Steve Jobs
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
For the biography,
see Steve Jobs (book).
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Steve Jobs
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 Jobs holding a white iPhone 4 at Worldwide Developers Conference 2010 |
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Born
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Died
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Cause of death
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Metastatic Insulinoma
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Nationality
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American
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Ethnicity
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Occupation
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Co-founder, Chairman and CEO,
Apple Inc. Co-founder and CEO, Pixar Founder and CEO, NeXT Inc. |
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Years active
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1974–2011
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Influenced by
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Board member of
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Religion
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Spouse(s)
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Laurene Powell
(1991–2011, his death) |
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Children
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Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Reed Jobs Erin Jobs Eve Jobs |
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Relatives
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Mona Simpson (sister)
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Signature
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Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February
24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)[6][7] was an American entrepreneur.[8] He is best known as the
co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc.Through Apple, he was widely
recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal
computer revolution[9][10] and for his influential career
in the computer and consumer electronics fields.
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.
In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first
commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. 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, one 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]
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 Storeand the App Store.[17] 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.[18] The reinvigoration of the
company is regarded by many commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in
business history.[19][20][21]
In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine tumor.
Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone imbalance, underwent a
liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively thinner as his health
declined.[22] 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 his metastatic tumor on October 5,
2011.
Jobs has received a number of honors and
public recognition for his influence in the technology and music industries. He
has widely been referred to as "legendary", a "futurist" or
simply "visionary",[23][24][25][26] and has been described as the
"Father of the Digital Revolution",[27] a "master of
innovation",[28][29] and a "design
perfectionist".[30][31]
Early
life and education
Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on
February 24, 1955 to two university students, Joanne Carole Schieble of Swiss Catholic
descent and Syrian-born
Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (Arabic: عبدالفتاح
جندلي),
who were both unmarried at the time.[32] Jandali, who was teaching
in Wisconsin when Steve was born, said he
had no choice but to put the baby up for adoption because his girlfriend's
family objected to their relationship.[33]
The baby was adopted at birth by Paul
Reinhold Jobs (1922–1993) and Clara Jobs (1924–1986), an Armenian American[3] whose maiden name was Hagopian.[34] 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 didn't graduate from
college and Paul Jobs 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."[35] He stated in his authorized
biography that they "were my parents 1,000%."[36] Unknown to him, his biological
parents would subsequently marry (December 1955), have a second child,
novelist Mona Simpson,
in 1957, and divorce in 1962.[36]
The Jobs family moved from San Francisco
to Mountain View,
California when Steve was five years old.[1][2] The parents later adopted a
daughter, Patti. Paul was a machinist for a company that made lasers,
and taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands.[1] The father 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,
Steve became interested in and developed a hobby of technical tinkering.[37]
Clara was an accountant[35] who taught him to read before
he went to school.[1] Clara Jobs had been a payroll
clerk for Varian Associates,
one of the first high-tech firms in what became known as Silicon Valley.[38]
Jobs's youth was riddled with frustrations
over formal schooling. At Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View, he was
a prankster whose fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs
tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school—a
proposal his parents declined.[39]
Jobs then attended Cupertino Junior High
and Homestead
High School in Cupertino, California.[2] At Homestead, Jobs became
friends with Bill Fernandez, a neighbor who shared the same interests in
electronics. Fernandez introduced Jobs to another, older computer whiz
kid, Steve Wozniak (also
known as "Woz"). In 1969 Woz started building a little computer board
with Fernandez that they named "The Cream Soda Computer", which they
showed to Jobs; he seemed really interested.[40]
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.[40] Jobs dropped out of college
after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes,
including a course on calligraphy.[41] He continued auditing classes at Reed while sleeping
on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and
getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.[42] Jobs later 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."[42]
Early
career
Homebrew Computer Club
Newsletter, September 1976
In 1974, Jobs took a job as a technician
at Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California.[43] He traveled to India in
mid-1974[44] to visit Neem Karoli Baba[45] 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
as Neem Karoli Baba had died in September 1973.[43] Then they made a long trek up
a dry riverbed to an ashram of Hariakhan Baba. In India, they spent a lot of
time on bus rides from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh and back, then up to Himachal Pradeshand back.[43]
After staying for seven months, Jobs left
India[46] and returned to the US ahead
of Daniel Kottke.[43] Jobs had changed his
appearance; his head was shaved and he wore traditional Indian clothing.[47][48] During this time, Jobs
experimented with psychedelics,
later calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or
three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".[49][50] 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.[51] He considered taking up
monastic residence at Eihei-ji in Japan,
and maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen.[52] Jobs would later say that
people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully
relate to his thinking.[49]
Jobs then returned to Atari, and was assigned
to create a circuit board for
the arcade video game Breakout.
