berkeley. He is a real techno-whiz, sweet natured, shy young man.The same year, he meets Chrisann Brennan, his first serious girlfriend. They later have a baby girl named Lisa.Steve wants nothing to do with it, and they break up. 

Steve and Woz start hanging around with each other, and they start 

Steve went to Reed College in Oregon. After one semester, he drops out. He still stayed at Reed for a few courses. He especially liked the calligraphy class. To earn extra money, he returns soda cans and collects five cents each in return. He works on an apple orchard and eats a lot of carrots. Because of this, he thinks that he should not bathe much.

He moves back home after 18 months, and gets a job at Atari. He gets a job as a technician, but because he hardly ever bathes, he is made the employee on the nightshift.

He would always ask himself this every morning - "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" When the answer was no for awhile, he knew something had to change. So, he decided to travel to India with his friend Dan. When he returned to California, his parents could hardly recognise him.

He likes to take long walks while he thinks. He meditates in the mornings, audits physics classes at Stanford University in the afternoon, dreams of starting his own business, and goes back to work at Atari. His boss, Nolan Bushnell offers him advice. " Pretend to be completely in control, and people will assume that you are. Don't take no for an answer."

Woz shows Steve is design for something called a home computer, which would be a first. They decide that they could do this, so they fundraise some money to buy parts to build a prototype. Woz sells his HP calculator for $500, and Steve sells his Volkswagen van for $1,500. And they start. Steve and Woz start thinking of names for their new company. Steve, thinking back to his days in Oregon tending an apple orchard, suggests Apple Computer. And Apple Computer is born.

Steve and Woz become more active in a local computer club. One day, they decide to show their prototype of the Apple 1 computer. Everyone but one person who owns a chain of stores is not impressed. This man asks them to keep in touch, and the very next day when Steve drops into one of his shops, he makes his very first sale. Apple Computer is now in business. Following this news, an assembly line is set up in the Jobs' family house. Steve does the soldering. Woz assembles boards. Clara answers the phone. Patty helps too. Another friend does the book keeping. Dan packs the assembled computers into boxes, and Paul tests them. Steve also delivers the finished product.

Apple Computer is a great success thanks to ingenuity, hard work and being in the right place at the right time. In 1978, Xerox gives Apple a call. Like many others, they want to invest in the hot, new computer company. Steve made a deal. "Invest a million dollars into Apple if they show them what's going on at Xerox PARC." Steve sees some good ideas, and uses them in Apple's next computer. These ideas include the mouse, overlapping windows, networking and more.

In 1985, Apple has a big meeting without Steve. They suggest Steve quit running the group for the new Macintosh computer and start a research group at Apple, but he decides that he can't live with a smaller role in the company he founded. He fights with CEO John Sculley - who was only CEO because Steve offered him a job there - for the top job, but he is so nasty, unreasonable and difficult to work with that the board members and other employees choose Sculley as boss. Steve is forced out of the company he started in his parents garage.

He travels to Europe, thinking of creating another company. So he does. He calls it NeXT. The computer and logo will be a cube. He obsesses over the details and other things, which means that the computers are always later than the release date.

He hires a Private Detective to help find his biological parents. He finds his mother, and flies down to LA to see her. He also meets his biological sister, Mona Simpson, a writer that lives in New York City. Later that year, he is asked to give a speech. While he is waiting to go on-stage, he meets a young Stanford business student. Her name is Laurene Powell. After the speech, they have dinner. They marry in 1991, and later that year, they have their first child, a boy named Reed. His first child, Lisa has also joined the family too.

While running NeXT, Steve buys Pixar for $5 million, and invests another $5 million to keep it going. He keeps pouring his own money into the company to keep it afloat. No matter how many big ideas the company comes up with, the company is getting broke. A phone call to Disney is made to help. Disney gives them some money in return for rights to the characters, film sequels, and other things.

In 1997, Apple buys NeXT, the company is failing and they're trying to make too many products. IBM and Microsoft now dominate the market. This is the year Steve makes a return to his first company after 12 years. He makes changes to the company, all for the better, seeing how close they were to bankruptcy. Steve later has an idea of having stores dedicated to selling Apple products all over the country. These are a big success. He also creates iPhoto, iMovie, Final cut Pro, iDvd, Garage Band and iTunes.

In 2003, Steve finds out that he has a rare form of Pancreatic cancer. He tries many ways to fight it. He and Laurene have three kids, Reed - 15, Erin - 11, and Eve - 8. He feels that his cancer battle should be kept secret, because he feels its a personal matter, and he's worried that the public will lose  confidence in Apple. He prepares for his last product - Apple's version of a Tablet.

Steve dies on October 5, 2011 in his home in Palo Alto surrounded by his family. He is 56 years of age. His last words were " Oh, wow."

Steve Jobs was a very inspirational person. He has inspired people to do good. He is sadly missed. He has inspired me to believe that anything is possible, and that things happen for a reason, and anything you put your mind to can be achieved, no matter how crazy the thought.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

The people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.

Thank you for viewing. I hope you learnt some new things.