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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 –
October 5, 2011)[3][4] was an American entrepreneur,[5]
marketer,[6] and inventor,[7] who was the co-founder,
chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he is
widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal
computer revolution[8][9] and for his influential career in
the computer and consumer electronics fields, transforming
“one industry after another, from computers and
smartphones to music and movies.”[10] Jobs also
co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar
Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of
directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when
Disney acquired Pixar. Jobs was among the first to see the
commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven
graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the
Apple Lisa and, a year later, the Macintosh. He also played
a role in introducing the LaserWriter, one of the first
widely available laser printers, to the market.[11]
After a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985,
Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform
development company specializing in the higher-education
and business markets. In 1986, he acquired the computer
graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off as
Pixar.[12] He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an
executive producer. He served as CEO and majority
shareholder until Disney's purchase of Pixar in 2006.[13] In
1996, after Apple had failed to deliver its operating system,
Copland, Gil Amelio turned to NeXT Computer, and the
NeXTSTEP platform became the foundation for the Mac
OS X.[14] Jobs returned to Apple as an advisor, and took
control of the company as an interim CEO. Jobs brought
Apple from near bankruptcy to profitability by 1998.[15]
[16][17]
As the new CEO of the company, Jobs oversaw the
development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad,
and on the services side, the company's Apple Retail
Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store.[18] The success of
these products and services provided several years of stable
financial returns, and propelled Apple to become the
world's most valuable publicly traded company in 2011.[19]
Steve Jobs
Jobs holding an iPhone 4 at Worldwide Developers
Conference 2010
Born
Steven Paul Jobs
February 24, 1955
San Francisco, California, US
Died
October 5, 2011 (aged 56)
Palo Alto, California, US
Cause of
death
Metastatic Insulinoma
Residence
Palo Alto, California, US
Alma mater
Reed College
Occupation
Co-founder, Chairman and CEO,
Apple Inc.
Co-founder and CEO,
Pixar
Founder and CEO,
NeXT Inc.
Years active
1974–2011
Net worth
$US 8.3 billion (July 2010)
Board
member of
The Walt Disney Company[1]
Apple Inc.
Religion
Zen Buddhism (previously Lutheran)[2]
Spouse(s)
Laurene Powell
(1991–2011; his death)
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The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many
commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in
business history.[20][21][22]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
Children
Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Reed Jobs
Erin Jobs
Eve Jobs
In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas
Relatives
Patricia Ann Jobs (adoptive sister),
neuroendocrine tumor. Though it was initially treated, he
reported a hormone imbalance, underwent a liver
Mona Simpson (biological sister)
transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively thinner as
Signature
his health declined.[23] On medical leave for most of 2011,
Jobs resigned in August that year, and was elected
Chairman of the Board. He died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor on October 5, 2011.
Jobs received a number of honors and public recognition for his influence in the technology and music
industries. He has been referred to as “legendary,” a “futurist” and a “visionary,”[24][25][26][27] and has been
described as the “Father of the Digital Revolution,”[28] a “master of innovation,”[29][30] “the master
evangelist of the digital age”[31] and a “design perfectionist.”[32][33]
1 Early life
2 Career
2.1 Early work
2.2 Apple Computer
2.3 NeXT Computer
2.4 Pixar and Disney
2.5 Return to Apple
2.6 Resignation
3 Business life
3.1 Wealth
3.2 Stock options backdating issue
3.3 Management style
3.3.1 Reality distortion field
3.4 Innovations and designs
3.4.1 The Macintosh Computer
3.4.2 The NeXT Computer
3.4.3 iMac
3.4.4 iPod
3.4.5 iPhone
3.5 Philanthropy
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4 Personal life
4.1 Health issues
5 Death
5.1 Media coverage
6 Honors and public recognition
7 Portrayals and coverage in books, film, and theater
7.1 Books
7.2 Documentary films
7.3 Short film
7.4 Feature films
7.5 Theater
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links
10.1 Articles
10.2 Interviews
Jobs's birth parents met at the University of Wisconsin, where his Syrian-born biological father, Abdulfattah
"John" Jandali (Arabic: ‫)عبدالفتاح جندلي‬,[34][35][36][37][38] was a student, and later taught, and where his
biological mother, Swiss-American Joanne Carole Schieble, was also a student. Jandali, who was teaching in
Wisconsin when Jobs was born, said he had no choice but to put the baby up for adoption because his
girlfriend's family objected to their relationship.[39]
Jobs was born in San Francisco, California on February 24, 1955.[40][41] He was adopted at birth by Paul
Reinhold Jobs (1922–1993) and Clara Jobs (née Hagopian) (1924–1986), an Armenian American.[42][43] Paul
and Clara had gotten married in March 1946, ten days after they met. Clara had an ectopic pregnancy and
couldn't bear children. In 1955, nine years after their marriage, they decided to adopt a child.[44] According to
Steve Jobs's commencement address at Stanford, Schieble wanted Jobs to be adopted only by a college
graduate couple. Schieble learned that Clara Jobs had not graduated from college and Paul Jobs had only
attended high school, but signed final adoption papers after they promised her that the child would definitely
be encouraged and supported to attend college. Later, when asked about his "adoptive parents", Jobs replied
emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs "were my parents."[45] He stated in his authorized biography that they
"were my parents 1,000%."[46] Walter Isaacson wrote in his authorized biography about Steve Jobs that Steve
had told him, "Paul and Clara are 100% my parents. And Joanna and Abdulfatah - are only a sperm and an
egg bank. It's not rude, it is the truth."[44]
Unknown to him, his biological parents would subsequently marry (December 1955), have a second child,
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novelist Mona Simpson, in 1957, and divorce in 1962.[46]
The Jobs family moved from San Francisco to Mountain View, California when Jobs was five years
old.[40][41] The parents later adopted a daughter, Patty.[40] Paul worked as a mechanic and a carpenter, and
taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands.[40] Paul showed Steve how to work
on electronics in the family garage, demonstrating to his son how to take apart and rebuild electronics such as
radios and televisions. As a result, he became interested in and developed a hobby of technical tinkering.[47]
Clara was an accountant[45] who taught him to read before he went to school.[40] Clara Jobs had been a
payroll clerk for Varian Associates, one of the first high-tech firms in what became known as Silicon
Valley.[48]
Jobs's youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. At Monta Loma Elementary school in
Mountain View, he frequently played pranks on others.[49] Though school officials recommended that he skip
two grades on account of his test scores, his parents elected for him only to skip one grade.[46][49]
Jobs then attended Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California.[41] At
Homestead, Jobs became friends with Bill Fernandez, a neighbor who shared the same interests in electronics.