According to Atari co-founder Nolan 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.[further
explanation needed]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.[53] 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.[54]
In the early 1970s, Jobs and Wozniak were
drawn to technology like a magnet. 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.[55]
Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer
Club with Wozniak in 1975.[2] 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.[56][57]
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.[58]
Career
Apple
Computer
See also: History of Apple
Home of Paul and Clara
Jobs, on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California.
Steve Jobs formed Apple Computer in its garage withSteve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. Wayne stayed only a
short time, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the primary co-founders of the company.
Jobs and Steve Wozniak met in 1971, when their
mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old
Jobs. In 1976, Wozniak single-handedly invented the Apple Icomputer. Wozniak showed it to Jobs,
who suggested that they sell it. Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple computer in
the garage of Jobs's parents in order to sell it.[59] They received funding from a
then-semi-retired Intel product-marketing
manager and engineer Mike Markkula.[60]
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 sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or
do you want to come with me and change the world?"[61]
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. One year later, Apple
employee Jef Raskin invented
the Macintosh.[62][63]
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".[64]
Apple logo in
1977, created byRob Janoff with
the rainbow color theme used until 1998.
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 and it eventually became a power
struggle between Jobs and Sculley.[65] Jobs kept meetings running
past midnight, sent out lengthy faxes, then called new meetings at 7:00 am.[66]
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, and on May 24, 1985, called a
board meeting to resolve the matter.[65] Apple's board of directors
sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties as head of the
Macintosh division.[67][68] Jobs resigned from Apple five
months later[65] and founded NeXT
Inc. the same year.[66][69]
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 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."[42][70][71]
NeXT
Computer
See also: NeXT
A NeXTstation with the original keyboard,
mouse and the NeXT MegaPixel monitor
After leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT
Computer in 1985, with $7 million. A year later, Jobs was
running out of money, and with no product on the horizon, he appealed for
venture capital. Eventually, he attracted the attention of billionaire Ross Perot who invested heavily in the
company.[72] 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.[73] 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.[74]
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 NeXTMailmultimedia 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.[75] Jobs ran NeXT with an
obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by the development of and
attention to NeXTcube's magnesium case.[76] 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.[77] The company reported its first
profit of $1.03 million in 1994.[72] 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,[77] 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.[78]
The first film produced by the
partnership, Toy Story (1995),
with Jobs credited as executive producer,[79] 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.[80]
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Steve
Jobs on computer graphics. Interview excerpt from 1995.[81]
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In the years 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,[82] 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 patch up 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.[83] 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. [83][84] [85] Upon Jobs's death his shares
in Disney were transferred to the Steven P. Jobs Trust led by Laurene Jobs.[86]
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 late 1996,[87] 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.[88] 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."[89] 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.[90] Jobs quipped at the time that
he would be using the title "iCEO".[91]
Jobs on stage at Macworld
Conference & Expo, San Francisco, January 11, 2005
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".[92]
Jobs was both admired and criticized for his
consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has 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. In 2005, Jobs responded to
criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-wastein 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.[42] 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.[93]
Resignation
In August 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO of
Apple, but remained with the company as chairman of the company's board.[94][95] Hours after the announcement,
Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares dropped five percent in after-hours trading.[96] 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.[97] It was believed, according
to Forbes, that the impact would be felt in a
negative way beyond Apple, including at The Walt Disney
Companywhere Jobs served as director.[98] In after-hours trading on the
day of the announcement, Walt Disney Co. (DIS) shares dropped 1.5 percent.[99]
Business
life
Wealth
Although Jobs earned only $1 a year as CEO of Apple,[100] 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.[101][102] 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.[103] Forbes estimated his net wealth at
$8.3 billion in 2010, making him the 42nd-wealthiest American.[104]
Stock
options backdating issue
.jpg)
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the fifthD: All Things
Digital conference (D5) in 2007
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,[105] 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.[106]
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.[107][108]
Management
style
Jobs was a demanding perfectionist[109][110] who always aspired to
position his businesses and their products at the forefront of the information
technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation
and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at
the Macworld
Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey
playerWayne 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.[111]
Steve Jobs announcing thetransition
to Intel processorsin 2005.
