Steve Jobs

In the story of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, Steven Paul Jobs stands near the center: an American businessman, inventor, and investor who helped turn computers from specialist machines into objects people could imagine on a desk, in a pocket, and in daily life. Born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955, and adopted shortly afterward by Paul and Clara Jobs, he grew up in Mountain View, California. His father built him a workbench in the garage and shared a love of mechanics, craftsmanship, and making things by hand.

Jobs did not fit easily into a traditional classroom. As a child, he resisted authority, misbehaved, played pranks, and was suspended a few times. Later, he attended Reed College in 1972, then withdrew that same year. In 1974, he traveled through India seeking enlightenment, and afterward studied Zen Buddhism. These strands, mechanical skill, impatience with convention, and an interest in simplicity and focus, became part of the way he approached products and leadership.

In 1976, Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer Company to further develop and sell Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. A year later, the Apple II brought them fame and wealth as one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers. Jobs also recognized the commercial promise of the Xerox Alto in 1979, with its mouse-driven graphical user interface. That insight led first to the Apple Lisa in 1983, which was largely unsuccessful, and then to the Macintosh 128K in 1984, the first mass-produced computer with a graphical user interface.

His first era at Apple ended in 1985 after a long power struggle with the company’s board and its then-CEO, John Sculley. That same year, Jobs founded NeXT, a computer platform development company focused on higher education and business markets. In 1986, he bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, which became Pixar. As Pixar’s chairman and majority shareholder until 2007, he was tied to the studio that produced Toy Story in 1995, the first computer-animated feature film, and went on to become a leading animation studio.

Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 as CEO after Apple acquired NeXT. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy, and he became largely responsible for its revival. Working closely with British designer Jony Ive, he helped create and promote products and services with wide cultural reach, beginning with the “Think different” advertising campaign and continuing through the iMac, iTunes, Mac OS X, Apple Store, iPod, iTunes Store, iPhone, App Store, and iPad. He resigned in 2011 after years of illness following a 2003 diagnosis of a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, and died on October 5, 2011, of tumor-related respiratory arrest.

Jobs’s words still resonate because they sound like the same mind that built and sold products: direct, demanding, and wary of pleasing everyone. “Think big, start small” fits the arc of a life that moved from a workbench in Mountain View to companies that changed computing, animation, music, phones, and retail. He held more than 450 patents in total, won 141 after his death, and in 2022 was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.