{"id":4442,"date":"2011-10-05T19:26:52","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T02:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/?p=4442"},"modified":"2011-10-05T19:32:15","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T02:32:15","slug":"steve-jobs-1955-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2011\/10\/05\/steve-jobs-1955-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Jobs, 1955 \u2013 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by wired<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder, chairman and former chief executive of Apple Inc., passed away Wednesday.<\/p>\n

A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, it would be impossible to overstate Steve Jobs\u2019 impact on technology and how we use it. Apple\u2019s mercurial, mysterious leader did more than reshape his entire industry: he completely changed how we interact with technology. He made gadgets easy to use, gorgeous to behold and essential to own. He made things we absolutely wanted, long before we even knew we wanted them. Jobs\u2019 utter dedication to how people think, touch, feel and interact with machines dictated even the smallest detail of the computers Apple built and the software it wrote.<\/p>\n

Jobs was born in San Francisco on Feb. 24, 1955, and adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, California. He was a techie from a young age, often sitting in on lectures at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto while attending Homestead High School in Cupertino. He eventually landed a summer job there, working alongside Steve Wozniak.<\/p>\n

Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore. in 1972, but dropped out after six months \u2013 he later said he \u201cdidn\u2019t see the value in it.\u201d He eventually returned home to California. He got a job at Atari, renewed his friendship with Wozniak and started hanging out with the Homebrew Computer Club. After trekking to India in 1974 \u2014 a trip he, like so many others, made to find enlightenment \u2013 Jobs returned home and looked up Woz.<\/p>\n

The two of them launched Apple in 1976. Their first project, the Apple I, wasn\u2019t much to look at \u2014 just an assembled circuit board. Anyone who bought it had to add the case and keyboard. But it was enough for Jobs to convince Mike Markkula, a semi-retired Intel engineer and product marketing manager, that personal computing was the future. Markkula invested $250,000 in the fledgling enterprise.<\/p>\n

The Apple I begat the Apple II in 1977. It was the first successful mass-market computer, and easy to use, too. That would become a hallmark of Apple under Jobs.<\/p>\n

The Apple II had a huge impact on the tech business, but cheaper alternatives, like the Commodore 64 and the VIC-20, quickly eroded Apple\u2019s market share. IBM\u2019s open PC platform eventually won out over Apple\u2019s closed approach, and the die was cast. The PC dominated the market.<\/p>\n

Still, Apple was by any measure a success. By the time Jobs was 25 in 1980, he was worth more than $100 million. Not that it mattered to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t that important because I never did it for the money,\u201d he once said.<\/p>\n

Apple once again shook up the industry with the Macintosh, announced in 1984 with a now-iconic Super Bowl ad challenging IBM. The Mac was a revolutionary step forward for personal computing \u2014 the first mass market computer to use a mouse-driven, user-friendly graphical interface. It was influenced by \u2013 critics would argue lifted from \u2014 technology Jobs saw a few years earlier at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. It irreversibly changed how we interact with computers.<\/p>\n

But then Jobs fell from grace. One year after the Mac\u2019s introduction, Jobs was fired in a power struggle with CEO John Sculley. Jobs was devastated. He felt he\u2019d let those who came before him \u2013 pioneers like David Packard and Bob Noyce \u2013 down, and he wanted to apologize.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the Valley,\u201d he admitted in a 2005 speech.<\/p>\n

But Jobs realized he loved what he did, and wanted to keep doing it. So he founded NeXT, a computer company, and a computer animation outfit that he renamed Pixar. As for Apple, it faltered in his absence. The company\u2019s stock plummeted 68 percent, pushing Apple to the brink of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

But in 1996, Apple purchased NeXT and Jobs returned to the company he founded. It wasn\u2019t long before he was once again back at the helm, and Apple\u2019s ascent began.<\/p>\n

One of Jobs\u2019 first moves was to make peace with arch-rival Microsoft. That led to a $150 million investment from Microsoft, breathing new life into the moribund Apple. Jobs was once again firmly in control, and this time he would make sure he didn\u2019t lose it.<\/p>\n

He ran Apple with a firm hand, enforcing a policy of secrecy, while instilling an unrivaled dedication to design and an unwavering commitment to quality. These things mattered so deeply to Jobs that he became a micromanager, one said to have put as much thought into the boxes holding Apple\u2019s products as the products themselves.<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s incredible string of hits started with the iMac and continued with iTunes and the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and 2010\u2019s iPad. There were some misses along the way \u2013 Mobile Me and Apple TV \u2013 but Jobs, working with lieutenants like Tim Cook, made Apple one of the biggest companies in the world.<\/p>\n

Jobs had always been the public face of Apple, but he began retreating from the spotlight in 2004 when doctors diagnosed him with pancreatic cancer. It was a rare form of the disease, one that could be treated, and Jobs survived. His health, though, continued to deteriorate. His liver failed in 2009, and Jobs took a six-month medical leave. He returned, but was rarely seen. He announced he was resigning as CEO in August, and Tim Cook replaced him as the head the company.<\/p>\n

At a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Jobs shared the philosophy that drove him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour time is limited, so don\u2019t waste it living someone else\u2019s life,\u201d Jobs said. \u201cDon\u2019t be trapped by dogma \u2014 which is living with the results of other people\u2019s thinking. Don\u2019t let the noise of others\u2019 opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by wired Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder, chairman and former chief executive of Apple Inc., passed away Wednesday. A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, it would be impossible to overstate Steve Jobs\u2019 impact on technology and how we use it. Apple\u2019s mercurial, mysterious leader did more than reshape his entire industry: he completely changed how we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4442"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4446,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442\/revisions\/4446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}