Much was made of Jobs's aggressive and
demanding personality. Fortune wrote
that he was "considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs".[112] Commentaries on his
temperamental style can be found in Michael Moritz's The Little Kingdom, The Second
Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young
& William L. Simon. In 1993, Jobs made Fortune's list of
America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his leadership of NeXT.
NeXT Cofounder Dan'l Lewin was quoted
in Fortune as saying of that period, "The highs were
unbelievable ... But the lows were unimaginable", to which Jobs's
office replied that his personality had changed since then.[113]
In 2005, Jobs banned all books published
by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing
an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.[114] In its 2010 annual earnings
report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles
available for the iPad."[115] 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 persona.[116] Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was
a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the creative
process of the filmmakers.[117]
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".[118] On October 6, 1997, in
a GartnerSymposium, when Michael Dell was asked
what he would do if he ran then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut
it down and give the money back to the shareholders."[119] In 2006, Jobs sent an email
to all employees when Apple's market capitalization rose
above Dell's. The email read:
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.[120]
Reality distortion field
Main article: Reality distortion
field
Apple's Bud Tribble coined the term "reality
distortion field" in 1981, to describe Jobs's charisma and its effects on the
developers working on the Macintosh project.[122] Tribble claimed that the term
came from Star Trek.[122] Since then the term has also
been used to refer to perceptions of Jobs's keynote speeches.[123]
The RDF was said by Andy Hertzfeld to be Steve Jobs's ability
to convince himself and others to believe almost anything, using a mix of
charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and
persistence. Although the subject of criticism, Jobs's so-called reality
distortion field was also recognized as creating a sense that the impossible
was possible. 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.[124][125]
Inventions 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.[36] His design sense was also
greatly influenced by the Buddhism which he experienced in India while on a
seven-month spiritual journey.[126] His sense of intuition was
also influenced by the spiritual people with whom he studied.[126]
According to Apple cofounder, Steve Wozniak,
"Steve didn't ever code. He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any
original design..."[127][128] Daniel Kottke, one of Apple's
earliest employees and a college friend of Jobs', stated that "Between Woz
and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing
person."[129]
He is listed as either primary inventor or
co-inventor in 342 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".[130] 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).[131][132] He has 43 issued US patents
on inventions.[133] The patent on the Mac OS
X Dock user
interface with "magnification" feature was issued the day before he
died.[134] However, Jobs had little
involvement in the engineering and technical side of the original Apple
computers.[128]
Even while terminally ill in the hospital,
Jobs sketched new devices that would hold the iPad in a hospital bed.[135] He also despised the oxygen
monitor on his finger and suggested ways to revise the design for simplicity.[136]
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.[137] The Macintosh had a friendly
appearance since it was meant to be easy to use. The disk drive is below the
display, the Macintosh was taller, narrower, more symmetrical, and far more
suggestive of a face. The Macintosh was identified as a computer that ordinary
people could understand.[138]
The NeXT Computer
Main article: 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.