Fernandez introduced Jobs to his neighbor, Steve Wozniak, a computer and electronics whiz kid, who was
also known as "Woz". In 1969 Wozniak started building a little computer board with Fernandez that they
named "The Cream Soda Computer", which they showed to Jobs; he seemed really interested.[50] Wozniak
has stated that they called it the Cream Soda Computer because he and Fernandez drank cream soda all the
time whilst they worked on it and that he and Jobs had gone to the same high school, although they did not
know each other there.[51]
Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Reed was an
expensive college which Paul and Clara could ill afford. They were spending much of their life savings on
their son's higher education.[50] Jobs dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months
dropping in on creative classes, including a course on calligraphy.[52] In the commencement address he gave
at Stanford, Jobs said that, while he continued to audit classes at Reed, he slept on the floor in friends' dorm
rooms, returned Coke bottles for food money, and got weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.[53]
In that same speech, Jobs said: "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac
would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."[53]
Early work
In 1972, Steve Wozniak designed his own version of the classic video game, Pong. After finishing it,
Wozniak gave the board to Jobs, who then took the game down to Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California. Atari
thought that Jobs had built it and gave him a job as a technician.[54][55] Atari's co-founder Nolan Bushnell
later described him as "difficult but valuable", pointing out that "he was very often the smartest guy in the
room, and he would let people know that".[56]
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Jobs travelled to India in mid-1974[57] to visit Neem Karoli Baba[58] at his
Kainchi ashram with a Reed College friend (and, later, an early Apple
employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. When they got
to the Neem Karoli ashram, it was almost deserted because Neem Karoli Baba
had died in September 1973.[55] Then they made a long trek up a dry riverbed
to an ashram of Haidakhan Babaji. In India, they spent a lot of time on bus
rides from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.[55]
After staying for seven months, Jobs left India[59] and returned to the US
ahead of Daniel Kottke.[55] Jobs had changed his appearance; his head was
shaved and he wore traditional Indian clothing.[60][61] During this time, Jobs
experimented with psychedelics, later calling his LSD experiences "one of the
Homebrew Computer Club
Newsletter, September 1976
two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".[62][63] He also
became a serious practitioner of Zen Buddhism, engaged in lengthy
meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest Sōtō Zen monastery in the US.[64] He
considered taking up monastic residence at Eihei-ji in Japan, and maintained a lifelong appreciation for
Zen.[65] Jobs would later say that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not
fully relate to his thinking.[62]
Jobs then returned to Atari, and was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout.
According to Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little
specialized knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between
them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari engineers, Wozniak
reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line.
According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that
Wozniak's share was thus $350.[66] Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said
that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.[67]
Wozniak had designed a low-cost digital "blue box" to generate the necessary tones to manipulate the
telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. Jobs decided that they could make money selling it. The
clandestine sales of the illegal "blue boxes" went well, and perhaps planted the seed in Jobs's mind that
electronics could be fun and profitable.[68] Jobs, in a 1994 interview, recalled that it took six months for him
and Wozniak to figure out how to build the blue boxes.[69] Jobs said that if not for the blue boxes, there would
have been no Apple. He states it showed them that they could take on large companies and beat them.[70][71]
Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak in 1975.[41] He greatly
admired Edwin H. Land, the inventor of instant photography and founder of Polaroid Corporation, and would
explicitly model his own career after that of Land's.[72][73]
In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed their own business, which they named "Apple Computer Company" in
remembrance of a happy summer Jobs had spent picking apples. At first they started off selling circuit
boards.[74]
Apple Computer
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In 1976, Wozniak single-handedly 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's
parents in order to sell it.[75] Wayne stayed only a short time leaving
Jobs and Wozniak as the primary co-founders of the company.[76]
They received funding from a then-semi-retired Intel productmarketing manager and engineer Mike Markkula.[77] Scott McNealy,
one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, said that Jobs broke a
"glass age ceiling" in Silicon Valley because he'd created a very
successful company at a young age.[71]
In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to
serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In
1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as
Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to spend the rest of your life
selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
Home of Paul and Clara Jobs, on
Crist Drive in Los Altos, California.
Steve Jobs formed Apple Computer
in its garage with Steve Wozniak and
Ronald Wayne in 1976. Wayne stayed
only a short time, leaving Jobs and
Wozniak as the primary co-founders
of the company.
[78]
In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven
graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa. A year later, Apple completed the
Macintosh.[79][80]
The following year, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled "1984". At Apple's annual
shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly
enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as "pandemonium".[81]
While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees
from that time described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. Disappointing
sales caused a deterioration in Jobs's working relationship with Sculley, which devolved
into a power struggle between the two.[82] Jobs kept meetings running past midnight,
sent out lengthy faxes, then called new meetings at 7:00 am.[83]
During an April 10 & 11 board meeting, Apple's board of directors gave Sculley the
authority to remove Jobs from all roles, except chairman, to reassign him to an
undetermined position. John delayed a reassignment. But when Sculley learned that
Jobs—who believed Sculley to be "bad for Apple" and the wrong person to lead the
company—had been attempting to organize a boardroom coup, on May 24, 1985, called
a board meeting to resolve the matter. Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley once
again and removed Jobs from his managerial duties as head of the Macintosh division.
With no duties and exiled from the rest of the company to an otherwise-empty building,
Jobs stopped coming to work and later resigned as chairman.[82][84][85] After
unsuccessfully applying to fly on the Space Shuttle as a civilian astronaut, and briefly
considering starting a computer company in the Soviet Union,[86] he resigned from
Apple five months later.[82]
Apple logo
introduced May
17, 1976,
created by Rob
Janoff with the
rainbow scheme
used until
August 26,
1999.
In a speech Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, he said being fired from Apple was the best thing that
could have happened to him; "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a
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beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
And he added, "I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was
awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it."[53][87][88]
NeXT Computer
Jobs founded NeXT Inc. in 1985 after his resignation[83][89] with
$7 million. A year later he was running out of money, and with no
product on the horizon, he sought venture capital. Eventually, Jobs
attracted the attention of billionaire Ross Perot who invested heavily
in the company.[90] NeXT workstations were first released in 1990,
priced at $9,999. Like the Apple Lisa, the NeXT workstation was
technologically advanced, but was largely dismissed as
cost-prohibitive by the educational sector for which it was
designed.[91] The NeXT workstation was known for its technical
strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development
system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the financial, scientific, and
academic community, highlighting its innovative, experimental new
technologies, such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor
chip, and the built-in Ethernet port. Tim Berners-Lee invented the
World Wide Web on a NeXT computer at CERN.[92]
A NeXTstation with the original
keyboard, mouse and the NeXT
MegaPixel monitor
The revised, second generation NeXTcube was released in 1990, also. Jobs touted it as the first
"interpersonal" computer that would replace the personal computer. With its innovative NeXTMail
multimedia email system, NeXTcube could share voice, image, graphics, and video in email for the first time.
