Steve Jobs CoFounder Apple Passes Away at 56

Steve Jobs RIP

Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs passes away at 56

Steve Jobs co-founder of Apple, passed away on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56.  More than a co-founder, Steve Jobs highlighted the benefits of technology when it was used as a tool, rather than an object.

The Washington Post said it best in their article, complimenting Steve Jobs as an individual who introduced simple computers, elegant in their design, for people who were more interested in using the machine rather than how it was built.

On August 24, 2011 Steve Jobs stepped down from his post as Apple’s chief executive.  Battling a rare form of pancreatic cancer, Jobs is certainly a man to admire, as the disease he passed on is known to be a difficult and painstaking endurance.

Born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, Steve Jobs was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs five months after his birth.  When he was 14 years old, Jobs took a summer career at Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) after William Hewlett approached him with the offer.  2 years later at the age of 16 Steve Jobs met Steve Wozniak, securing the future finding of Apple.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs

At the age of 21 Steve Jobs decided he would drop out of college to pursue a career as an entrepreneur.  Attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, working as a technician for Atari Inc. and finally saving enough money for him and Wozniak to build their first marketable computer, Steve Jobs was a gamer from day one.

According to ComputerWorld.com Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak launched Apple 1 for $666.66… But technically there are five sixes so its ok. By 1977 Apple II launched and became the world’s first widely used computer.  In 1979 the development of Macintosh began and things exploded for Jobs.

Even though Steve Jobs had a head on his shoulders and maintained himself, it was not always smooth sailing. His invention of “Lisa”, the first mouse controlled computer (named after his daughter undoubtedly) did not go over so well on the market. Steve Jobs has been overly successful in his life if you ask me, looking at a timeline on ComputerWorld.com it seems besides “Lisa” the only other major failure he had was in his own business that he formed at the age of 30 after leaving Apple.  NeXT was created as Steve Jobs tried to sell a monochrome monitor with the computer.

Somethings however Steve Jobs did right during his spilt from Apple.  Jobs bought Pixar (yes the animation company aka Toy Story) from George Lucas for less than $10 million.  Toy Story would gross $29,140,617 in its first weekend alone.

In 1996 Steve Jobs teamed back up with Apple and his first order of business was to make peace with Microsoft.  Eventually Microsoft invested $150 million dollars into Apple, giving Jobs and his company exactly what they needed to become the multi billion dollar business they are today.

Steve Jobs, Co-Founder Apple

They say Jobs paved the way for the rise of nerds, aka Google Founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and also Facebook’s father Mark Zuckerberg.  Wired.com posted a quote from Steve Jobs and his philosophical 2005-commencement address at Stanford University.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs said. “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Rest in peace Steve Jobs you will surely be missed.