Sir 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).[139]
iMac
Main article: IMac
Apple iMac was
introduced in 1998 and its innovative design was directly the result of Jobs's
return to Apple. Apple boasted "the back of our computer looks better than
the front of anyone else's".[140] Described as
"cartoonlike" the first iMac, clad in Bondi Blue plastic, was unlike
any personal computer that came before. In 1999, Apple introduced Graphite gray
Apple iMac and since has switched to all-white. 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.[141] The Apple iMac sold for
$1,299 at that time. There were some technical revolutions for iMac too. The
USB ports being the only device inputs on the iMac. So the iMac's success
helped popularize the interface among third party peripheral makers, which is
evidenced by the fact that many early USB peripherals were made of translucent
plastic to match the iMac design.[142]
iPod
Main article: 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.[143] 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.[144] Also, the iPod's success
prepared the way for the iTunes music store and the iPhone.[145] 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.[144]
iPhone
Main article: 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.[146] The Apple iPhone is a small
device with multimedia capabilities and functions as a quad-band touch screen
smartphone.[147] A year later, the iPhone 3G was released in July 2008 with
the key feature was support for GPS, 3G data and quad-band UMTS/HSDPA. In June
2009, the iPhone 3GS, added
voice control, a better camera, and a faster processor was introduced by Phil
Schiller.[148] iPhone 4 was thinner than
previous models, had a five megapixel camera which can record videos in 720p
HD, and added a secondary front facing camera for video calls.[149] A major feature of the iPhone 4S, introduced in October 2011,
was Siri, which is a
virtual assistant that is capable of voice recognition.[146]
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.[150] 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.[151] 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."[152] Jobs also added that when he
has some time we would start a public foundation but for now he does charitable
acts privately.[153]
After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs
eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs initially.[154] Jobs's friends told The
New York Times that he felt that expanding Apple would have done more
good than giving money to charity.[155] Later, under Jobs, Apple
signed to participate in 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.[156]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.[157][158]
Personal
life
Jobs's birth parents met at the University of
Wisconsin. Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, from Syria,[159] taught there. Joanne Carole
Schieble was his student; they were the same age because Jandali had
"gotten his PhD really young."[160][161][162] Schieble had a career as
a speech language
pathologist. Jandali taught political science at the University of
Nevada in the 1960s, and then made his career in the food and
beverage industry, and since 2006, has been a vice president at a casino
in Reno, Nevada.[163][164] In December 1955, ten months
after giving up their baby boy, Schieble and Jandali married. In 1957 they had
a daughter, Mona. They divorced in 1962, and Jandali lost touch with his
daughter.[165] Her mother remarried and had
Mona take the surname of her stepfather, so she became known as Mona Simpson.[161]
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[165] and became close friends. The
siblings kept their relationship secret until 1986, when Mona introduced him at
a party for her first book.[35]
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 where "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,[166] 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."[167] Jobs was in occasional touch
with his mother Joanne Simpson,[154][168] who lives in a nursing home
in Los Angeles.[161] 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."[36] Jandali stated in an interview
with the The Sun in
August 2011, that his efforts to contact Jobs were unsuccessful. Jandali mailed
in his medical history after Jobs's pancreatic disorder was made public that
year.[169][170][171]
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.[165]
Jobs's first child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, was born in 1978, the
daughter of his longtime partner Chris Ann Brennan, a Bay Area painter.[154] 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.[154] 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,
aZen Buddhist monk. Their son, Reed, was
born September 1991, followed by daughters Erin in August 1995, and Eve in
1998.[172] The family lives in Palo Alto, California.[173]
Jobs
demonstrating the iPhone 4 toRussian President Dmitry Medvedev on June 23, 2010
In the unauthorized biography, The Second
Coming of Steve Jobs, author Alan Deutschman reports that
Jobs once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman
quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed College, as
saying she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large
measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan" (Dylan was the Apple icon's
favorite musician). In another unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs by Jeffrey S. Young
& William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez,
but her age at the time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have
children.
Jobs was also a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple
occasions at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about
hisbusiness model on 60 Minutes, he replied:
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.[174]
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 had 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.[175][176]
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 by Greens Restaurant.[177][178] Clinton returned the favor
and Jobs, who was a Democraticdonor,
slept in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House.[179]
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 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.[180] The court decision was
overturned on appeal in March 2010, and the mansion was demolished beginning in
February 2011.[181]
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.[182][183] 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."[184] He was a pescetarian.[185]
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.[186]
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 Mr. 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."[187]
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.[188]
Health issues
Jobs
addressing concerns about his health in 2008.
