Apple Founder Steve Jobs: Biography

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Jobs Steve
Steven Paul Jobs

Other names:	Stephen Paul Jobs
In English:	Steven Paul Jobs
Date of Birth:	24.02.1955
Place of Birth:	USA
Date of death:	05.10.2011
A place of death:	USA
Short information: American entrepreneur, designer and inventor, pioneer of the personal computer revolution. One of the founders, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Apple Corporation. One of the founders and CEO of Pixar

Biography

His parents were unmarried students: Syrian-born Abdulfatta (John) Jandali and Joan Schible from a Catholic family of German immigrants.

The boy was adopted by Paul Jobs and an American of Armenian origin, Clara Jobs, née Hagopian. The Jobs could not have their own children. They named their adopted son Stephen Paul. Jobs always considered Paul and Clara to be father and mother, he was very annoyed if someone called them foster parents: "They are 100% my real parents."

In the late 1970s, Jobs' friend Steve Wozniak developed one of the first personal computers with great commercial potential. The Apple II computer was the first mass-produced Apple product created at the initiative of Steve Jobs. Jobs later saw the commercial potential of a mouse-driven GUI, leading to the Apple Lisa and, a year later, the Macintosh (Mac).

After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a company that developed a computer platform for universities and businesses. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, turning it into Pixar. He remained Pixar's CEO and majority shareholder until the studio was acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 2006, making Jobs the largest private shareholder and member of Disney's board of directors.

Difficulties developing a new operating system for the Mac led to Apple's purchase of NeXT in 1996 to use NeXTSTEP as the basis for Mac OS X. As part of the deal, Jobs was given a position as an advisor to Apple. The deal was orchestrated by Jobs. By 1997, Jobs had regained control of Apple, heading the corporation. Under his leadership, the company was saved from bankruptcy and a year later began to make a profit.

Over the next decade, Jobs led the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, as well as the development of the Apple Store, iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore. The success of these products and services, which provided several years of stable financial profit, allowed Apple to become the most valuable public company in the world in 2011. Many commentators call Apple's revival one of the greatest accomplishments in business history. At the same time, Jobs was criticized for his authoritarian management style, aggressive actions towards competitors, the desire for total control over products even after they were sold to the buyer.

Jobs has received public recognition and a number of awards for his impact on the technology and music industries. He is often called a "visionary" and even "the father of the digital revolution". Jobs was a brilliant speaker and took innovative product presentations to the next level, turning them into exciting shows. His instantly recognizable figure in a black turtleneck, faded jeans and sneakers is surrounded by a cult following.

After eight years of fighting the disease, Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer in 2011.

Steve Jobs: "1.5 million Armenians were subjected to the Genocide. Tell us how it happened?"

The book Steve Jobs: A Biography by Walter Isaacson says that Steve's adoptive mother, Clara Jobs (nee Hagopian), is a descendant of Armenians who escaped the genocide at the beginning of the twentieth century. Her father Luis Hakobyan was born in Malatya in 1894 and her mother Victoria Artinyan was born in Izmir in 1894.

The story of Steve Jobs' visit to Turkey, which took place in 2006, is curious. Jobs' Turkish guide Asil Tuncer told about this difficult visit. According to him, the last visit of the late Steve Jobs to Turkey caused great outrage in the country. Tuncer claims that Jobs considered the Turks an enemy and even refused to shake hands with the tour guide before he left the ship.

“We started our journey. Jobs most wanted to see the Hagia Sophia. Approaching her, he asked a question about the minarets. In turn, I replied that after the capture, the former church was turned into a mosque, and a minaret was added in the southeastern part. After that, a flurry of questions rained down on me, ”writes Tuncer.

“What happened to so many Christians? You millions of Muslims in a non-Muslim environment, what have you done?” Jobs lamented. Before the guide even opened his mouth, he heard another question: “1.5 million Armenians were subjected to the Genocide. Tell us how it happened?"

After these questions, the Turkish guide began to prove to Jobs that there was no genocide at all. The guide's denials, his stories about the civil war and the betrayal of the Armenians during World War I further angered Steve Jobs.

After all, Steve and his wife Marina met with the owner of the travel agency and expressed their dissatisfaction with the cruise. They expressed a desire to leave the ship ahead of schedule. In the end, without saying a word to the Turkish guide, and leaving his hand hanging in the air, Jobs left the ship. The promised iPhone guide also did not receive.

