Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb 24, 1955 in San Francisco, CA. He was put up for adoption by his unwed parents and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. A couple years after he was adopted, his family moved to Mountain View.

Steve grew up in a neighborhood of engineers in what became known as the Silicon Valley in the early 1950s. He tinkered with electronics in their garages on weekends. He met 18-year-old Steve Wozniak when he was 15.

Steve spent 1 year at Reed College in Oregon before dropping out. He moved to a hippie commune to cultivate apples before returning to California to seek employment. He was hired by Atari.

His friend Woz joined the Homebrew Computer Club and Steve took an interest in a computer Woz was building. Together, they started Apple Computer April 1, 1976.

In 1985, Steve Jobs left Apple on bad terms and started NeXT. He created NeXT Cube but it didn’t sell as it was overpriced.

When he left Apple and cashed in his Apple stocks, he used bought a group of scientists and incorporated them as Pixar. By 1995, NeXT tanked but Pixar continued to succeed (he owned 80% of the company).

In 1996, Apple bought NeXTSTEP, NeXT’s operating system and he convinced them to buy the whole company. Steve was back at the company he founded. By 1997, he was Apple’s interim CEO.

In 1998, Steve introduced the iMac. In 2000, he introduced Mac OS X based on NeXTSTEP. He became CEO and also remained CEO at Pixar.

In 2000, Steve decided to branch out from movies into music and started to develop the iPod.

In 2006, Disney announced it’s acquisition of Pixar.

In 2003, he started to develop a tablet in secret but realized touch-screen technology could be important to a phone as well. He changed the world with his iPhone – an mp3 player and phone in one.

Late 2003, Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He refused surgery for 9 months.

He announced the iCloud in 2011. He resigned as Apple CEO August 24, 2011. He died October 5, 2011.

Jody remembers Steve Jobs as a true visionary.