"Interpersonal computing is going to revolutionize human communications and groupwork", Jobs told
reporters.[93] Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by the development of
and attention to NeXTcube's magnesium case.[94] This put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division,
and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with
the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel.[95] The company reported its first profit of $1.03 million in 1994.[90] In
1996, NeXT Software, Inc. released WebObjects, a framework for Web application development. After NeXT
was acquired by Apple Inc. in 1997, WebObjects was used to build and run the Apple Store,[95] MobileMe
services, and the iTunes Store.
Pixar and Disney
In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division
for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.[96]
The first film produced by the partnership, Toy Story (1995), with Jobs credited as executive producer,[97]
brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released. Over the next 15 years, under Pixar's
creative chief John Lasseter, the company produced box-office hits A Bug's Life (1998); Toy Story 2 (1999);
Monsters, Inc. (2001); Finding Nemo (2003); The Incredibles (2004); Cars (2006); Ratatouille (2007);
WALL-E (2008); Up (2009); and Toy Story 3 (2010). Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E,
Up and Toy Story 3 each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in
2001.[98]
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In 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael
Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership,[99] and in early 2004, Jobs announced that Pixar would
seek a new partner to distribute its films after its contract with Disney expired.
In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to mend relations with Jobs
and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an
all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. When the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's
largest single shareholder with approximately seven percent of the company's stock.[100] Jobs's holdings in
Disney far exceeded those of Eisner, who holds 1.7 percent, and of Disney family member Roy E. Disney,
who until his 2009 death held about one percent of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner –
especially that he soured Disney's relationship with Pixar – accelerated Eisner's ousting. Upon completion of
the merger, Jobs received 7% of Disney shares, and joined the Board of Directors as the largest individual
shareholder.[100][101][102] Upon Jobs's death his shares in Disney were transferred to the Steven P. Jobs Trust
led by Laurene Jobs.[103]
Return to Apple
Logo for the Think Different
campaign designed by
TBWA\Chiat\Day and initiated by
Jobs after his return to Apple
Computer in 1997.
In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $427 million.
The deal was finalized in February 1997,[104] bringing Jobs back to
the company he co-founded. Jobs became de facto chief after
then-CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997. He was formally
named interim chief executive in September.[105] In March 1998, to
concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs
terminated a number of projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and
OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of
encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might
not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs's
summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to
terrorize a whole company."[106] Jobs also changed the licensing
program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the
manufacturers to continue making machines.
With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most
notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance, the company increased sales
significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and
powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the
"interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO.[107] Jobs quipped at the time that he
would be using the title "iCEO".[108]
The company subsequently branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With the
introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the
company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. On June 29, 2007, Apple entered the
cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also
included the features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionized the mobile browsing scene.
While stimulating innovation, Jobs also reminded his employees that "real artists ship".[109]
Jobs was both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has
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been dubbed the "reality distortion field" and was particularly evident during
his keynote speeches (colloquially known as "Stevenotes") at Macworld
Expos and at Apple Worldwide Developers Conferences.[110]
In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for
e-waste in the US by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at
Apple's Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April. A few weeks later, Apple
announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer
TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the
Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the commencement
speaker.[53] The banner read "Steve, don't be a mini-player—recycle all
e-waste".
In 2006, he further expanded Apple's recycling programs to any US customer
who buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and "environmentally
friendly disposal" of their old systems.[111]
Resignation
Jobs on stage at Macworld
Conference & Expo, San
Francisco, January 11, 2005
In August 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, but remained with the
company as chairman of its board.[112][113] Hours after the announcement, Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares dropped
five percent in after-hours trading.[114] This relatively small drop, when considering the importance of Jobs to
Apple, was associated with the fact that his health had been in the news for several years, and he had been on
medical leave since January 2011.[115] It was believed, according to Forbes, that the impact would be felt in a
negative way beyond Apple, including at The Walt Disney Company where Jobs served as director.[116] In
after-hours trading on the day of the announcement, Walt Disney Co. (DIS) shares dropped 1.5 percent.[117]
Remember, the sixties happened in the early seventies, and that's when I came of age; and to me,
the spark of that was that there was something beyond what you see every day. It's the same thing
that causes people to be poets instead of bankers. And I think that's a wonderful thing. I think that
same spirit can be put in to products, and those products can be manufactured, and given to
people, and they can sense that spirit.
—Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
Wealth
Although Jobs earned only $1 a year as CEO of Apple,[118] Jobs held 5.426 million Apple shares worth $2.1
billion, as well as 138 million shares in Disney (which he received in exchange for Disney's acquisition of
Pixar) worth $4.4 billion.[119][120] Jobs quipped that the $1 per annum he was paid by Apple was based on
attending one meeting for 50 cents while the other 50 cents was based on his performance.[121] Forbes
estimated his net wealth at $8.3 billion in 2010, making him the 42nd-wealthiest American.[122]
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Stock options backdating issue
In 2001, Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7.5 million
shares of Apple with an exercise price of $18.30. It was alleged that
the options had been backdated, and that the exercise price should
have been $21.10. It was further alleged that Jobs had thereby incurred
taxable income of $20,000,000 that he did not report, and that Apple
overstated its earnings by that same amount. As a result, Jobs
potentially faced a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. The
case was the subject of active criminal and civil government
investigations,[123] though an independent internal Apple investigation
completed on December 29, 2006 found that Jobs was unaware of
these issues and that the options granted to him were returned without
being exercised in 2003.[124]
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the fifth
D: All Things Digital conference
(D5) in May 2007
On July 1, 2008, a $7 billion class action suit was filed against several members of the Apple Board of
Directors for revenue lost due to the alleged securities fraud.[125][126]
Management style
Jobs was perceived as a demanding perfectionist,[127][128] who always aspired to position his businesses and
their products at the forefront of the information technology industry, by foreseeing and setting innovation
and style trends. He summed up this self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld
Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky
There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be,
not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very
beginning. And we always will.[129]
Jobs's aggressive and demanding personality has been widely publicized. Fortune
stated that he was "considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs".[130]
In 1993 Jobs made Fortune's list of America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his
leadership at NeXT. NeXT cofounder, Dan'l Lewin, was quoted in Fortune: "The
highs were unbelievable ... But the lows were unimaginable". In response to the
article, Jobs's office explained that his personality had changed since then.[131]
Apple CEO Tim Cook noted, "More so than any person I ever met in my life,
[Jobs] had the ability to change his mind, much more so than anyone I’ve ever
met ... Maybe the most underappreciated thing about Steve was that he had the
courage to change his mind."[132]
Steve Jobs announcing
the transition to Intel
processors in June 2005.