In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with
cancer,[189] and in mid-2004, he announced
to his employees that he had a cancerous tumor in his pancreas.[190] The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very poor;[191] Jobs stated that he had a
rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.[190] Despite his diagnosis, Jobs
resisted his doctors' recommendations for mainstream medical intervention for
nine months,[154] instead consuming a
special alternative 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."[189] 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."[192] "Instead, he tried a
vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online,
and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a
clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven
approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004."[193] He eventually underwent
a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or
"Whipple procedure") in July 2004, that appeared to successfully
remove the tumor.[194][195][196] Jobs apparently did not
receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy.[190][197] During Jobs's absence, Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and
operations at Apple, ran the company.[190]
In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the
keynote for Apple's annual Worldwide
Developers Conference. His "thin, almost gaunt" appearance
and unusually "listless" delivery,[198][199] 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.[200] In contrast, according to
an Ars Technica journal
report, Worldwide
Developers Conference (WWDC) attendees who saw Jobs in person
said he "looked fine".[201] Following the keynote, an
Apple spokesperson said that "Steve's health is robust."[202]
Two years later, similar concerns followed
Jobs's 2008 WWDC keynote address.[203] Apple officials stated Jobs
was victim to a "common bug" and was taking antibiotics,[204] while others surmised
his cachectic appearance was due to the
Whipple procedure.[197] 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.[205][206] The New York Times published
an article based on an off-the-record 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."[207]
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,[208] intensifying rumors
concerning Jobs's health.[209] Jobs responded at Apple's
September 2008 Let's Rock keynote by quoting Mark Twain: "Reports of my death are
greatly exaggerated."[210] 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.[211]
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.[212][213] In a statement given on
January 5, 2009, on Apple.com,[214] Jobs said that he had been
suffering from a "hormone imbalance"
for several months.[215]
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,[216] with Jobs still involved with
"major strategic decisions."[216]
In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University
Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee.[217][218] Jobs's prognosis was
described as "excellent".[217]
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.[219][220] 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).[221]
Jobs announced his resignation as Apple's CEO
on August 24, 2011. "Unfortunately, that day has come," wrote Jobs,
for he could "no longer meet [his] duties and expectations as Apple's
CEO". Jobs became chairman of the board and named Tim Cook his successor.[222][223] Jobs continued to work for
Apple until the day before his death.[224]
Death
Flags
flying at half-staff outside
Apple HQ in Cupertino, on the evening of Steve Jobs's death.
Memorial
candles and iPads to Steve Jobs outside the Apple Store in Palo Alto California
shortly after his death
Jobs died at his California home around
3 pm on October 5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated
islet-cell neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer,[2][225][226] resulting inrespiratory arrest.[227] He had lost consciousness the
day before, and died with his wife, children and sister at his side.[228]
Both Apple and Microsoft flew their flags at half-staff throughout their respective
headquarters and campuses.[229][230] Bob Iger ordered all Disney properties, including Walt Disney World andDisneyland, to fly their flags at half-staff,
from October 6 to 12, 2011.[231]
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.
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.[232]
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.[233] 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.[233]
An email address was also posted for the
public to share their memories, condolences, and thoughts.[234][235] 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:[236]
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 anyone
ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of
making computer animated films; the one 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.[236]
A small private funeral was held on October
7, 2011, of which details were not revealed out of respect to Jobs's family.[237] 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.[238] Sunday, October 16, 2011, was
declared "Steve Jobs Day" by Governor Jerry Brown of California.[239] 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.[240][241]
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, was in
attendance. 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.[242]
Jobs is buried in an unmarked grave at Alta Mesa Memorial
Park, the only non-denominational cemetery in Palo Alto.[243][244] He is survived by Laurene,
his wife of 20 years, their three children, and Lisa Brennan-Jobs, his daughter from a
previous relationship.[245] His family released a
statement saying that he "died peacefully".[246][247] He "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"; his last words, spoken
hours before his death, were:
"Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."[165]
Media coverage
Steve Jobs's death broke news headlines on ABC, CBS,
and NBC.[248] 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,[249] British Prime Minister David Cameron,[250] Microsoft founder Bill Gates,[251] 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.[252] Other statements of
condolence were made by many of Jobs's friends and colleagues, such as Steve Wozniak and George Lucas.[253][254] 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 has been featured on the
cover of Time.[255] The issue included a photographic essay by Diana Walker, aretrospective 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.[256]
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.
