-
Birth of Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was born in 1955 and raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California. -
Period: to
Steve Jobs
Cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), and a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer era. -
Pilgrimage to India
Working at Atari Steve Jobs saved enough money for a pilgrimage to India to experience Buddhism. -
Drop out form college and first job
Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, and took a job at Atari Corporation as a video game designer in early 1974. -
Founding of Apple
Back in Silicon Valley Jobs reconnected with Stephen Wozniak, a former high school friend who was working for the Hewlett-Packard Company. When Wozniak told Jobs of his progress in designing his own computer logic board, Jobs suggested that they go into business together. The Apple I, as they called the logic board, was built in the Jobses’ family garage with money they obtained by selling Jobs’s Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak’s programmable calculator. -
Introducing Apple's Macintosh (Mac)
In January 1984 Jobs himself introduced the Macintosh in a brilliantly choreographed demonstration that was the centrepiece of an extraordinary publicity campaign. It would later be pointed to as the archetype of “event marketing.” -
Removal from Apple's board of directors
However, the first Macs were underpowered and expensive, and they had few software applications—all of which resulted in disappointing sales. Apple steadily improved the machine, so that it eventually became the company’s lifeblood as well as the model for all subsequent computer interfaces. But Jobs’s apparent failure to correct the problem quickly led to tensions in the company, and in 1985 he was removed from Apple’s board of directors. -
Acquiring Pixar
In 1986 Jobs acquired a controlling interest in Pixar, a computer graphics firm that had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company of Hollywood movie director George Lucas. Over the following decade, Jobs built Pixar into a major animation studio. -
Toy Story
Pixar produced the first full-length feature film to be completely computer-animated, Toy Story, in 1995. Pixar’s public stock offering that year made Jobs, for the first time, a billionaire. -
Return to Apple
In June 1997 the Board of Directors requested Apple’s prodigal cofounder to lead the company once again. Jobs quickly forged an alliance with Apple’s erstwhile foe, the Microsoft Corporation, simplified the company’s product line, and engineered an award-winning advertising campaign that urged potential customers to “think different” and buy Macintoshes. -
Reinventing Apple
That was the year that Apple introduced iTunes, a computer program for playing music and for converting music to the compact MP3 digital format commonly used in computers and other digital devices. Later the same year, Apple began selling the iPod, a portable MP3 player, which quickly became the market leader. In 2003 Apple began selling downloadable copies of major record company songs in MP3 format over the Internet. -
Introduction of iPhone
In 2007 Jobs took the company into the telecommunications business with the introduction of the touch-screen iPhone, a mobile telephone with capabilities for playing MP3s and videos and for accessing the Internet. Later that year, Apple introduced the iPod Touch, a portable MP3 and gaming device that included built-in Wi-Fi and an iPhone-like touch screen. -
Medical leave of absence
In January 2011, however, Jobs took another medical leave of absence. In August he resigned as CEO but became chairman. He died two months later.