In 2005 Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple
Stores, as the company had published an unauthorized Jobs biography, iCon:
Steve Jobs.[133] In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a
deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad."[134] Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs
"would have made an excellent king of France", alluding to Jobs's compelling and larger-than-life
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persona.[135]
Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting in 1987, when Jobs first
criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes".[136] On October 6, 1997, at a Gartner Symposium,
when Dell was asked what he would do if he ran the then-troubled Apple Computer company, he said: "I'd
shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."[137] Then, in 2006, Jobs sent an email to all
employees when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's:
Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's
stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be
different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.[138]
Jobs was also a board member at Gap Inc. from 1999 to 2002.[139]
Apple's third co-founder Wayne explained that Job's personality was very cold. He recounted the times Jobs
was ruthless, including one occasion in which Jobs asked Wayne to convince a friend to sell his company for
Apple's benefit.[140]
Floyd Norman, of Pixar, described Jobs as a "mature, mellow individual" who never interfered with the
creative process of the filmmakers.[141] In early June 2014, Pixar cofounder and Walt Disney President Ed
Catmull revealed that Jobs once advised him to "just explain it to them until they understand." in
disagreements. Catmull released the book Creativity Inc. in 2014, in which recounts numerous experiences of
working with Jobs. Regarding his own manner of dealing with Jobs, Catmull writes:
In all the 26 years with Steve, Steve and I never had one of these loud verbal arguments and it's
not my nature to do that. ... but we did disagree fairly frequently about things. ... I would say
something to him and he would immediately shoot it down because he could think faster than I
could. ... I would then wait a week ... I'd call him up and I give my counter argument to what he
had said and he'd immediately shoot it down. So I had to wait another week, and sometimes this
went on for months. But in the end one of three things happened. About a third of the time he
said, 'Oh, I get it, you're right.' And that was the end of it. And it was another third of the time in
which [I'd] say, 'Actually I think he is right.' The other third of the time, where we didn't reach
consensus, he just let me do it my way, never said anything more about it.[142]
Reality distortion field
Apple's Bud Tribble coined the term "reality distortion field" (RDF) in 1981, to describe Jobs's charisma and
its effects on the developers working on the Macintosh project.[143] Tribble claimed that the term came from
Star Trek[143] and the term has since been used to refer to perceptions of Jobs's keynote speeches.[144]
Andy Hertzfeld described the RDF as Jobs's ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything,
whereby he used a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence.
Although the subject of criticism, Jobs's so-called RDF was also recognized as a concept that created a sense
that the impossible was possible. Then, by motivating the people around him to create innovative products,
Jobs was in turn able to market them creatively to reach a wide audience.[145] Once the term became widely
known, it was often used in the technology press to describe Jobs's sway over the public—particularly
regarding new product announcements.[146][147]
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Innovations and designs
Jobs's design aesthetic was influenced by the modernist architectural style of Joseph Eichler and the industrial
designs of Braun's Dieter Rams.[46] His design sense was also greatly influenced by the Buddhism which he
experienced in India while on his seven-month spiritual journey,[148] and his sense of intuition was influenced
by the spiritual people with whom he studied.[148]
According to Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak "Steve didn't ever code. He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do
any original design..."[149][150] Daniel Kottke, one of Apple's earliest employees and a college friend of
Jobs's, stated that "Between Woz and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing
person."[151]
He is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 346 United States patents or patent applications
related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including
touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages. Jobs's
contributions to most of his patents were to "the look and feel of the product". His industrial design chief
Jonathan Ive had his name along with him for 200 of the patents.[152] Most of these are design patents
(specific product designs; for example, Jobs listed as primary inventor in patents for both original and
lamp-style iMacs, as well as PowerBook G4 Titanium) as opposed to utility patents (inventions).[7][153] He
has 43 issued US patents on inventions.[7] The patent on the Mac OS X Dock user interface with
"magnification" feature was issued the day before he died.[154] Although Jobs had little involvement in the
engineering and technical side of the original Apple computers,[150] Jobs later used his CEO position to
directly involve himself with product design.[155]
Even while terminally ill in the hospital, Jobs sketched new devices that would hold the iPad in a hospital
bed.[156] He also despised the oxygen monitor on his finger and suggested ways to revise the design for
simplicity.[157]
The Macintosh Computer
The Macintosh was introduced in January 1984. The computer had no "Mac" name on the front, but rather
just the Apple logo.[158] Apple co-founder and former Apple engineer Steve Wozniak said that the Macintosh
failed under Steve Jobs, and that it wasn't until Jobs left that it became a success.[159]
The NeXT Computer
After Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985, he started a company that built workstation computers. The
NeXT Computer was introduced in 1989. Tim Berners-Lee created the world's first web browser on the
NeXT Computer. The NeXT Computer was the basis for today's Macintosh OS X and iPhone operating
system (iOS).[160][161]
iMac
Apple iMac was introduced in 1998 and its innovative design was directly the result of Jobs's return to Apple.
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Apple boasted "the back of our computer looks better than the front of anyone else's".[162] Described as
"cartoonlike", the first iMac, clad in Bondi Blue plastic, was unlike any personal computer that came before.
In 1999, Apple introduced the Graphite gray Apple iMac and since has varied the shape, colour and size
considerably while maintaining the all-in-one design. Design ideas were intended to create a connection with
the user such as the handle and a breathing light effect when the computer went to sleep.[163] The Apple iMac
sold for $1,299 at that time. The iMac also featured some technical innovations, such as having USB ports as
the only device inputs. This latter change resulted, through the iMac's success, in the interface being
popularised among third party peripheral makers – as evidenced by the fact that many early USB peripherals
were made of translucent plastic (to match the iMac design).[164]
iPod
The first generation of iPod was released October 23, 2001. The major innovation of the iPod was its small
size achieved by using a 1.8" hard drive compared to the 2.5" drives common to players at that time. The
capacity of the first generation iPod ranged from 5G to 10 Gigabytes.[165] The iPod sold for US$399 and
more than 100,000 iPods were sold before the end of 2001. The introduction of the iPod resulted in Apple
becoming a major player in the music industry.[166] Also, the iPod's success prepared the way for the iTunes
music store and the iPhone.[167] After the 1st generation of iPod, Apple released the hard drive-based iPod
classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, video-capable iPod Nano, screenless iPod Shuffle in the following
years.[166]
iPhone
Apple began work on the first iPhone in 2005 and the first iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. The iPhone
created such a sensation that a survey indicated six out of ten Americans were aware of its release. Time
magazine declared it "Invention of the Year" for 2007.[168] The Apple iPhone is a small device with
multimedia capabilities and functions as a quad-band touch screen smartphone.[169] A year later, the iPhone
3G was released in July 2008 with three key features: support for GPS, 3G data and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA.
