Steve Jobs, a man whose life is an example of sheer brilliance,
inspiration and insight beyond words; the incredible genius behind Apple
computers and other revolutionary products deserves to be praised for
his contribution to technology that changed the way of life.
This entrepreneurial legend was born on 24th February 1955 in San
Francisco, California. Adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs who was a middle
class couple, he lived most of his childhood in Mountain View, Santa
Clara. The place which became known as the ‘Silicon Valley’ in the early
1950s laid the grounds for Steve’s immensely successful career. The
growing years of Steve’s life consisted of gizmos and other electrics
being worked by the neighboring engineers. He enrolled in Reeds College
initially but soon dropped out after realizing that he was more
interested in fruitarian diet and philosophy. He moved to a hippie
community in Oregon where his pastime was cultivating apples.
Although incredibly smart, Jobs lacked right guidance. During his
high school years he befriended Steve Wozniak who was a computer
engineer not knowing that this friendship would alter his life course.
Steve took up a job at Atari as a video game designer for a short while.
At the age of 21 he started ‘Apple Computers’ along with Steve Wozniak.
Their computers were user friendly, smaller, cheaper and easily
available for the common people. The first model, the Apple I made sales
of 774, 000 dollars. This figure increased by 700% to 139,000 million
dollars.
The business started undergoing a downfall in sales and profits in
the early 1980s despite the heavy marketing of Macintosh. As a result
the executives at Apple started phasing out Jobs blaming him for the
loss they were suffering. Consequently, he resigned from his post of CEO
at Apples only to start a new company known as NeXT, Inc. He purchased
another company in the following year which was later named ‘Pixar
Animation Studios’. Steve believed in this new venture so much so that
he invested 50 million dollars of his own money into it. This company is
the producer of the smash hit animations such as ‘Toy Story’, ‘Finding
Nemo’ and ‘The Incredibles’. Pixar Studios was bought by Walt Disney in 2006 with Jobs remaining its biggest shareholder.
NeXT Inc. was not as successful as Steve would have hoped it to be.
It was purchased by Apple in 1997 with Steve Jobs back as Apple’s CEO.
The person who was blamed for the downfall was the one to bring back its
lost glory and this time never to leave again. He was wiser, older and
more experienced. The introduction of inventive and trendy products such
as iMac combined with huge and effective marketing strategies worked
the magic and the once again the consumers had their loyalties with
Apple.
Steve was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 and after a
surgery the tumor was removed successfully. Steve was a very private man
and disclosed very little about his ailing health which did not seem to
get in the way of his flourishing accomplishments. In the following
years he presented other ground-breaking products such as the MacBook
Air, iPhone and the iPod.
Steve Jobs died on 5th October 2011. We have this visionary
entrepreneur to thank for providing the world remarkable innovations.
His whole career is an epitome of greatness and belief in oneself.