Achievements

National Medal of Technology (1985, President Ronald Reagan awarded Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and they were among the first to receive this award)
Jefferson Award (1987, for public service in the category "best public service by a person 35 years of age or younger")
In 1988, the magazine "Inventor and Innovator" recognized Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as winners of the "Technology Chariot of Progress" competition.
In December 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver inducted Jobs into the California Hall of Fame.
In 1989, Inc. named Jobs Entrepreneur of the Decade
In November 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by Fortune magazine.
In August 2009, Jobs was named the most admired entrepreneur by teenagers in a Junior Achievement poll.
In November 2009, Fortune named Jobs "CEO of the Decade"
In March 2012, Fortune named Steve Jobs "the greatest entrepreneur of our time"
In November 2010, Jobs was ranked 17th on the Forbes list of the most influential people in the world.
In December 2010, the Financial Times named Jobs Person of the Year.
In December 2011, Graphisoft unveiled the world's first bronze statue of Steve Jobs in Budapest, calling him one of the greatest figures of our time.
In February 2012, Jobs was posthumously awarded the Grammy Trustees Award (given to those who have influenced the music industry in areas other than performing)

Memory

Books

"Little Kingdom" (1984) by Michael Moritz on the founding of Apple Computer
"The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" (2001) by Alan Deutschman
«iKona. Steve Jobs (2005) by Jeffrey Young and William Simon
iWoz (2006) by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. This is Wozniak's autobiography, but it covers much of Jobs' life and work at Apple.
"iPresentation. Persuasion Lessons from Apple Leader Steve Jobs (2010) Carmina Gallo
"Steve Jobs" (2011), authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson
"Steve Jobs. Leadership Lessons (2011), Jay Elliot, William Simon. A book about the unique management style of Steve Jobs
Jobs Rules (2011) Carmina Gallo
"Inside Apple" (2012) Adam Lashinsky. Talks about the secret systems, tactics, and leadership strategies that made it possible for Steve Jobs and his company to work.
"Steve Jobs. The Man Who Thought Different (2012) Karen Blumenthal. Detailed biography of Steve Jobs

Documentaries

"The Machine That Changed the World" (1992) - the third series of this five-part film, "Paperback Computer", chronicles Jobs and his role in the early days of Apple
Triumph of the Nerds (1996) - three-part documentary for PBS about the rise of the personal computer
"Nerds 2.0.1" (1998) - a three-part documentary for PBS (sequel to "Triumph of the Nerds") about the development of the Internet
iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World (2011) - documentary on Discovery with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman
Steve Jobs: And One More (2011) - PBS documentary produced by Pioneer Productions
"Unknown Jobs" (2012) - AppleInsider.ru documentary about the founder of Apple, covering the unknown side of the life of Steve Jobs

Art films

Steve Jobs is a planned adaptation by Sony Pictures of Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs with writer and director Aaron Sorkin.
Jobs is a planned independent film by Joshua Michael Stern. Jobs will be portrayed by Ashton Kutcher
Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) - A TNT film that chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. Jobs played by Noah Wyle

Theatre

The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (2012) - New York Public Theater production with Mike Daisy

Miscellaneous

Jobs was dedicated to the Disney film "John Carter" and the Pixar cartoon "Brave"
On the first anniversary of the death of Jobs in Odessa, a sculptural composition "Thank you, Steve!" Was opened. The 330-kilogram composition is an almost two-meter palm (Steve Jobs) made from scrap metal

Bibliography

Books about Steve Jobs in Russian

Steve Jobs Steve Jobs on Business: 250 Sayings from a Man Who Changed the World = The Business Wisdom of Steve Jobs. - M.: "Alpina Publisher", 2012. - 256 p. - ISBN 978-5-9614-1808-8
Isaacson W. Steve Jobs = Steve Jobs: A Biography. - M.: Astrel, 2012. - 688 p. - ISBN 978-5-271-39378-5
Young J.S., Simon W.L. iKona. Steve Jobs = iCon. Steve Jobs. - M.: Eksmo, 2007. - 448 p. - ISBN 978-5-699-21035-0
Keni L. What Steve is thinking. - M.: AST, 2012. - 284 p. - ISBN 978-5-017-06251-3
Gallo K. Jobs rules. Universal principles of success from the founder of Apple. - M.: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2011. - 240 p. - ISBN 978-5-91657-301-5
Wozniak C., Smith D. Steve Jobs and I. The True Story of Apple = iWoz. - M.: Eksmo, 2011. - 288 p. - ISBN 978-5-699-53452-4
Beam J. Steve Jobs: First Person. - M.: Olimp-Business, 2012. - 176 p. - ISBN 978-5-9693-0208-2
Eliot D., Simon W. Steve Jobs: Lessons in Leadership. - M.: Eksmo, 2012. - 336 p. - ISBN 978-5-699-50848-8

October 5, 2011 - Steve Jobs dies from respiratory arrest caused by pancreatic cancer.