In June 2009, the iPhone 3GS, whose improvements included voice control, a better camera, and a faster
processor, was introduced by Phil Schiller.[170] The iPhone 4 is thinner than previous models, has a five
megapixel camera capable of recording video in 720p HD, and adds a secondary front-facing camera for
video calls.[171] A major feature of the iPhone 4S, introduced in October 2011, was Siri, a virtual assistant
capable of voice recognition.[168]
Philanthropy
Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek magazine stated that "Jobs isn't widely known for his association with
philanthropic causes", compared to Bill Gates's efforts.[172] In contrast to Gates, Jobs did not sign the Giving
Pledge of Warren Buffett which challenged the world's richest billionaires to give at least half their wealth to
charity.[173] In an interview with Playboy in 1985, Jobs said in respect to money that "the challenges are to
figure out how to live with it and to reinvest it back into the world which means either giving it away or using
it to express your concerns or values."[174] Jobs also added that when he has some time he would start a
public foundation but for now he does charitable acts privately.[175]
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After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs initially eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs.[176]
Jobs's friends told The New York Times that he felt that expanding Apple would have done more good than
giving money to charity.[177] Later, under Jobs, Apple signed to participate in the Product Red program,
producing red versions of devices to give profits from sales to charity. Apple has gone on to become the
largest contributor to the charity since its initial involvement with it. The chief of the Product Red project,
singer Bono, cited Jobs saying there was "nothing better than the chance to save lives", when he initially
approached Apple with the invitation to participate in the program.[178] Through its sales, Apple has been the
largest contributor to Product Red's gift to the Global Fund, which fights AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria,
according to Bono.[179][180]
In the 1980s, Jobs found his birth mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson, who told him he had a biological sister,
Mona Simpson. They met for the first time in 1985,[181] and became close friends. The siblings kept their
relationship secret until 1986, when Mona introduced him at a party for her first book.[45]
After deciding to search for their father, Simpson found Jandali managing a coffee shop. Without knowing
who his son had become, Jandali told Mona that he had previously managed a popular restaurant in the
Silicon Valley, mentioning that "even Steve Jobs used to eat there. Yeah, he was a great tipper." In a taped
interview with his biographer Walter Isaacson, aired on 60 Minutes,[182] Jobs said: "When I was looking for
my biological mother, obviously, you know, I was looking for my biological father at the same time, and I
learned a little bit about him and I didn't like what I learned. I asked her to not tell him that we ever met...not
tell him anything about me."[183] Jobs was occasionally in touch with his mother Joanne Simpson,[176][184]
who lives in a nursing home in Los Angeles. When speaking about his biological parents, Jobs stated: "They
were my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more."[46]
In an August 2011 interview with The Sun, Jandali stated that his efforts to contact Jobs were unsuccessful.
Jandali mailed in his medical history after Jobs's pancreatic disorder was made public that year.[38][185][186]
In her eulogy to Jobs at his memorial service, Mona Simpson stated:
I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father
had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind
and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I'd met my
father, I tried to believe he'd changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an
idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people. Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd
been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my
father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.[181]
Jobs's first child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, was born in 1978, the daughter of his longtime partner Chrisann
Brennan, a Bay Area painter.[176] For two years, she raised their daughter on welfare while Jobs denied
paternity by claiming he was sterile; he later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter.[176] Jobs later married
Laurene Powell on March 18, 1991, in a ceremony at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.
Presiding over the wedding was Kobun Chino Otogawa, a Zen Buddhist monk. Their son, Reed, was born
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September 1991, followed by daughters Erin in August 1995 and Eve in 1998.[90] The family lived in Palo
Alto, California.[187]
Jobs dated Joan Baez for a few years. Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of
Jobs from his time at Reed College, believed Jobs was interested in
Baez because she had been the lover of Bob Dylan, who was Jobs's
favorite musician.[188] Jobs confided in Joanna Hoffman his concerns
about the relationship, and she would later tell his official biographer:
"She was a strong woman, and he wanted to show he was in control.
