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Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs; February 24, 1955 � October 5, 2011) was an American inventor and entrepreneur. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs was co-founder and previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. In the late 1970s, Jobs � along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula and others � designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd, which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios.[7] He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer. He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1 percent until its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company in 2006,[8] making Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder at seven percent and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.[9][10] Apple's 1996 buyout of NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he served as its interim CEO from 1997, then becoming permanent CEO from 2000 onwards, spearheading the advent of the iPod, iPhone and iPad.[11]. From 2004, he fought a long battle with cancer, [12] eventually leading to his resignation as CEO in August 2011, during his third medical leave. After his resignation, Jobs was elected chairman of Apple's board of directors. On October 5, 2011, around 3:00 pm, Jobs died at his home in Palo Alto, California, aged 56, six weeks after resigning as CEO of Apple. A copy of his death certificate, which was made public on October 10, indicated respiratory arrest as the immediate cause of death, with "metastatic pancreas neuroendocrine tumor" as the underlying cause. His occupation was listed as "entrepreneur" in the "high tech" business.[13] He was widely described as a visionary, pioneer and genius. Jobs was born in San Francisco to Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, a Syrian, and Joanne Carole Schieble (later Simpson), an American of Swiss and German ancestry,[14] both graduate students.[15] Jobs was placed for adoption after Schieble's father opposed their marriage.[16] Schieble became a speech language pathologist[17] while Jandali taught political science at several colleges. He is currently vice president of Boomtown Casino and Hotel in Reno, Nevada.[18][19] Schieble and Jandali married in December 1955 four months after her father died and ten months after giving up their baby boy. Their daughter, Jobs' biological sister, novelist Mona Simpson was born in 1957. Schieble and Jandali divorced in 1962. The siblings first met in 1984, and kept their relationship a secret until 1986.[17] They enjoyed a close adult relationship, with Jobs regularly visiting Simpson in Manhattan. From Simpson, Jobs learned more about their birth parents and he invited his biological mother Joanne to some events.[6][20] Jandali's attempts, late in his life, to contact Jobs were unsuccessful;[21] Interviewed in August 2011 when Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, Jandali said, "I just wish I hadn't been the selfish man I must have been, to allow both my children to turn their backs on me and pray it is not too late to tell Steve how I feel."[22][23] |