Life Summary: Steve Jobs, Tech Visionary

Steve Jobs was given up by his American and Syrian parents at birth, said to smell bad and spent ten years of his life struggling to make multiple failing business ventures succeed. Today, however, he is a legend who is greatly missed. This is the story of the man who changed telecommunications and music for our generation. 

1955 – A baby boy is born to a young graduate student from the University of Wisconsin who had fallen in love with a teaching assistant from Syria. Because his parents have no money, they decide to put him up for adoption. Paul and Clara Jobs who live in Mountain View, California, USA (which will later come to be known as Silicon Valley) adopt their baby and name him Steven Paul Jobs. 

Age 3 – The Jobs adopt a little girl they call Patti. Steve now has a sister. 

Age 5 – Steve’s dad makes him a workbench and teaches him to use a hammer and saw. A neighbour gives Steve his first Heathkit and Steve starts to make radio transistors with it. 

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Age 13 – Steve joins the Hewlett-Packard Explorer Club which offers lectures to kids interested in electronics. Steve sees a computer for the first time at one of these lectures.

Teenage years – Steve gets a girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan and joins the computer club. At the club, he meets Steve Wozniak (Woz) who is a few years older and designs computers as a hobby. 

Age 17 – Steve graduates from high school but can’t afford to go to college. He asks the Dean of Reed College to be allowed to live in the dorms and sit in on classes for free. The Dean agrees, however, he does not allow Steve to get a degree from doing so. 

In college – Steve goes to lectures on Eastern Religions and Calligraphy. He sleeps on the floor of his friends’ dorms. He collects Coke bottles for money and depends on local charities for food. 

Age 19 – After 18 months in college, Steve takes a job at Atari which makes computer games. His friend Woz is already working there. He takes a trip to India when he has enough money saved and continues working at Atari when he returns. 

Age 21 – Woz creates a circuit board for an easy-to-use computer that can execute commands on TV screens. Steve suggests they leave Atari to start their own company selling that board to people who want to build their own computers, and on April Fool’s Day 1976, Apple Computers is born. It operates out of Steve’s parents’ garage. They build a sample computer to show how the circuit board works and end up getting a deal to sell 50 such computers to a local electronics store for $2500. They don’t have the money to make those computers (each cost $200 to make) so Steve persuades a local electronics supply store to give him the parts first and promises to pay later. They make a big profit when the deal is completed, and decide to work on making a better computer that can be used out of the box—the Apple II. Their computers are called Apples because Steve thinks apples to be the perfect fruit and wants his computers to be the same.

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Age 22 – Steve finds an investor who gives them money to create the Apple II. Woz is in charge of tech and Steve is in charge of design. He gets a logo designer to create a logo for their computer—a rainbow coloured apple that has a bite taken out of it. They finish in time for a computer fair in San Francisco and their product—with colour, good graphics and sound—stands out.

Age 23 – Apple Computers is growing. Steve now has employees but is difficult to work for, partly because he seldom showers and smells bad. His girlfriend, Chrisann, now an artist, has his baby, Lisa. Steve refuses to have anything to do with the baby because he is 100% focused on his company. 

Age 24 – Apple now employs thousands of employees. They make a home computer with a mouse.

Age 25 – Steve is a millionaire and becomes the youngest person in history to make Fortune magazine’s list of top Americans in business.

Age 26 – Woz is injured in a plane crash and never returns to work at Apple full-time. Steve handpicks a team of engineers to build a new computer called the Macintosh—a type of Apple. He hires John Sculley, head of the Pepsi-Cola company to run the business for him.

Age 29 – The Macintosh is released. The computer “for the rest of us” in Steve’s words. The first advertisement for it runs during the Super Bowl and soon many people want to buy it but it remains far from being a big hit.

Age 30 – Due to disappointing sales of the Macintosh, Sculley wants to make computers for businesses instead of home users. Steve refuses and tries to get the board of directors to fire Sculley. The board of directors remove Steve instead and move him to a new office across the street, away from other employees. 5 months later, Steve leaves Apple to start a new company called NeXT—a company that would make the next perfect computer.

Age 31 – Steve’s adoptive mother dies. He tracks down his birth mother and meets her and his sister, Mona. From then on he would be close to Mona. He collaborates with George Lucas, who he is a big fan of, and becomes owner of Lucas’ computer graphics company, Pixar. 

Age 33 – NeXT has lost $10million, much of which is Steve’s own money. Nobody wants to buy NeXT computers because at $6500, they are too expensive for the average user.

Age 35 – While giving a lecture at Stanford University, Steve meets graduate student, Laurene Powell who is like himself not a meat eater. They exchange phone numbers. 

Age 36 – Steve marries Laurene and their son, Reed Paul Jobs is born. He lays off most of Pixar’s staff because he had put in $50million and Pixar was still losing money. He signs a deal to make 3 animated movies for Disney, which wouldn’t make Pixar much money but would allow Pixar to get movies made.

Age 38 – Steve’s adoptive father dies. His teenage daughter Lisa goes to live with him. He lays off most of the workers at NeXT and stops going in to work. He spends most of his time with his son, Reed.

Age 40 – Pixar’s first movie—Toy Story—opens and becomes the most popular movie of the year. Pixar goes on to make many more hit movies in a row. His second daughter, Erin Sienna, is born. 

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Age 41 – At last, Steve Jobs is a success again. He is a billionaire now. Apple, on the other hand, is now struggling because their computers have failed to change with the times and are slow. They are nearly bankrupt. Apple, who had removed Scully 3 years prior, now wants Steve back. Steve agrees to be its head, but only for a while. He gives himself a salary of $1 per year. 

Age 42 – Steve announces that Apple is going to team up with Microsoft—all of Apple’s computers will use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser—to produce iMacs (Internet Macintoshes). He gets rid of products that aren’t selling. He lays off workers. He runs an ad campaign that brands Apple products with the words, ‘Think Different’, and makes his iMacs brightly coloured. 

Age 43 – The iMac becomes the best-selling computer in the world. Steve has a third daughter, Eve. 

Age 45 – Despite only wanting to stay in Apple for a few months, Steve becomes Apple’s permanent head. He has too many new ideas to want to leave now. 

Age 46 – Apple opens its first stores. Just like Apple’s computers, they too look different, more like works of art than IT stores. Steve then releases the iPod and iTunes for Mac computers only.

Age 47 – The iPod is now compatible with Microsoft’s Windows computers. Sales skyrocket. This however sets in motion the era of music piracy. 

Age 48 – Steve opens the iTunes music store for record companies to sell music on. This begins the era of online music buying. A medical check up, however, reveals Steve has pancreatic cancer.

Age 49 – Steve has surgery to remove the tumour. 3 months later, he returns to work but looks thin and pale. 

Age 50 – He gives a speech to the graduating class at Stamford University, telling them that “time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” He decides to improve cell phones with his time left. 

Age 52 – Steve introduces the iPhone—a personal computer that fits into your pocket, and can also be used as a phone. It is imperfect but popular. 

Age 54 – Steve begins taking time off and gets in touch with a biographer to get his biography told. Soon after, he has a liver transplant and returns to work a few months later. 

Age 55 – Steve introduces the iPad—Apple’s new tablet computer, smaller, thinner and lighter than the ones that had been in the market for the past few decades. 

Age 56 – Apple is now the most successful company in the world. Steve steps down as CEO, no longer well enough to continue working. He spends his time with friends and family instead, and dies just 2 months later. He is mourned by people all over the world. 

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Photographs: Wikimedia Commons. Compiler: Sy
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