Plus, he always said he wanted to have a family, and with her he knew
that he wouldn't".[189]
Jobs was also a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple
occasions at Keynotes and was also interviewed on a showing of a
Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on 60
Minutes, he replied:
Jobs demonstrating the iPhone 4 to
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
on June 23, 2010
My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative
tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the
parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of
people.[190]
In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in The San Remo, an apartment building in New York City with a
politically progressive reputation, where Demi Moore, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, and Princess Yasmin
Aga Khan, daughter of Rita Hayworth, also owned apartments. With the help of I. M. Pei, Jobs spent years
renovating his apartment in the top two floors of the building's north tower, only to sell it almost two decades
later to U2 singer Bono. Jobs never moved in.[191][192]
In 1984, Jobs purchased the Jackling House, a 17,000-square-foot
(1,600 m2), 14-bedroom Spanish Colonial mansion designed by
George Washington Smith in Woodside, California. Although it
reportedly remained in an almost unfurnished state, Jobs lived in the
mansion for almost ten years. According to reports, he kept a 1966
BMW R60/2 motorcycle in the living room, and let Bill Clinton use it
in 1998. From the early 1990s, Jobs lived in a house in the Old Palo
Alto neighborhood of Palo Alto. President Clinton dined with Jobs
and 14 Silicon Valley CEOs there on August 7, 1996, at a meal catered
Steve Jobs's house in Palo Alto
by Greens Restaurant.[193][194] Clinton returned the favor and Jobs,
who was a Democratic donor, slept in the Lincoln bedroom of the
White House.[195] And according to Isaacson, during one late-night phone call, Bill Clinton once asked Jobs
for some advice about the Lewinsky scandal, and when Jobs told the President that, if the affair were true, "
'you've got to tell the country'...There was silence on the other end of the line."[196]
Jobs allowed Jackling House to fall into a state of disrepair, planning to demolish the house and build a
smaller home on the property; but he met with complaints from local preservationists over his plans. In June
2004, the Woodside Town Council gave Jobs approval to demolish the mansion, on the condition that he
advertise the property for a year to see if someone would move it to another location and restore it. A number
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of people expressed interest, including several with experience in restoring old property, but no agreements to
that effect were reached. Later that same year, a local preservationist group began seeking legal action to
prevent demolition. In January 2007, Jobs was denied the right to demolish the property by a court
decision.[197] The court decision was overturned on appeal in March 2010, and the mansion was demolished
beginning in February 2011.[198]
Jobs usually wore a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by Issey Miyake (that was sometimes reported
to be made by St. Croix), Levi's 501 blue jeans, and New Balance 991 sneakers.[199][200] Jobs told Walter
Isaacson "...he came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience
(the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style."[199]
Jobs's car was a silver Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG, which did not display its license plates, as he took
advantage of a California law which gives a maximum of six months for new vehicles to receive plates; Jobs
leased a new SL every six months.[201] Jobs involved himself with the details of designing his 78-meter
(256 ft) luxury yacht Venus (named after the deity)[202] to keep thoughts of death at bay. It is also designed by
Philippe Starck.[203] It was launched after Jobs's death, and later impounded due to an unpaid debt to Starck,
which was then paid by Jobs's heirs.[204]
In a 2011 interview with biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs revealed at one point he met with U.S. President
Barack Obama, complained of the nation's shortage of software engineers, and told Obama that he was
"headed for a one-term presidency." Jobs proposed that any foreign student who got an engineering degree at
a U.S. university should automatically be offered a green card. After the meeting, Jobs commented, "The
president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done.... It infuriates
me."[205]
Jobs contributed to a number of political candidates and causes during his life, giving $209,000 to Democrats,
$45,700 to associated special interests and $1,000 to a Republican.[206]
Health issues
In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with cancer,[207] and in mid-2004, he announced to his employees that
he had a cancerous tumor in his pancreas.[208] The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very poor;[209]
Jobs stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.[208] Despite
his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for medical intervention for nine months,[176]
instead consuming a pseudo-medicine diet in an attempt to thwart the disease. According to Harvard
researcher Ramzi Amri, his choice of alternative treatment "led to an unnecessarily early death."[207] Cancer
researcher and alternative medicine critic David Gorski "disagreed with Amri's assessment," stating, "My best
guess was that Jobs probably only modestly decreased his chances of survival, if that."[210] Barrie R.
Cassileth, the chief of Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center's integrative medicine department,[211] said
"Jobs’s faith in alternative medicine likely cost him his life.... He had the only kind of pancreatic cancer that
is treatable and curable.... He essentially committed suicide."[212] According to Jobs's biographer, Walter
Isaacson, "for nine months he refused to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer – a decision he later
regretted as his health declined."[213] "Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies, and other
treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He was also influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic
that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in
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July 2004."[214] He eventually underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004,
that appeared to successfully remove the tumor.[215][216][217] Jobs apparently did not receive chemotherapy or
radiation therapy.[208][218] During Jobs's absence, Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at
Apple, ran the company.[208]
In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the keynote for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. His
"thin, almost gaunt" appearance and unusually "listless" delivery,[219][220] together with his choice to delegate
significant portions of his keynote to other presenters, inspired a flurry of media and Internet speculation
about his health.[221] In contrast, according to an Ars Technica journal report, Worldwide Developers
Conference (WWDC) attendees who saw Jobs in person said he "looked fine".[222] Following the keynote, an
Apple spokesperson said that "Steve's health is robust."[223]
Two years later, similar concerns followed Jobs's 2008 WWDC keynote address.[224] Apple officials stated
that Jobs was victim to a "common bug" and was taking antibiotics,[225] while others surmised his cachectic
appearance was due to the Whipple procedure.[218] During a July conference call discussing Apple earnings,
participants responded to repeated questions about Jobs's health by insisting that it was a "private matter".
Others, however, voiced the opinion that shareholders had a right to know more, given Jobs's hands-on
approach to running his company.[226][227] The New York Times published an article based on an off-therecord phone conversation with Jobs, noting that "While his health problems amounted to a good deal more
than 'a common bug', they weren't life-threatening and he doesn't have a recurrence of cancer."[228]
On August 28, 2008, Bloomberg mistakenly published a 2500-word obituary of Jobs in its corporate news
service, containing blank spaces for his age and cause of death. (News carriers customarily stockpile
up-to-date obituaries to facilitate news delivery in the event of a well-known figure's death.) Although the
error was promptly rectified, many news carriers and blogs reported on it,[229] intensifying rumors concerning
Jobs's health.[230] Jobs responded at Apple's September 2008 Let's Rock keynote by essentially[231] quoting
Mark Twain: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."[232] At a subsequent media event, Jobs
concluded his presentation with a slide reading "110/70", referring to his blood pressure, stating he would not
address further questions about his health.[233]
On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that marketing vice-president Phil Schiller would deliver the
company's final keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2009, again reviving questions about
Jobs's health.[234][235] In a statement given on January 5, 2009, on Apple.com,[236] Jobs said that he had been
suffering from a "hormone imbalance" for several months.[237]
On January 14, 2009, in an internal Apple memo, Jobs wrote that in the previous week he had "learned that
my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought", and announced a six-month leave of
absence until the end of June 2009, to allow him to better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who previously
acted as CEO in Jobs's 2004 absence, became acting CEO of Apple,[238] with Jobs still involved with "major
strategic decisions."[238]
In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in
Memphis, Tennessee.[239][240] Jobs's prognosis was described as "excellent".[239]
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On January 17, 2011, a year and a half after Jobs returned from his liver transplant, Apple announced that he
had been granted a medical leave of absence. Jobs announced his leave in a letter to employees, stating his
decision was made "so he could focus on his health". As during his 2009 medical leave, Apple announced
that Tim Cook would run day-to-day operations and that Jobs would continue to be involved in major
strategic decisions at the company.[241][242] Despite the leave, he made appearances at the iPad 2 launch event
(March 2), the WWDC keynote introducing iCloud (June 6), and before the Cupertino city council (June
7).[243]
Jobs announced his resignation as Apple's CEO on August 24, 2011, writing to the board, "I have always said
if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be
the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come." [244] Jobs became chairman of the board
thereafter, naming Tim Cook his successor as CEO,[245][246] and continued to work for Apple until the day
before his death six weeks later.[247]
Jobs died at his Palo Alto, California, home around 3 p.m. on October
5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated
islet-cell neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer,[41][248][249] resulting in
respiratory arrest.[250] He had lost consciousness the day before, and
died with his wife, children, and sisters at his side.[181]
Both Apple and Microsoft flew their flags at half-staff throughout
their respective headquarters and campuses.[251][252] Bob Iger ordered
all Disney properties, including Walt Disney World and Disneyland, to
fly their flags at half-staff from October 6 to 12, 2011.[253]
His death was announced by Apple in a statement which read:
We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed
away today.
Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of
countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives.
The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.
Flags flying at half-staff outside
Apple HQ in Cupertino, on the
evening of Steve Jobs's death.
His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all
who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.[254]
For two weeks following his death, Apple's corporate Web site displayed a simple page, showing Jobs's name
and lifespan next to his grayscale portrait.[255] Clicking on the image led to an obituary, which read:
Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being.
Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend
and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his
spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.[255]
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An email address was also posted for the public to share their
memories, condolences, and thoughts.[256][257] Over a million tributes
were sent, which are now displayed on the Steve Jobs memorial page.
Also dedicating its homepage to Jobs was Pixar, with a photo of Jobs,
John Lasseter and Edwin Catmull, and the eulogy they wrote:[258]
Steve was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend, and
our guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of
what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what
Memorial candles and iPads to Steve
anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed
Jobs outside the Apple Store in Palo
in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one
Alto, California shortly after his death
thing he always said was to 'make it great.' He is why Pixar
turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity, and love of
life has made us all better people. He will forever be part of Pixar's DNA. Our hearts go out to
his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time.[258]
A small private funeral was held on October 7, 2011, of which details were not revealed out of respect to
Jobs's family.[259] Apple announced on the same day that they had no plans for a public service, but were
encouraging "well-wishers" to send their remembrance messages to an email address created to receive such
messages.[260] Sunday, October 16, 2011, was declared "Steve Jobs Day" by Governor Jerry Brown of
California.[261] On that day, an invitation-only memorial was held at Stanford University. Those in attendance
included Apple and other tech company executives, members of the media, celebrities, close friends of Jobs,
and politicians, along with Jobs's family. Bono, Yo Yo Ma, and Joan Baez performed at the service, which
lasted longer than an hour. The service was highly secured, with guards at all of the university's gates, and a
helicopter flying overhead from an area news station.[262][263]
A private memorial service for Apple employees was held on October 19, 2011, on the Apple Campus in
Cupertino. Present were Cook, Bill Campbell, Norah Jones, Al Gore, and Coldplay, and Jobs's widow,
Laurene. Some of Apple's retail stores closed briefly so employees could attend the memorial. A video of the
service is available on Apple's website.[264]
Jobs is buried in an unmarked grave at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, the only non-denominational cemetery in
Palo Alto.[265][266] He is survived by Laurene, his wife of 20 years, their three children, and Lisa
Brennan-Jobs, his daughter from a previous relationship.[267] His family released a statement saying that he
"died peacefully".[268][269] His sister, Mona Simpson, described his passing thus: "Steve’s final words, hours
earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a
long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s
final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW." He then lost consciousness and died several hours
later.[181]
Media coverage
Steve Jobs's death broke news headlines on ABC, CBS, and NBC.[270] Numerous newspapers around the
world carried news of his death on their front pages the next day. Several notable people, including US
President Barack Obama,[271] British Prime Minister David Cameron,[272] Microsoft founder Bill Gates,[273]
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and The Walt Disney Company's Bob Iger commented on the death of Jobs. Wired News collected reactions
and posted them in tribute on their homepage.[274] Other statements of condolence were made by many of
Jobs's friends and colleagues, such as Steve Wozniak and George Lucas.[275][276] After Steve Jobs's death,
Adult Swim aired a 15-second segment with the words "hello" in a script font fading in and then changing
into "goodbye".
Major media published commemorative works. Time published a commemorative issue for Jobs on October
8, 2011. The issue's cover featured a portrait of Jobs, taken by Norman Seeff, in which he is sitting in the
lotus position holding the original Macintosh computer, first published in Rolling Stone in January 1984. The
issue marked the eighth time Jobs was featured on the cover of Time,[277] and included a photographic essay
by Diana Walker, a retrospective on Apple by Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman, and a six-page essay by
Walter Isaacson. Isaacson's essay served as a preview of his biography, Steve Jobs.[278]
Bloomberg Businessweek also published a commemorative, ad-free issue, featuring extensive essays by Steve
Jurvetson, John Sculley, Sean Wisely, William Gibson, and Walter Isaacson. On its cover, Steve Jobs is
pictured in gray scale, along with his name and lifespan.
At the time of his resignation, and again after his death, Jobs was widely described as a visionary, pioneer and
genius[279][280][281][282]—perhaps one of the foremost—in the field of business,[283][284] innovation,[285] and
product design,[286] and a man who had profoundly changed the face of the modern world,[279][281][285]
revolutionized at least six different industries,[280] and who was an "exemplar for all chief executives".[280]
His death was widely mourned[285] and considered a loss to the world by commentators across the globe.[282]
After his resignation as Apple's CEO, Jobs was characterized as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of his
time.[287][288] In his The Daily Show eulogy, Jon Stewart said that unlike others of Jobs's ilk, such as Thomas
Edison or Henry Ford, Jobs died young. He felt that we had, in a sense, "wrung everything out of" these other
men, but his feeling on Jobs was that "we're not done with you yet."[289] Malcolm Gladwell in The New
Yorker asserted that "Jobs's sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of
him ... and ruthlessly refining it."[290]
There was also a dissenting tone in some coverage of Jobs's life and works in the media, where attention
focused on his near-fanatical control mindset and business ruthlessness. A Los Angeles Times media critic
reported that the eulogies "came courtesy of reporters who—after deadline and off the record—would tell
stories about a company obsessed with secrecy to the point of paranoia. They remind us how Apple shut
down a youthful fanboy blogger, punished a publisher that dared to print an unauthorized Jobs biography and
repeatedly ran afoul of the most basic tenets of a free press."[291] Free software pioneer Richard Stallman
drew attention to Apple's strategy of tight corporate control over consumer computers and handheld devices,
how Apple restricted news reporters, and persistently violated privacy: "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the
computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died".[292][293] On his blog,
Stallman has summarized Jobs as having a "malign influence" on computing because of his leadership in
guiding Apple to produce closed platforms.[294][295] Silicon Valley reporter Dan Gillmor stated that under
Jobs, Apple had taken stances that in his view were "outright hostile to the practice of journalism"[291] – these
included suing three "small fry" bloggers who reported tips about the company and its unreleased products
including attempts to use the courts to force them to reveal their sources, suing teenager Nicholas Ciarelli,
who wrote enthusiastic speculation about Apple products beginning at age 13[291] (Rainey wrote that Apple
wanted to kill his 'ThinkSecret' blog as "It thought any leaks, even favorable ones, diluted the punch of its
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highly choreographed product launches with Jobs, in his iconic jeans and mock turtleneck outfit, as the star."