Conclusion

Steve Jobs is undeniably an outstanding person by all standards. He has made significant contributions to five industries: personal computers with the Apple II and Macintosh, music with the iPod and iTunes, iPhones, and animation with Pixar. middle class hippie boy graduate built a computer empire, became a multi-millionaire in a few years, was fired from his company and returned to it a decade later, and turned it into one of the most powerful corporations in the world. He also contributed to the creation of the company that would lead the animated film industry for decades to come. For years he was called an upstart, but now he is deservedly recognized as one of the most prominent business managers and an unrivaled visionary. He has changed millions of lives by making technology easy to use, fun and aesthetic.

Steve Jobs is an American entrepreneur, inventor, and industrial designer who is widely recognized as a pioneer of the information technology era.

Jobs is best known as one of the founders of Apple and Pixar. Many consider him a real revolutionary in the field of mobile gadgets, as well as a brilliant marketer.

Education and first job

In 1972, Jobs entered Reed College in Portland, but was expelled from it six months later. This was due to too expensive education, which turned out to be unbearable for his parents.

After leaving Reed College, Steve became seriously interested in Eastern spiritual practices. In addition, he refused to eat meat and repeatedly experimented with fasting.

An interesting fact is that Jobs liked to spend his free time with hippies, listening with them to The Beatles, who were at the peak of their popularity.

In 1975, Jobs set about improving the circuitry for a video game. He had to upgrade the board, minimizing the number of chips located on it.

For each chip removed, Atari paid $100. But since Steve was not well versed in the design of electronic circuits, he was forced to turn to Wozniak.

As a rule, it took more than one month to complete such work, but he convinced a friend to complete the task in 4 days. As a result, after 4 days of intensive work, Wozniak managed to optimize the board for the game.

For such an outstanding result, the company paid Jobs $ 5,000, but he told his friend that he received only $ 700, after which he divided this amount in half.

Thus, in his hands was enough money that allowed him to quit his job.

Jobs career

When Steve Jobs was 20 years old, he first saw Wozniak's computer, which he created with his own hands. Then friends seriously thought about selling such equipment.

However, this required start-up capital. By selling some personal belongings, they were able to save $1,300.

After that, the guys found a customer who was ready to buy as many as 50 computers from them. To fulfill such an order, they had to take out a loan, because it was necessary to purchase a lot of materials.

After 10 days, the inventors managed to sell some of the computers, which they decided to call "Apple 1". The price of each of them was $666.

At the same time, IBM began mass production of computers. Then Jobs thought about how to get ahead of the competitor and emerge victorious in this difficult race.

Millionaire at 25

By that time, Wozniak was able to improve his PC, as a result of which the “Apple 2” was released. This model was faster and had a better design.

As a result, Apple technology began to spread around the world, and the number of their computers exceeded 5 million copies. This event has become one of the most significant in the biography of Steve Jobs.

At the age of 25, he and his friend Steve Wozniak became millionaires.

The inventors did not stop at the results achieved, but rather continued to upgrade their products.

Soon there was a new PC "Lisa", which Steve named after his daughter.

Later, his colleagues Mark Markulla, who invested more than $ 250,000 in Apple, and Scott Forstall reorganized the company and decided to remove Jobs.

Mac

After being fired, he began to collaborate with Jeff Raskin. Together with him, he wanted to create a portable machine that would have small dimensions and could fit in a small suitcase. Later this device was called "Macintosh".

It is worth noting that conflicts often arose between Jobs and Raskin, since Jobs was already a very demanding and principled boss.

As a result, Ruskin was fired, and later, due to disagreements, John Scully and Wozniak also quit.

After that, Jobs formed the NeXT hardware company.

In 1986, he became the head of the Pixar animation studio, which produced many popular cartoons.

Apple soon announced that it would buy NeXT for $427 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996, and Jobs was introduced to the Apple team as an "adviser to the chairman."

Return to Apple

The company immediately began to feel the movement: production was reduced, followed by a series of personnel changes and reshuffles.

It became clear that Jobs would try to regain Apple, although he himself called himself only a “consultant” and in every possible way denied claims to power, citing his employment at Pixar and the need to devote more time to his family.

At the same time, Jobs quickly managed to get people loyal to him into key positions in the company and gained an unequivocal reputation: he became a gray eminence at Apple.

After a short time, he received the position of Apple's managing director, joining the board of directors. An interesting fact is that in 2000, Jobs entered the Guinness Book of Records as the director with the smallest salary - $ 1 per year.

In 2001, Jobs introduced an MP3 player called the "iPod" to the world, which became incredibly popular. The player had unique technical characteristics, great design and a large amount of memory.

After that, a series of bright events related to innovative developments took place in the biography of Steve Jobs.