Although reporters wrote glowing eulogies
after Jobs died, Los Angeles Times media critic James
Rainey reported that they "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."[257]
Free software pioneer Richard Stallman drew attention to the
tight corporate control Apple exercised 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".[258][259] 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."[260]
Apple "has taken stances that, in my
opinion, are outright hostile to the practice of journalism," said
longtime Silicon Valley reporter Dan Gillmor.[257] Under Jobs, Apple sued three
"small fry" bloggers who reported tips about the company and its
unreleased products and tried to use the courts to force them to reveal their
sources. Under Jobs, Apple sued teenager Nicholas Ciarelli, who wrote enthusiastic
speculation about Apple products beginning at age 13. His popular blog,
ThinkSecret, was a play on Apple's slogan "Think Different."[257] Rainey wrote that Apple
wanted to kill ThinkSecret as "It thought any leaks, even favorable ones,
diluted the punch of its highly choreographed product launches with Jobs, in
his iconic jeans and mock turtleneck outfit, as the star."[257]
Honors
and public recognition
.jpg){kind=logo}
Steve
Jobs with the first generation iPad tablet
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".[261][262]
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),[263] 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.[264] On November 27, 2007, Jobs
was named the most powerful person in business by Fortune magazine.[265] 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.[266]
In August 2009, Jobs was selected as the most
admired entrepreneur among teenagers in a survey by Junior Achievement,[267] having previously been named
Entrepreneur of the Decade 20 years earlier in 1989, by Inc. magazine.[268] On November 5, 2009, Jobs was
named the CEO of the decade by Fortune magazine.[269]
In November 2010, Jobs was ranked No.17
on Forbes: The World's Most Powerful People.[270] In December 2010, the Financial Times named Jobs its person
of the year for 2010, ending its essay[271] 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.'".[272] The Financial Times closed by
rhetorically asking of this quote, "How wrong can you be."[271]
At the time of his resignation, and again
after his death, Jobs was widely described as a visionary, pioneer and genius[273][274][275][276]—perhaps one of the foremost—in the
field of business,[269][277]innovation,[278] and product design,[279] and a man who had profoundly
changed the face of the modern world,[273][275][278] revolutionized at least six
different industries,[274] and who was an "exemplar
for all chief executives".[274] His death was widely mourned[278] and considered a loss to the
world by commentators across the globe.[276]
After his resignation as Apple's CEO, Jobs
was characterized as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of his time.[280][281] 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."[282]
.JPG)
Statue
of Jobs at Graphisoft Park, Budapest[283]
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.[283]
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.[284]
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.[285]
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".[286]
The Disney film John Carter is
dedicated to Jobs,[287] as well as the Pixar
film Brave.[288]
On October 5, 2012, Apple.com's homepage was
changed to a video tribute to Jobs, because it was the first anniversary of his
death, and it showed pictures with audio from some of his greatest keynotes.
When the video ended, it showed a note from Tim Cook about the matter.
Portrayals
and coverage in books, film, and theater
Books
§ 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.
§ 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.
§ 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.
Documentaries
§ 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.
§ Triumph of the Nerds – a 1996 three-part
documentary for PBS,
about the rise of the home computer/personal
computer.
§ Nerds 2.0.1 – a 1998 three-part
documentary for PBS,
(and sequel to Triumph of the Nerds) which chronicles the
development of the Internet.
§ iGenius: How Steve Jobs
Changed the World – a 2011 Discovery Channel documentary hosted
by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.[289]
§ Steve Jobs: One Last Thing – a 2011 PBS documentary
produced by Pioneer Productions.[290] A slightly shortened and
localized[291] version of the show was
broadcast[292] in the United Kingdom the
following day titled, Steve Jobs: iChanged the World –
on Channel 4.[293]
Films
§ Steve Jobs – A Sony Pictures film version of the
biography by Walter Isaacson,
with a screenplay and directed by Aaron Sorkin.
§ Jobs – an upcoming independent film by Joshua Michael Stern.
Jobs will be portrayed by Ashton Kutcher.[294]
§ Pirates of
Silicon Valley – a 1999 TNT film which chronicles the rise of
Apple and Microsoft from the
early 1970s to 1997. Jobs is portrayed by Noah Wyle.[295]
Theater
§ The Agony and Ecstasy of
Steve Jobs – The Public Theater,
New York City, 2012, starring Mike Daisey.[296]
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