[291]
).
Some have compared Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie who died a week later, and the respective media
coverage of their deaths.[296][297]
After Apple's founding, Jobs became a symbol of his company and industry.
When Time named the computer as the 1982 "Machine of the Year", the
magazine published a long profile of Jobs as "the most famous maestro of the
micro".[298][299]
Jobs was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Ronald
Reagan in 1985, with Steve Wozniak (among the first people to ever receive the
honor),[300] and a Jefferson Award for Public Service in the category "Greatest
Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under" (also known as the Samuel S.
Beard Award) in 1987.[301] On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most
powerful person in business by Fortune magazine.[302] On December 5, 2007,
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver
inducted Jobs into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California
Museum for History, Women and the Arts.[303]
Steve Jobs with the first
generation iPad tablet
In August 2009, Jobs was selected as the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers in a survey by Junior
Achievement,[304] having previously been named Entrepreneur of the Decade 20 years earlier in 1989, by Inc.
magazine.[305] On November 5, 2009, Jobs was named the CEO of the decade by Fortune magazine.[283]
In November 2010, Jobs was ranked No.17 on Forbes: The World's Most Powerful People.[306] In December
2010, the Financial Times named Jobs its person of the year for 2010, ending its essay[307] by stating, "In his
autobiography, John Sculley, the former PepsiCo executive who once ran Apple, said this of the ambitions of
the man he had pushed out: 'Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. This
was a lunatic plan. High-tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.'"[308] The Financial
Times closed by rhetorically asking of this quote, "How wrong can you be."[307]
On December 21, 2011, Graphisoft company in Budapest presented the
world's first bronze statue of Steve Jobs, calling him one of the greatest
personalities of the modern age.[309]
In January 2012, when young adults (ages 16 – 25) were asked to identify
the greatest innovator of all time, Steve Jobs placed second behind
Thomas Edison.[310]
On February 12, 2012, Jobs was posthumously awarded the Grammy
Trustees Award, an award for those who have influenced the music
industry in areas unrelated to performance.[311]
Statue of Jobs at Graphisoft Park,
Budapest[309]
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In March 2012, global business magazine Fortune named Steve Jobs the "greatest entrepreneur of our time",
describing him as "brilliant, visionary, inspiring", and "the quintessential entrepreneur of our generation".[312]
Two films, Disney's John Carter[313] and Pixar's Brave,[314] are dedicated to Jobs.
Steve Jobs was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend on August 10, 2013.[315]
In February 2014, and according to a list of upcoming subjects published by The Washington Post, U.S.
Postal Service approved that Steve Jobs will get a limited release postage stamp in 2015.[316][317]
Books
The Bite in the Apple (2013) by Chrisann Brennan.
iCon: Steve Jobs (2005), by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon
Inside Apple (2012), a book by Adam Lashinsky that reveals the secret systems, tactics, and leadership
strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to work.
iWoz (2006), by Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple. It is an autobiography of Steve Wozniak, but it
covers much of Jobs's life and work at Apple.
Steve Jobs (2011), an authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson.
The Little Kingdom (1984) by Michael Moritz, documenting the founding of (then) Apple Computer.
The Man Who Thought Different (2009) by Karen Blumenthal
The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (2001), by Alan Deutschman
The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation (2011), by Jay Elliot, a former Sr.
Vice-President at Apple. It reveals Jobs's work at Apple – from the inception of game-changing
products like the Apple II and the Macintosh, to his stunning fall from grace, and on to his rebirth at the
helm of Apple.[318]
The Zen of Steve Jobs (2012) written by Caleb Melby with artwork by Jess3, a graphic novel about the
relationship of Jobs and Kobun Chino Otogawa and how the monk's mentorship influenced Jobs's
business philosophy.
How to Think Like Steve Jobs (2013) by Daniel Smith.
Documentary films
iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World – a 2011 Discovery Channel documentary hosted by
Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.[319]
The Machine That Changed the World – Part 3 of this 1992 five-part documentary, called The
Paperback Computer, prominently featured Jobs and his role in the early days of Apple.
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Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippie," a 2011 BBC Documentary.[320]
Steve Jobs: One Last Thing – a 2011 PBS documentary produced by Pioneer Productions.[321] A
slightly shortened and localized[322] version of the show was broadcast[323] in the United Kingdom the
following day titled, Steve Jobs: iChanged the World – on Channel 4.[324]
Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, released in 2012 includes the full 70 minute interview Jobs gave in
1995 for the documentary, Triumph of the Nerds.
Mobilize: A Film About Cell Phone Radiation, a 2013 documentary, features Jobs in archived
interviews.
Short film
Golden dreams, a 2001 short film about the history of California show at Disney California Adventure
Park. Steve Jobs is portrayed by Mark Neveldine.
Feature films
Untitled future film on Jobs – A Sony Pictures film with a screenplay and directed by Aaron
Sorkin.[325]
Jobs – a 2013 independent film by Joshua Michael Stern. Jobs is portrayed by Ashton Kutcher.[326]
Pirates of Silicon Valley – a 1999 TNT film which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from
1971 to 1997. Jobs is portrayed by Noah Wyle.[327]
Theater
The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs – The Public Theater, New York City, 2012, starring Mike
Daisey.[328]
1. ^ "The Walt Disney Company and Affiliated Companies – Board of Directors" (http://corporate.disney.go.com
/corporate/board_of_directors.html). The Walt Disney Company. Retrieved October 2, 2009.
2. ^ "Steve Jobs: Died Buddhist, Raised Lutheran" (http://www.webcitation.org/6LOgQeT6w). Archived from the
original (http://www.christianpost.com/news/steve-jobs-died-buddhist-raised-lutheran-57506/) on July 28, 2012.
3. ^ Misa, T. J. (2011). "Steven P. Jobs (1955-2011)". Science 334 (6058): 919–919. doi:10.1126/science.1216019
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.1216019). PMID 22096183 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
/22096183).
4. ^ O'Reilly, T. (2011). "Steve Jobs (1955–2011)". Nature 479 (7371): 42. doi:10.1038/479042a (http://dx.doi.org
/10.1038%2F479042a). PMID 22051667 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22051667).
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