Apple introduced the Apple TV media player, and soon the iPhone touchscreen phone was on sale. Less than a year later, the company has developed the thinnest notebook "MacBook Air".

Genius Jobs

Researchers have always been interested in the question of why it was Apple products that for a long time occupied a leading position in the global electronics market, leaving all competitors far behind.

In answering this question, it is impossible not to admit that this was only possible thanks to Steve Jobs.

Jobs attached great importance to the appearance and interface of his devices. Apple products were unique in their kind and could not be confused with any other brand.

Steve always thought a few steps ahead and tried to anticipate the desires of the consumer. It is worth noting that he often used other people's developments, which he brought to the ideal before implementation.

You can recall one interesting fact from the biography of Steve Jobs, which fully reveals his marketing talent. In 2010, he introduced the iPad tablet as a complete alternative to a laptop.

However, the audience was little interested in the gadget. The situation was further complicated by the fact that he actively advertised his netbooks, claiming that the future was behind them.

It was here that Jobs' oratorical talent manifested itself. He described the iPad so masterfully that he literally forced people to buy it.

As a result, in just one year, more than 15 million people purchased the tablet, which was almost a record figure in .

Personal life

At the age of 17, Steve Jobs met Chris Ann Brennan, who was a hippie. Together they mastered various oriental practices, and also hitchhiked.

In 1978, their daughter Lisa was born. An interesting fact is that initially Jobs categorically denied his paternity, stating that Chris met not only with him. As a result of litigation and a genetic test, it turned out that he was the father.

When Lisa grew up, Steve got along quite well with her, and he recalled the story of denying his paternity with annoyance:

“I shouldn't have behaved like this. Then I did not imagine myself a father and was not ready for this. If it were possible to change everything now, I would, of course, behave better.”

In 1982, Steve began an affair with artist Joan Baez, but their relationship ended after 3 years.

After that, he met Tina Redse, whom he fell in love with at first sight. At that time, she worked as a computer consultant, and most importantly, she was also fond of the hippie subculture.

Feelings arose between them, but the matter never came to the wedding. When Steve Jobs proposed to her, Tina turned him down and their relationship ended.

In 1989, Jobs met and began dating Lauren Powell, who was a bank employee. A year later, they decided to get married. Later, they had a boy, Reed (1991), as well as two girls, Erin (1995) and Eve (1998).

Death of Jobs

In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Doctors unambiguously insisted on urgently operating on him.

However, he refused the operation for 9 months, preferring to use non-traditional methods. He later regretted it very much.

He held his last speech on June 6, 2011, and on August 24 he announced his resignation as CEO of Apple.

Fully concentrating on the fight against a terrible disease, he used various methods of treatment, but he did not succeed in defeating the disease.

Some researchers call Jobs "the greatest entrepreneur of our time", and put him on a par with such personalities as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.

Jobs statue at Graphisoft Park in Budapest

In 2013, Jobs: The Empire of Seduction was filmed based on facts from his biography.

In 2011, Graphisoft unveiled the world's first bronze statue of Steve Jobs in Budapest, calling him one of the greatest figures of our time.

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Instruction

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955. His father, the Syrian Adulfat Jandali, and his mother Joan Shible, born in a family of German emigrants, lived in a civil marriage. Joan gives birth to a son and decides to abandon the child. Her son ended up in the family of an American of Armenian origin Clara Jobs and her husband Paul. The boy was named Stephen. Before the adoption, Joan made a commitment from the couple to pay for the child's education and college. Jobs considered Paul and Clara his real parents all his life, although he knew the history of their appearance in their family.

Steve's father worked as an auto mechanic and tried his son to love this profession, but remained cold to motors. However, Steve enthusiastically studied the basics of electronics and soon, under the guidance of his father, he assembled and repaired televisions and radios.

Steve made his money by delivering newspapers, and then he, a thirteen-year-old boy, was invited to work on the assembly line at Hewlett-Packard. At the age of 15, Jobs bought his first car, and a year later, Steve became interested in the work of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, began to communicate with hippies, smoke marijuana and use LSD.

Steve's classmate introduced him to Steven Wozniak. Despite the 5 years of age difference, they quickly found a common language. Their first joint project was the manufacture of "blue boxes" - digital devices that made it possible to crack telephone codes and call anywhere in the world. Friends began to sell such boxes to students and neighbors. The business was illegal, and therefore the production of devices had to be curtailed.

In 1972, Steve entered Reed College, which was famous for its excellent curriculum, high standards and very free morals. The guy became interested in spiritual practices, refused food of animal origin, periodically practiced fasting. Six months later, Jobs drops out of college, but continues to attend creative classes.

