Steve Jobs is best known as a visionary for introducing one of the first personal computers, the Apple I, along with "the other Steve," Steve Wozniak, or Woz. Jobs' expertise lay in marketing the product, while Woz focused on the computer's technical aspects. Jobs' standout role was as a savvy marketer of products that combined new technologies with appealing design, and as a talented manager of creative staff.
Early on, Jobs understood the PC's capabilities and recognized the value of the laser printer and the graphical user interface, said Andy Grove, chairman of Intel Corp. He also said that Jobs was the most inspirational Silicon Valley leader.
Jobs' entrepreneurial skills started at a young age, when in 1968 he and a friend co-created and sold the "blue box," an illegal phone attachment that allowed users to make long distance calls. He sold and repaired stereos during his high school years.
As a young man, Jobs immersed himself in counterculture. In 1974, he spent his savings from working at Atari to travel to India, where he sought spiritual enlightenment. He also dated culture icon Joan Baez in his 20s. He prefers to wear informal attire to work and his favorite musician is Bob Dylan, whom he started listening to at age 13.
Wozniak and Jobs became friends after meeting at Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 1971. In 1976, they built the Apple I PC in Wozniak's parents' garage after raising US$1,750 -- for which Jobs sold his Volkswagen minibus, and Wozniak his HP scientific calculator.
In 1976, the duo founded Apple Computer Co., named after Jobs spent a summer working at an Oregon orchard. The company changed its name to Apple Computer Inc. a year later. Apple's second PC, the Apple II, was a success, recording sales of $139 million from 1977-1979.
Apple's introduction of the Macintosh in 1984 raised the ante of desktop computing and identified Jobs as a visionary in the personal computing landscape. The Mac ran on a 32-bit processor (compared to 16-bit processors for other PCs at the time) and had 128K bytes of memory, expandable to 192K bytes. The Mac was an immediate success: it sold over 400,000 units in its first year.
In 1985, Jobs and John Sculley, the company's president and CEO, clashed over philosophical differences about running the company, resulting in Jobs' ousting from Apple. Jobs left the company he co-founded with a net worth of $150 million and started his next venture, Next Computer Inc., which generated moderate success.
In addition to starting Next, Jobs bought feature animation company Pixar in 1986 for $10 million from George Lucas. Jobs' Pixar Animation Studios became a Hollywood powerhouse that he still runs today. Since 1986, Pixar has created five of the most successful English animated films of all time: Toy Story (1995); A Bug's Life (1998); Toy Story 2 (1999); Monsters, Inc. (2001); and Finding Nemo (2003). Between them, these films earned more than $2 billion at the worldwide box office. Pixar has also collected more than 100 awards and nominations for animated films, commercials and technical contributions. Toy Story won a Special Achievement Academy Award in 1995.
In 1996 Jobs returned to Apple after it bought his company, Next Computer. He was named interim CEO in 1997 and helped revive the financially strapped company with a string of hardware and software product announcements.
From this batch of announcements, the iMac and the Mac OS X Unix-based operating system became the most successful products and helped revive Apple financially.
Jobs took Apple into the music business by launching the iPod, an enormously successful portable MP3 player, in 2001, and the iTunes Music Store, an online shop selling encoded songs and albums, in 2003.
Also in 2003, Jobs reaffirmed his status as a visionary by announcing the PowerMac G5, the first 64-bit desktop computer, trumping chip behemoths Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in the process.
In August 2004, shortly after Jobs had surgery to remove a malignant tumor from his pancreas, Apple introduced the 64-bit iMac G5 personal computer, the next iteration of the company's highly popular iMac series of PCs.
The following June, Jobs announced at its Worldwide Developer Conference that Apple would launch Intel-based Macs in 2006 and six months later it followed through on that pledge, releasing the MacBook Pro and iMac. By August, the company had fully made the transition to Macs using Intel chips.
At Macworld in early January 2007, Jobs showed off the first iPhone and Apple TV, followed the next month by word that the company would offer music free of DRM (digital rights management) at the iTunes Store.
But Jobs' health increasingly took center stage when he appeared in public. By 2006 he was noticeably thinner than he had been to the point of being described as "gaunt." After his 2008 Macworld keynote, the company said that he was suffering from a "common bug" and taking antibiotics to combat it. Jobs and others were quoted as saying that his health issues were "not life-threatening" and did not involve a recurrence of pancreatic cancer.
Rumors were fueled in August 2008 when Bloomberg erroneously posted Jobs' obituary to its newswire. Even though it was missing a date and cause of death, and despite Bloomberg quickly removing the story from circulation and issuing a retraction, Jobs' health continued to be a topic, generating numerous speculative news stories regarding Apple's future without Jobs.
In the years after his return to Apple and its resurgence as an industry leader, the interconnectedness of Jobs and the company was also a frequent source for discussions and the subject of news stories. Again, in December 2008 the flames were fanned when Apple announced that the 2009 Macworld Conference & Expo would be its last and that Jobs would not deliver its keynote address, as had become his custom.
Questions of Jobs' health surfaced in December 2008 after Apple announced that he would not deliver his usual keynote at the 2009 Macworld Expo. Apple also said that 2009 would mark the company's final time participating in the show. Apple claimed it no longer needed the exposure due to the attention garnered from its iPod, iPhone, computers and retail stores.
In January 2009 Jobs revealed in a letter that a hormone imbalance caused his noticeable weight loss. At the time he said he would carry on as CEO. He did not offer details on the treatment and only said it was simple and straightforward.
Approximately one week later he announced that he would take a leave of absence from Apple until June to deal with his medical condition, which he said had changed. Neither Apple nor Jobs revealed information on his illness. Tim Cook, the company's COO, will handle the daily operations until Jobs returns. Jobs, according to Apple, will still be involved in major decisions during his recovery.
In late June, The Wall Street Journal reported that Jobs underwent a liver transplant while on hiatus. While Apple was mum on the topic, a Tennessee hospital released a statement confirming that Jobs had the surgery and was "recovering well and has an excellent prognosis."
On June 29, Apple confirmed that Jobs had returned to work. He will spend a few days a week at the office and will work from home the remainder of the time, the company said.
