Have you ever heard of someone being ousted from the company they founded? Unbelievable, right? It should be noted that we are familiar with this person, more specifically his company’s products. This person is Steve Jobs, one of the few people who played a major role in the development of technology in the 20th century. Steve Jobs was a businessman, investor, and owner of a media outlet. Steve Jobs closed his eyes to life in 2011. He was the person who introduced companies such as Apple and Pixar to the world. Although he has an interesting life story, he has made innovations that could change the fate of technology in the world. Apple’s boss Steve Jobs, who frequently competed with Bill Gates‘ Microsoft at that time, was later eliminated from the company he founded. In this article, we shared all the details about Steve Jobs’ private and business life.
Steve Jobs’ Childhood and Education Life
Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, United States. Jobs’ biological father, Abdel Fattah Al-Jandali, was a political science professor who grew up in Syria. Besides his biological mother was a Catholic of Swiss and German origin. The story of how the mother and father met is quite interesting. Father Jandali, a doctoral candidate, was a teaching assistant in a course taken by mother Schieble in Syria. When Anne Schieble realized she was pregnant with Steve, she returned to San Francisco from Syria. The reason for this is known to be that she wants to give birth to the baby in America. She placed the little Steve, in the care of Paul and Clara Jobs, but later gave up this decision after learning that the family did not receive a university education. This incident was taken to court, and after the Jobs couple promised to pay for the Steve’s university education, mother Schieble left the child to this couple. Additionally, the Jobs couple adopted Steve’s biological sister, Patricia, in 1957.
Paul Jobs’ real profession was a machinist. Over the years, he began to instill his love of mechanics with his son Steve in their garage at home. By the age of 10, Jobs was deeply interested in electronics and made friends with many engineers living in his neighborhood. During his primary school years, Jobs had serious difficulties making friends with children his own age, and all his friends described him as “Lonely”.
Steve Jobs was a naughty kid who constantly caused mischief throughout his middle school life. Instead of blaming Steve, father Paul blamed the school and took Steve Jobs out of school. Steve Jobs says that in one of his 4th grade classes, his teacher bribed him to finish the book.
Spiritual Quest Travel to India
Steve Jobs started his university education at Reed College in Oregon after completing his high school education. He ended his education by dropping out of school. Jobs started working at Atari Cooperative in 1974, and after saving enough money, he decided to go to India. Steve Jobs’s trip to India was actually for the purpose of a “spiritual quest”. Jobs became a Buddhist and a vegetarian after his India trip. Jobs, was fed in the Hare Krishna temple in India, was taking many classes on campus, especially in calligraphy. The calligraphy lessons Jobs took would lay the foundations of the fonts used on Macintosh computers a few years later.
When Jobs came back to America, he continued to work at Atari. Atari assigned Jobs to design a circuit board for a game called Breakout, but Jobs was not very keen on doing this job. Thereupon, he convinced his 24-year-old friend Steve Wozniak to do this job. Although Jobs received a $5,000 payment from Atari, he told Wozniak the total payment was $700, and Wozniak earned only $350 for the job.
Steve Wozniak was Steve Jobs’ friend from school, and these two started going to “Homebrew Computer Club” meetings together after Jobs came back from India. Then, in the later months of 1974, Jobs and Wozniak began producing “blue boxes” to make expensive long-distance calls for free. This was their first business adventure. According to Jobs, if there were no “blue boxes”, Apple would not have emerged because blue box sales made him think that sales of electronic products could be profitable and fun.
Founding of Apple
At the Homebrew Computer Club meetings, the first step was taken to develop and market the first Apple computer. Apple Computer Co. was founded in 1976 in Jobs’ family garage. Wozniak first showed Jobs the Apple I computer whose simple design he had completed, and Jobs suggested that they should sell this product. However, where was öne missing part for the computers; circuit boards, so Wozniak sold his scientific calculator and Jobs sold his Volkswagen van. Later in 1976, computer supplier Paul Terrell purchased 50 Apple Businesses from this duo. Jobs and Wozniak sold each unit for $500, and 150 more Apple I products were manufactured. By selling one unit of Apple I products for $666.66, Apple Computers had earned enough money to start working on the Apple II. Apple II was released in 1977 and began to consolidate its place in the computer market.
Apple Computer company went public in the last months of 1980 and entered the stock market with very high values, and the company earned 110 million dollars in the first public offering. After the IPO, the two partners became multimillionaires. Apple III was also released in 1980, but this version could not replace the Apple II.
In 1983, Steve Jobs visited John Sculley, the CEO of Pepsi at the time, and asked, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?” posed the question. In this way, John Sculley joined the Apple company.
After John Sculley joined the company, Apple launched the Macintosh in 1984, which they started its designing in 1980. Apple was a commercial success after the Macintosh version, but there was some conflict within the company. The board of directors, especially John Sculley, forced Jobs to resign, and Steve Jobs left the company he founded in 1985, 9 years later foundation of Apple.
After leaving Apple…
Steve Jobs founded a computer company called NeXT. Jobs established this company with 7 million dollars, and his aim was to design computers in this company, just like in Apple. While he was planning to launch these computers into the education market, Jobs also found investors. Texas billionaire Ross Perot and Japanese electronics company Canon Inch invested in Jobs’ NeXT company. Although NeXT computers attracted attention with their engineering design, they fell behind their competitors, and Jobs concentrated on software systems instead of designing computers.
Jobs was interested in the NeXT company, he did not stay idle and bought a controlling share of a company from a different sector. He invested in Pixar, the computer graphics company of Lucasfilm LTD., the production company of George Lucas who was a Hollywood film director. In the 10 years after Jobs bought a controlling interest in Pixar, the company grew into a major animation studio. The company that produced the computer-animated Toy Story movie in 1995 broke records. Jobs became a billionaire for the first time after the Pixar company went public. Pixar company was sold to Disney Company in 2006.
Back to Apple
While Apple was struggling with financial losses, they were looking for a breakout year, so they hired Gilbert Amelio. When Amelio learned that the company’s aging operating system was not developing at an acceptable level, he bought Jobs’ software company NEXTSTEP for $426 million. In this way, Jobs, entered the Apple’s doors as a consultant, was appointed CEO by the company managers again in 1997. In this role, Jobs quickly formed an alliance with chief rival Microsoft Corporation and changed its advertising campaigns. Jobs revived the company and made it the only major personal computer manufacturer with its own operating system, and he thought Apple was in a unique position in this regard.
New era at Apple
In 2001, Jobs began reinventing Apple for the 21st Century. Apple company introduced iTunes in 2001. iTunes was launched as a computer program by Apple for playing music and converting music to the MP3 digital format used in digital devices. Later in 2001, Apple introduced the portable MP3 player iPod. iPods had already become the market leader in a very short time. In 2006, Jobs officially changed the company’s name to Apple Inc.
Jobs’ Health Problems
Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003. He was supposed to have Whipple surgery, but he postponed the surgery for 9 months at the time because he tried alternative medical approaches. Jobs had Whipple surgery in 2004. In this surgery, parts of Jobs’ pancreas, bile duct, and gallbladder were removed. Jobs took over the company again shortly after the surgery. In 2008, less than 5 years after the surgery, Jobs experienced significant weight loss, leading to public speculation that the cancer had returned. Jobs, who temporarily left the company many times in the following years, left his position as CEO of Apple to Tim Cook in August 2011, and Jobs passed away 2 months after this separation.
Thank you for reading.
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