The first serious work of Steve Jobs can be considered the Atari company, which was engaged in the production of video games. Jobs was paid $5 an hour for revising games. A year later, Steve becomes a member of the Homemade Computer Club. Already after the first meeting, Jobs, together with his friend Wozniak, began designing a personal computer, which was later called the Apple I.

April 1, 1976 Steve Jobs with his friends Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne register their own company and begin mass production of printed circuit boards. Just at that time, Jobs becomes a fruitarian, sits down on an apple diet and proposes that the new company be called Apple Computer.

In the garage of Jobs' parental home, a group of friends who are passionate about electronics assemble the first Apple I computers. Byte store owner Paul Terrell ordered the production of 50 units of personal machines at once. Moreover, he did not need boards, but fully assembled and ready-to-use computers. However, Apple I was very different from classical computers in the sense familiar to modern man. No one in the world produced similar goods at that time. In August 1976, Steve Wozniak completed work on the board for the Apple II. On the new computer, it was possible to work with color and sound, connect game controllers. The Apple II had an integrated keyboard, expansion slots, disk drives, and a plastic case.

The Apple Computer partnership became Apple, which now had its own office. Steve Jobs chooses Apple in the form of a six-color bitten apple. The founders of the company constantly clashed, but the Apple II was successfully sold both in the US and abroad. The Apple III was focused on helping with business and spreadsheets. The project was personally handled by Jobs, who was listed as the company's vice president of research and development. The Apple III project failed for a number of reasons, especially since in 1983 the IBM PC became the market leader, pushing Apple into second place. The rigidity and integrity of Jobs led to the fact that at the age of 25 he became chairman of the board of directors without the right to interfere in technical issues.

Steve Jobs holds presentations of new Apple developments, but the conflict situation in the company is becoming more and more serious. The board of directors fires Jobs. Steve founds NeXT Inc., which specializes in the release of computers for scientists and students. Later NeXT Inc. begins developing software for large customers, and Jobs returns to Apple. Soon Steve Jobs brings to market the iMac G3, a computer with a futuristic design, USB inputs for connecting peripherals and a user-friendly graphical interface.

It was Jobs who came up with the idea to sell goods through an online store, as well as to open points of sale as close as possible to the consumer, that is, in residential areas. Jobs dreamed that the computer would become a digital center that would store photos, music, movies, through which one could communicate with friends and make purchases. Apple releases related software (iMovie, iTunes). The founder of the company managed to realize one more of his dreams: to carry the entire collection of his favorite songs in his pocket. This is how the iPods were born. But the head of Apple was well aware that sooner or later mobile phones would become so powerful that they would replace players, photo and video cameras, laptops, and therefore the famous iPhone smartphones were launched on the market. In parallel, Steve supervised the development of the iPad internet tablet.

In October 2003, Jobs learns that he has pancreatic cancer. He refuses surgical treatment, preferring herbalism, veganism and acupuncture, but then still goes to the hospital. By that time, the tumor had metastasized. Neither surgery nor chemotherapy helped, time was hopelessly lost.

On June 6, 2011, Steve Jobs holds his last presentation, where he introduces the iCloud service and the iOS 5 operating system, and then resigns. Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011. He is still called a visionary, condemned for his business methods, but his genius is recognized.

Tip 3: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: Friends, Rivals or Enemies?

A couple of decades ago, computer technology was almost exotic and was used only, perhaps, in the offices of government agencies and large companies. Today, almost all people have desktops and tablets. Such a widespread use of modern technologies is primarily the merit of two specialists - Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

The relationship between the founders of Apple and Microsoft has always been a rocky one. Jobs and Gates throughout the history of doing business have alternately become rivals, then comrades-in-arms, or even just enemies.

Rivals

In their early days, the young Gates and Jobs were more like rivals than friends or enemies. Many people believe that Windows 85 was the first graphical operating system that made working on a PC as simple as possible for ordinary users. However, this is not entirely true.

For the first time, the idea of using graphical friendly interfaces for PCs was implemented by Apple on the Apple Macintosh PC. It was with the aim of concluding a contract for the supply of software for these desktops that Jobs, in his youth - in the 80s of the last century - arrived in Washington to Bill Gates.

The creator of Microsoft at that time considered the possibilities of the new OS a little limited, but nevertheless agreed to cooperate with Apple. For a couple of years after the release of the Macintosh, the companies worked together and the relationship between Jobs and Gates was quite friendly.

Enemies

The joint work of Microsoft and Apple has become, in the opinion of both leaders, quite productive. However, once Bill Gates noted that he had more specialists working on the Mac than Steve, considering this unfair.

After that, the relationship between the companions began to gradually deteriorate. They finally fell apart with the release of Microsoft in 1985 the first version of Windows. The news had a bombshell effect on Steve.

