Steven Paul
“Steve” Jobs was an American entrepreneur. He is best known as the
co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc.
Born: February 24, 1955, San Francisco
Died: October 5, 2011, Palo Alto
Spouse: Laurene Powell (m. 1991–2011)
Children: Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Reed Jobs, Eve Jobs, Erin Siena Jobs
Education: Homestead High School (1972), Reed College, Cupertino Junior High School, Monta Loma Elementary School
Siblings: Mona Simpson
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. By introducing the LaserWriter he enabled a
revolution called desktop publishing.
After losing 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. He was credited in Toy Story
(1995) as an executive producer. He served as CEO and 50.1% majority
shareholder until Disney bought Pixar in 2006. Jobs received 7% of
Disney shares, and joined the Board of Directors as the largest
individual shareholder. By 1996, Apple had failed to deliver a new
operating system, Copland. Gil Amelio turned to NeXT Computer, and the
NeXTSTEP platform became the foundation for the Mac OS X 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
As the new CEO of the company, Jobs
oversaw the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and
on the services side, the company’s Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store
and the App Store. 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. The
reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many commentators as one of
the greatest turnarounds in business history.
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 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” and has been described as the “Father of the
Digital Revolution”,a “master of innovation”, and a “design
perfectionist”
Jobs’s birth parents met at the
University of Wisconsin. Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, from Syria, taught
there. Joanne Carole Schieble was his student; they were the same age
because Jandali had “gotten his PhD really young.” 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.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. Her mother remarried and had Mona take the surname of her
stepfather, so she became known as Mona Simpson.
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 and became
close friends. The siblings kept their relationship secret until 1986,
when Mona introduced him at a party for her first book
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,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.”Jobs was
in occasional touch with his mother Joanne Simpson,who lives in a
nursing home in Los Angeles.When speaking about his biological parents,
Jobs stated: “They were my sperm and egg bank. That’s not harsh, it’s
just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more.”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.
