Steve Jobs – Founder of Apple, American businessman Story, Education, Rewards

Steve Jobs, American businessman and founder, played a major role in the success of Apple computers and other revolutionary new technology like iPod, iPad and MacBook.

Born in San Francisco, 1955, to his unwed biological parents, Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali. Two university students gave up Steve for adoption. Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs who were lower-middle-class couples who moved to suburban Mountain view after a few years. Steve, in his authorized biography, mentioned Paul and Clara as their 1,000% parents.

Steve’s father was a machinist for a company that built lasers and taught his son to reconstruct electronics. Paul encouraged him to perform experiments with electronics in his garage. This polished his interest as he grew up and build into confidence, tenacity and mechanical prowess in Steve.

Jobs performed at his local school in California and later registered at Reed College, Portland, Oregon. He was an intelligent and innovative thinker which results in excellent grading and potential throughout his studies. In his elementary school due to boredom, he used to play pranks, and his fourth-grade teacher bribed him to study. Due to his excellence in grading, school administrators wanted to skip him ahead for high school, and parents declined the proposal.

Lacking direction, he dropped out of Reed College in Portland within six months and the next 18 months moved into creative classes at school. In 1974, Jobs attempted to work as a video game designer with Atari. After several months he left the company to seek spiritual enlightenment in India.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs:

In high school, Steve met his future partner Wozniak whom he bonded over a love for electronics and computer chips. They both started building blue boxes phone phreakers that were used for making free calls across the nation. They left the blue boxes behind and came up with Apple 1, a kit for building PCs.  In 1976, Steve Wozniak and Jobs invented the first Apple I computer where customers had to add their own monitor and keyboard.

Wozniak did building while Jobs handled the sales, the duo made a massive hit with enough money off the hobbyist market to invest further in Apple II. They funded their entrepreneurial venture by vending his Volkswagen bus, and Wozniak sold his beloved scientific calculator. The duo was credited for their revolutionizing work in the industry.

In 1980, Apple computers with a market value of $1.2 billion became a public traded company b end of its first day of trading. However, the next several years were struggle some for Apple, as they suffered from design flaws which resulted in recall and consumer disappointment. In that year, IBM surpassed Apple sales and became a PC dominated business.

In 1984, Apple came up with Macintosh, marketing the product as a piece of counterculture lifestyle. Despite positive sales and high performance, Macintosh was not IBM-compatible. Marketing head, Sculley believed Jobs was impairing Apple, and the company’s executive spells him out. He left Apple in 1985 and soon began to develop a hardware and software enterprise called NeXT Inc, which later was brought by Apple in 1996 for $429 million.

In 1996, the purchase of NeXT gave Jobs his post back as Chief executive. Till the time, Apple had been led behind by rivals such as Microsoft and even it was struggling to make a profit. Jobs promoted Apple in a new direction with products focused on accessibility, appealing design and innovative features.

iPod, iTunes are some of the superior products that became a massive hit in the US. In the year 2007, Apple focused on the mobile phone market and came up with the iPhone. iPhone had features of the iPod to offer multi-functionality and a touchscreen device in your palm. In 2010, Apple introduced a revolutionary style tablet computer – iPad.

Rewards:

1. In 2007 Steve Jobs was awarded as the most influential person by Fortune Magazine.
2. Apple was the second-biggest music retailer in America after the launch of iTunes.
3. It has been ranked 1st on Fortune Magazine list as “America’s most admired companies”.
4. It has been credited as No. 1 among Fortune 500 companies.