Jobs considered the new OS to be a plagiarism from the Macintosh, and he was not slow to inform the public about it. Bill replied that even before working with Apple, he hatched the idea of developing a graphical shell, believing that the future was behind it.

In addition, the founder of Microsoft pointed to the fact that the very principle of user interaction with a computer through graphics was not invented by Apple specialists at all, but by Xerox PARC, which they once admired by Jobs. From that moment on, former business partners became irreconcilable enemies.

In 1985, Steven Jobs left Apple and registered his own company, NeXT. However, even after he stopped working for Microsoft's main competitor, relations between Bill and him did not improve.

Have you ever been friends?

Despite many years of enmity, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs always treated each other with a certain amount of respect. Steve noted Gates' great sense of humor and excellent business skills, and Bill repeatedly expressed admiration for Jobs' good design taste.

In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple, which was then on the verge of bankruptcy. To improve things, he decided to turn to Bill for help. Since then, the former enemies declared a truce.

Jobs, who mercilessly criticized Microsoft products before, even publicly praised Internet Explorer for Mac, Office, which simply shocked his fans. In the next five years, until the end of the contract with Bill, Steve never allowed himself to express any criticism of Microsoft in any interview. But later, without forgiving his partner for what he had done, from time to time he still tried to hurt Gates' pride by releasing, for example, a series of truly brilliant videos that made fun of PC.

The largest specialists in the field of computer software did not become friends until the death of Jobs. Even the success of Apple did not reconcile the former partners who got rich, achieved a lot in life. However, it is possible that the strained relationship between Bill and Steve was to some extent only an appearance.

After the death of Jobs, it turned out that until his death, he kept a letter from Gates on the table next to the bed. The richest man in the world, as his relatives and friends noted, experienced the death of his "sworn friend" really hard.

Sources:

American publication about the relationship between Gates and Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs (Steven Paul Jobs, 1955-2011) - American engineer and entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. He is considered one of the key figures in the computer industry, a man who largely determined its development.

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. It cannot be said that he was a desired child. Just a week after his birth, his unmarried mother, graduate student Joanna Shible, gave up the baby for adoption. The adoptive parents of the child were Paul and Clara Jobs (Paul Jobs, Clara Jobs) from Mountain View, California. They named him Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked for an accounting firm, and Paul Jobs was a mechanic for a company that made laser machines.

Childhood

When Steve Jobs was 12 years old, on a whim of a child and not without an early display of teenage impudence, he called William Hewlett, then president of Hewlett-Packard, on his home phone number. Then Jobs was assembling some kind of electrical appliance, and he needed some parts. Hewlett chatted with Jobs for 20 minutes, agreed to send the necessary parts, and offered him a summer job at Hewlett-Packard, the company within whose walls the entire Silicon Valley industry was born. It was at work at Hewlett-Packard that Steve Jobs met a man whose acquaintance largely determined his future fate - Stephen Wozniak. He got a job at Hewlett-Packard, leaving the boring classes at the University of California, Berkeley. Work in the company was much more interesting to him due to his passion for radio engineering.

Studies

In 1972, Steve Jobs graduated from high school and entered Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but dropped out after his first semester. Steve Jobs explains his decision to drop out this way: “I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my parents' savings went to college tuition. Six months later, I didn't see the point. I didn't know at all what I was going to do with my life, and I didn't understand how college would help me figure it out. I was pretty scared at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.”

Dropping out of school, Jobs focused on what was really interesting to him. However, it was not easy to remain a free student at the university now. “It wasn't all romantic,” Jobs recalls. – I didn’t have a dorm room, so I had to sleep on the floor in my friends’ rooms. I used Coke bottles for five cents each to buy my own food and every Sunday night I walked seven miles across town to have a proper meal once a week at a Hare Krishna temple.”

The adventures of Steve Jobs on the college campus after the expulsion continued for another 18 months, after which in the fall of 1974 he returned to California. There he met up with an old friend and technical genius, Stephen Wozniak. On the advice of a friend, Jobs got a job as a technician at Atari, a popular video game company. Steve Jobs did not have any ambitious plans then. He just wanted to earn money for a trip to India.

But in addition to the then fashionable interest in India and the hippie subculture, Steve Jobs had an interest in electronics, which grew stronger every day. Together with Wozniak, Jobs came to the Homebrew computer club in Palo Alto, which at that time united many young people who were keenly interested in computers and electronics. The club gave a lot to the future founders of Apple. In particular, thanks to the club, they began their "collaboration" with the telephone giant AT & T (T), however, not in the way that this company would like. Steve Jobs read about an interesting discovery by American radio amateurs, which made it possible to illegally connect to the AT&T telephone network and make free calls over long distances, and caught fire with a new and promising business. Meeting with John Draper, who was then actively popularizing this discovery, Jobs and Wozniak decided to start making the so-called “blue boxes”, special devices that made it possible to make free calls over long distances. So Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started tinkering with electronics together in Jobs' parent garage.

