Profile piece on Steve Jobs
Born in San Francisco in 1955 Steve Jobs had appeared to be regret for his biological parents, who were unmarried students at the time of his birth. Unnamed at the time he was put up for adoption and taken in by Paul and Clara Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant and Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist. Steve then grew up with them in California.
Steve’s teachers knew he had an intelligent spark, wanting to move him up to high school but his parents declined. This may have been because of Steve’s different side to school life. He was in fact the prankster and at times detested to work, with his teachers having to bribe him to get on with his studies.
When Steve enrolled at Reed College in Portland in 1972 he was lost looking for direction. He eventually left after six months and spent the next 18 months sleeping on friends’ floors, dropping into different creative classes. Steve found one course he loved – calligraphy. Later in life Steve 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!"
In 1974 Steve Jobs started a new chapter in his life by becoming a video games designer with Atari. He knew he was on the right track now and his high school friend Steve Wozniak helped him. Together they attended voluntary meetings of the Homebrew Computer club which was an early computer hobbyist users group and led the two to start Apple Computers. The duo thrived working as independents. The first Apple computer was released later that year for $666.66.
The first ever computer to have colour graphics was made in 1977, with revenues reaching $1 million. As the Apple computer continued to develop so did the customers interest in Steve’s product and by 1982 annual revenue climbed to $1 billion. Apple computers were being sold world-wide.
Even though Apple sales were flying, there was no denying there were some crucial design flaws, and the public were noticing. Steve had to fill the president role at Apple and appointed well known marketing expert John Sculley. Even though Steve appointed Sculley, Sculley felt Steve wasn’t benefiting Apple as much as he used too. Sculley gradually faded Steve out, and by 1985 Steve Job’s had resigned.
Steve then started a new software company called NeXT, Inc, which was a new computer company making high-end machines for universities. Steve was always thinking of what’s going to be the next big thing saying his companies always looked for the “next dream” and didn’t make “me too products”. That’s why Steve became so successful because he never stopped looking at the future and always set new organisational objectives.
The next year Steve took over George Lucas’s animation company which eventually became PIXAR animation studios. Steve had huge faith in making this company more than just a success, investing $50 million of his own money, and what a decision it was with PIXAR producing some of the greatest animation films ever to be seen, Toy Story and Finding Nemo. The films profited $140 million $286 million between them. Steve bagged $4 billion from PIXAR films alone. Success or what?!
Steve also continued to develop his first NeXT computer which went on sale in 1989 for $6,500, but Apple saw the product not do as well as first thought which led to them buying the company in 1997 for $492 million. Steve then returned to his post at Apple. Making them the leading software company around again. His skills didn’t go unnoticed, leading Apple to create the iMac and working on improving the Apple computer’s ability to perform better than competitors computers. Steve thought Bill Gates co-founder of Microsoft did, Steve thought Gates was trying to copy his product “when they saw the Mac they couldn’t even copy it well.” This led to Steve wanting cross media regulations to be put in place to stop other companies copying their products.
In 2003 Steve found out he had a rare pancreatic cancer. The following year he had surgery which was successful. The pancreatic tumour was removed.
Whilst all this was on going Apple was once again producing more diverse products. The IPod had gone on sale and then they introduced Itunes a site for Ipod users to purchase music. This was again a success within the first week there were 1 million sales. Disney then bought Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006, with Steve benefiting from this becoming the largest shareholder in Disney.
Steve then lost a lot of weight in 2009. He claimed it was due to hormone imbalance and continued to lead Apple. Later it was learnt it was due to a liver transplant. Everybody knew Steve liked to keep his personal life to himself.
Steve began to gradually leave his post at Apple due to medical reasons, although he did carry on making big decisions such as unveiling the Ipad saying it was 'the biggest thing Apple's ever done'. On the 24thof august, 2011, Jobs eventually stepped down as CEO for good and became chairman.
A few months later on October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs died. The 56 year old was pronounced dead with no specific cause.
Steve became a worldwide star, somebody who all young people can look up too. Steve Wozniak expressed how Jobs had something other creators in the technology industry didn’t have: “His drive toward the future no matter how unachievable it seemed.” Apple will definitely miss his importance as he is arguably the most important executive of all time. Despite this tragedy, Apple are still flourishing, as products like the Ipad and Iphone are the most wanted gadgets around.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0423418/bio http://allaboutstevejobs.com/bio/timeline.php
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