Life is like a chessboard, and the only position that cannot be controlled is the starting position. Be born in a given family in a given city, in a certain country, in an environment etc.. The rest is up to you.
Steve Jobs (born February 24, 1955 – died October 5, 2011) was the son of Abdulfattah Jandali, born in Syria, later professor of political science and American student Joanne Simpson, which later became the speech therapist.
At the time of Steve’s birth, both parents were students, and they gave him up for adoption to couple Paul and Clara Jobs, who later also adopted a little girl named Patti.
Steve Jobs
At the age of 27, Steve Jobs came to know about his biological parents. They later married and had a daughter, Mona Simpson, who later became a well-known novelist. Her first novel is called “Anywhere But Here“. In the 1960s, parents were separated and Mona Simpson lost touch with her father.
It seems that Steve Jobs had no relationship with his biological father, Abdulfattah Jandali who was a Syrian Muslim. The fact that Steve Jobs is half Arab, has become a major source of pride in Muslim environments.
Adoptive parents are the ones who loved him and guided Steve. His adoptive mother was an accountant, and his father was a veteran and machinist. The family lived in Mountain View, Silicon Valley, California.
In childhood, his father was passionate about electronics who explained how to assemble and Little Steve disassemble electronics, hobby that changed his life completely.
Steve was not a child to obey the rules. He was smart and innovative and always had frustrations about rigors of school education. However, the results were excellent in school so he was proposed by the school board to go directly to the school, a proposal was rejected by his parents.
He attended a high school in Cupertino, California and attended after-school lectures given by Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California.
In 1971, he met Steve Wozniak, a student at the University of Michigan, 5 years older than him, then Apple’s loyal partner.
For a short time, along with Wozniak worked at Hewlett-Packard.
In 1972, he enrolled in Reed College in Portland, but dropped out after a semester of college. Next 18 months followed calligraphy.
Like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckenberg, Steve Jobs did not graduate from any university.
In 1974, he returned to California where he was employed as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of video games. He wanted to raise money for spiritual retreat in India.
A few months remained at Atari and then went to India and came back as a convinced Buddhist, shaved head and dressed in Indian clothes.
He experimented with LSD (semisynthetic psychedelic drug) and said that this experience was one of the two or three most important things that made him “who do not share the counter-cultural roots, could not fully relate to thinking”.
After India, he returned to the old job at Atari where he was tasked to create a circuit for the game Breakout. Not interested in circuits, concluded a deal with his friend Wozniak, who managed to create the circuit, to the great surprise of those from Atari. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell’s Jobs says he paid $5000.
Steve Jobs gave Wozniak just $ 350, saying it as such and paid only $ 700, not $ 5000 right.
In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer in the Jobs family garage, where he discovered his passion with his adoptive father. Both have sold something: Jobs sold his Volkswagen and Wozniak Scientific Calculator.
Both partners wanted to revolutionize the computer industry by democratizing the industry and create intuitive computers that are smaller, cheaper and accessible to everyone.
In 1978, his first child was born, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, from long-term relationship with Chris Ann Brennan, however, Jobs denied paternity of his daughter in court documents, claiming he was sterile. Seven years later admitted child and a teenager, Lisa lived with her father.
The first Apple product had significant design flaws that reflected both sales and consumer disappointment and market share. Suddenly, IBM surpassed Apple sales, it had to compete with a business dominated by IBM/PC.
In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh and the product marketed as a computer with a “counter-cultural lifestyle”, romantic, creative, youthful. But despite higher sales and performance superior to IBM’s PCs, the Macintosh was still not fully compatible with IBM. Because of this, Apple executives begun to put pressure on Jobs to go.
In 1985, Steve Jobs resigned as a CEO of Apple and set up a new hardware and software company, NeXT Inc..
The following year, Jobs bought Pixar animation company in which he invested 50 million dollars of his own money. Pixar studio continued to produce highly popular animation films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Pixar films have raised $ 4 billion.
In 2006, Pixar merged with The Walt Disney what made Steve Jobs the largest shareholder of Disney.
Despite Pixar’s success, NeXT Inc.. failed in its attempts to sell its operating system. Apple eventually bought NeXT Inc. company. in 1997 at 429 million dollars.
Also in 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO. With a new management team and a self-imposed salary of $ 1 a year, Steve Jobs has made the company value of all time, reaching in August 2012 at a market value of 623 billion dollars (according to NASDAQ quote www.forbes.com).
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