First business

However, they did not deal with the “blue boxes” for long. Jobs was already packing for a philosophy tour of India, as planned. From India, Jobs returned with rich impressions, a shaved head and in traditional Indian clothes. At this time, an interesting incident occurred with the founders of Apple, which especially vividly describes the technical talent of Steven Wozniak and the business acumen of Steve Jobs. At Atari, Jobs was given the task of designing the circuitry for the Breakout video game. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, the company asked Jobs to minimize the number of chips on the board and pay $100 for each chip he could remove from the circuit. Steve Jobs was not very well versed in the construction of electronic circuits, so he offered Wozniak to split the bonus in half if he took up this business. Atari was quite surprised when Jobs presented them with a board that had 50 chips removed. Wozniak created a scheme so dense that it was impossible to recreate it in mass production. Jobs then told Wozniak that Atari had only paid $700 (not $5,000 as it actually was), and Wozniak got his cut, $350.

However, from the very first meeting, Jobs admired Steven Wozniak. “He was the only person who understood computers better than me,” Steve Jobs admits a few years later. There is no doubt that Wozniak played an important role in the life of his friend, without his engineering genius there would be neither Apple nor the triumph of Steve Jobs, solemnly presenting the company's new product.

Apple

Steve Jobs was only 20 years old when he saw the computer that Wozniak had built for his own use. The idea of having a personal—personal—computer struck Jobs, and he persuaded Wozniak to start building computers to sell. Initially, both planned to deal only with the manufacture of printed circuits - the basis of a computer, but in the end they came to assembling finished computers.
In early 1976, Jobs asked draftsman Ronald Wayne, with whom he had once worked at Atari, to join their business. Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne founded Apple Computer Co. April 1, 1976 in the form of a partnership. It must be said that only young people who had not yet left the rebellious age could come up with the idea of naming a computer company “Apple” (Apple means “apple” in English).

The start-up company needed start-up capital, and Steve Jobs sold his van and Wozniak sold his beloved Hewlett Packard programmable calculator. As a result, they helped out about $1300. Jobs convinced Wozniak to leave Hewlett Packard to become vice president and head of product development at the new company.

Soon they also received the first large order from a local electronics store - 50 pieces. However, the young company did not then have the money to buy parts to assemble such a large number of computers. Then Steve Jobs convinced component suppliers to provide materials on credit for 30 days. After receiving the parts, Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne assembled the cars in the evenings, and within 10 days they delivered the entire batch to the store. The company's first computer was called the Apple I. The store that ordered the machines sold it for $666.66 because Wozniak liked numbers with the same digits. But despite this large order, Wayne lost faith in the success of the undertaking and left the company, taking $800.

Already in the fall of the same year, Wozniak completed work on the Apple II prototype, which became the first mass-produced personal computer in the world. It had a plastic case, a floppy disk reader, and support for color graphics. To ensure successful sales of the computer, Jobs ordered the launch of an advertising campaign and the development of a beautiful and standard packaging for the computer, which clearly showed the company's new logo - a rainbow bitten apple. According to Jobs, the colors of the rainbow should emphasize the fact that the Apple II is capable of supporting color graphics. Since the release of the Apple II lineup, more than 5 million computers have been sold, for which programmers have created about 16,000 applications. At the end of 1980, Apple held a successful initial public offering that resulted in Steve Jobs becoming a millionaire at 25.

In December 1979, Steve Jobs and several other Apple employees gained access to the Xerox Research Center (XRX) in Palo Alto. There, Jobs first saw the company's prototype, the Alto computer, which used a graphical interface that allowed the user to issue commands by hovering over a graphic object on the monitor. As colleagues recall, this invention struck Jobs, and he immediately began to confidently say that all future computers would use this innovation. And no wonder, because it contained three things through which the path to the heart of the consumer lies. Steve Jobs already then understood that it was simplicity, ease of use and aesthetics. He immediately got excited about the idea of creating such a computer.

Then the company spent several months developing a new Lisa computer, named after Jobs' daughter. In 1980, Steve tried to lead this project, in which he hoped to embody the revolutionary innovation that he saw in Xerox Laboratories. However, Apple President Michael Scott (Michael Scott) refused Jobs. The project was led by another person. A few months later, Jobs begged Scott to put him in charge of another project on a less powerful mainstream computer, the Macintosh. Largely at the instigation of Jobs, a competition unleashed between the Lisa and Macintosh development teams.

