Stories and Lifestyle

The early years Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco and as a foundling was taken in by his adopted parents shortly afterwards. His adopted father was a car dealer in Santa Clara County south of San Francisco. After attending Homestead High School, jobs started studying at a college in Oregon in 1972, but never graduated. Ever since he was young, Jobs had a strong will. He went to college barefoot, let his hair grow and experimented with psychedelic drugs. At the same time, however, he was fascinated by the possibilities of electronics and was a "wire head" in high school already. After high school he sent an application for a summer job to William R. Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard (HP) himself and after college he designed video games for Atari Inc.

Apple becomes reality With the money he earned there he traveled to India for a few months in 1974. After his return, he found a like-minded friend in Steve Wozniak, a few years older than himself, who was an engineer with HP. He had constructed a "Blue Box" in 1971 that allowed him to make free phone calls around the world. The idea of a Personal Computer (PC) was already around in the mid 70s, but the only thing available was the expensive "Altair" offered as a "do it yourself" kit in the department store that didn't meet expectations by far. Jobs talked Wozniak into setting up an enterprise, Apple Computer Inc., for which Jobs later organized capital, orders and support. First of all the two tried to built a computer from cheap materials according to a design by Wozniak in the garage of Jobs' parents.

The world at his feet Their idea that computers did not just have to be machines for specialists and mainframes for large companies but available and usable for basically everyone quickly conquered the world. The Apple II was a major success in 1977 and with its color graphics and keyboard it was the PC's breakthrough as a mass-produced article. Jobs' career advancement as an entrepreneur was a steep one. He was a millionaire at age 23, two years later he made the Forbes list of richest Americans for the first time. When the company went public his share was assessed at $165 million. However, Jobs' could not stabilize this success. The Apple III did not repeat its predecessors' success in 1980 and the CEO himself was more and more seen as egomaniacal and eccentric, in addition to the fact that he favored too expensive products.

Exit marks a new beginning In 1983, Apple suffered losses for the first time. Due to problems with the development of "Mac," Jobs became the victim of a palace revolution in his own company, he finally left Apple in 1985. With the millions he got from selling his shares in the company, he made a new beginning and founded the NeXT Computer Inc. together with a few other former Apple people. With the brand NeXT and later NeXTStep they developed a completely new generation of object-oriented system software. The corporate clients were very much interested in this new offer. In April of 1993, Jobs reached an agreement with, among others, Siemens Nixdorf, Dell Computer, Epson and NEC. In 1994 they acquired Sun Microsystems and HP licenses and in 1995 Jobs started a cooperation with Microsoft. That year, NeXT made profits for the first time.

In 1995, Jobs had a very great success - with his subsidiary Pixar Animation Studios that he had bought from George Lucas. He had already received an Oscar for an experimental film in 1988, and in 1995 he presented, after four years of production, "Toy Story," the first movie based solely on computer animation. Even though the Walt Disney Company as the marketer of the box office hit got more than 80% of the profits, "Toy Story" and later "A Bug's Life" was pretty good business for Jobs who owned 80% of the Pixar Animation Studios (newest hit: "Finding Nemo.") In November of 1995, the company went public.

The archenemy jumps in In the meantime, Apple Computers is hit by one crisis after the next. Under Gilbert F. Amelio, who took over the company's management in the February of 1995, Apple started the reorganization process and started combing through the rather extensive product range. However, it didn't make it back into the profit zone. The sensation happened in 1997 - the archenemy Microsoft jumped in with $150 million. With this contribution aimed at allowing Apple to continue as an independent company, Microsoft secured its own position as well and avoided being attacked even more as a monopolist. Since 1998, Apple drew attention to itself with a new product offensive. Exemplary was the favorably priced, but conspicuously colored iMac with its peculiar shape, introduced in 1998. That weird new computer attracted a great number of new customers and more than two million were sold during the first year alone.

Apple's software development department introduced the new operating software "Mac OS 8.5" with integrated internet search engine "Sherlock." For the summer of 2000 Apple announced the operating system "Mac OS X2." In January of 2000, Jobs reassumed his position as CEO of Apple and the executive board gave him a Gulfstream V Jet and options for 10 million Apple stocks. Until then Jobs had worked for one symbolic Dollar a year.

Outwitting the competition Apple landed a special coup with the commercial online sales of music via an internet platform called "Musicstore." More than one million songs have been downloaded via this service that is currently only available in the US over the first week already - for a fee of 99 cents each. The high user rates surprised the music industry that has been looking for a legal way of selling music online.

...And a few personal things - His personal life didn't take second place after his work life. In 1991, Jobs married Laurene Powell. They have two children: Reed and Laurene. He has another daughter, Lisa, from a previous relationship.

No less amazing than the story of his success - he was 27 when he met his biological sister for the first time - the author Mona Simpson!

Further reading: Find an interesting book about the life of Steven Jobs here:

www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767904338/americandream0e