In the end, Jobs lost the race when the Lisa came out in 1983, becoming the first mainstream computer with a graphical interface. However, the commercial failure of this project followed, mainly due to the high price ($9995) and the limited set of software applications for this computer. Therefore, the second round was for Jobs and his Macintosh. Like the Lisa, the Macintosh used an innovation peeped from the Xerox labs - a graphical interface and a mouse. But unlike the Lisa, the Macintosh was a commercially successful computer that revolutionized the industry. The Macintosh operating system interface became the standard, and its principle was used in all operating systems that were created from that moment on.

When Jobs urged John Scully to leave Pepsi-Cola to become Apple's CEO in 1983, he was emphasizing that Apple employees were writing new pages of history: “Do you really want to sell sugary water for the rest of your life or you want to try to change the world?” This time, Jobs' ability to convince him did not fail, and Sculley became the director of Apple. However, over time it turned out that his vision of the computer business is very different from the vision of Jobs, who was then too impatient for a different point of view. The conflict between Sculley and Jobs grew, and eventually led to the fact that Jobs was forced to leave Apple, being removed from project management.

In 1985, against the backdrop of the release of a number of unsuccessful computer models (the commercial failure of the Apple III), the loss of a significant market share and ongoing conflicts in the leadership, Wozniak left Apple, and after some time Steve Jobs also left the company. Also in 1985, Jobs founded NeXT, a hardware and workstation company.

In 1986, Steve Jobs co-founded the Pixar animation studio. Under Jobs, Pixar produced films such as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. In 2006, Jobs sold Pixar to Walt Disney Studios for $7.4 million in company stock. Jobs remained on the board of directors of Pixar and at the same time became the largest individual shareholder of Disney, having received at his disposal 7 percent of the shares of the studio.

The return of Steve Jobs to Apple took place in 1996, when the company founded by Jobs decided to acquire NeXT. Jobs joined the board of directors of the company and became the interim manager of Apple, which was going through a serious crisis at that moment.

In 2000, the word “temporary” disappeared from the title of Jobs’ position, and the founder of Apple himself entered the Guinness Book of Records as the CEO with the most modest salary in the world (according to official documents, Jobs’s salary at that time was $ 1 a year; subsequently, a similar the salary scheme used by other corporate executives).

In 2001, Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod player. Within a few years, iPod sales became the company's main source of income.
In 2006, the company introduced the Apple TV network media player.
In 2007, sales of the iPhone mobile phone began.
In 2008, Steve showed off the thinnest laptop in the world, called the MacBook Air.

Being engaged in a business that completely captured his life, he barely noticed that his daughter was born. As Jobs himself admits, since 1977, when Lisa was born (that was the name of his daughter), he gave work “150%” of his time and effort. Lisa lived with her mother, who never married Steve Jobs. He began to recognize his daughter, communicate with her only years later.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

Jobs's relationship with competitors in his market has always been ambiguous. He stole ideas from someone without a twinge of conscience, maliciously mocked someone. One of them is .

These two legendary people have a lot in common, but they are completely different. Born in the same year, with similar life histories, they worked hard to succeed and break through to the top of the computer industry. But, if Jobs was not afraid to take risks and relied on innovation, then Gates moved to the top according to the standard business multiplication scheme. Having taken a monopoly in software, licensing Microsoft, he almost simply began to receive money from sales, developing very slowly and not making any revolutionary innovations.

But, despite their different attitudes to doing business, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will forever go down in the history of the modern development of personal computers and software.

Lost interview:

Ever since the birth of Apple, Steven Jobs knew for sure that he had a special mission on Earth, and he could change the world. “He always believed,” recalls Stephen Wozniak, “that he would lead all of humanity.” The attitude towards the “messiah in jeans” is by no means unambiguous and, as a rule, is very far from colorless indifference. In addition to friends and fans who call him the best manager, there are those who openly dislike him, finding him overly self-confident and self-centered. The sharp nature of Jobs is legendary. Entering into a business or personal relationship with Jobs, intelligent and well-mannered businessmen, accustomed to conduct polite business dialogue, find themselves in an extremely uncomfortable environment. I must say, the public loves scandals, and people like Jobs have the unique ability to generate them around them with regular frequency, bringing sharpness and novelty to life.

Death of Steve Jobs

Undoubtedly, he was a man of genius in his field. His death was a great loss not only for his family, friends and employees. The world has lost this enterprising man who changed society's perceptions of the personal computer. The cause of Steve Jobs' death was pancreatic cancer. He struggled with the disease for eight long years, remaining active to the last. Steve Jobs' date of death is October 5, 2011.