Steve Jobs
Birdslip
Steve Jobs was born on the 24th of February, 1955. He was put up for adoption by his biological parents. His biological father’s name was Abdulfattah 'John' al-Jandali, a Syrian immigrant who left Syria to further his studies at the University of Wisconsin in the United States of America.
At the University of Wisconsin, Abdulfattah met Joanne Schieble. Joanne got pregnant for Abdulfattah, but her father did not want them to get married.
They decided to put their son up for adoption.
Paul and Clara Jobs became Steve’s adopted parents. The family lived in Mountain View, California. Those were the days when the electronics industry was experiencing a serious boom.
Jobs, a quiet and reserved kind of person, often spent time in the garage of one of the neighbours, an employee of Hewlett-Packard (HP). It was at the Hewlett-Packard explorer club that he started getting really interested in computers.
Steve Jobs studied at Reed College in Oregon, but after two years, he dropped out.
In 1975, Jobs joined a club, the Homebrew Computer Club. It was at this club he met Steve Wozniak, a computer genius. Jobs was fascinated about Wozniak’s idea of making computers much smaller. In those days, computers were so large, each one occupied an entire room. Steve Jobs saw a huge market opportunity for a company to make much smaller computers that would appeal to ordinary individuals.
Jobs thought it will be a great idea for both of them to start a company together.
Their company was called the Apple Computer Company.
The Apple II was the world’s best selling Personal Computer in the 70s.
And Apple has remained unstoppable ever since.
In 1985, Steve Jobs was fired by the board of directors of Apple. The board felt he was investing too much time and resources in products that were not doing well in the market.
Initially he did not know what to do with his life, but after regaining inspiration, Steve decided he was going to create computers for animators. The name of his new computer company was called NeXT.
He also bought Pixar, a small animations company from George Lucas, the producer of Star Wars. Steve Jobs company, Pixar, went on to create some of the most amazing animation movies of all time.
Toy Story, A bug’s life, Monster Inc, Finding Nemo and Wall-E are all Steve Jobs’ Pixar creations.
Steve returned as CEO of Apple. And he came back with a bang.
He introduced the iPod, the iMac, the iPhone, the iPAD, iTunes and the Apple App Store.
Today, Apple is the biggest company on earth. Apple is worth more than $2 Trillion.
Steve Jobs has been awarded over 450 patents, including the patent for a glass designed staircase which is found in some iconic Apple stores.
It’s simply amazing what a human being can achieve in one lifetime.
Almost exactly like it happened with Tayo Aderinokun, the genius co-founder of Guaranty Trust Bank, Steve Jobs also died of an illness due to cancer in the year 2011. They were both aged 56.
On an occassion, Steve Jobs’ biological sister, Mona Simpson paid Abdulfattah, Steve’s biological father, a restaurant manager, a visit.
Not knowing who his biological son had become, Walter Isaacson, author of biography on Steve Jobs said:
Abdulfattah wished she (Mona) could have seen him when he was managing a Mediterranean restaurant north of San Jose.
‘That was a wonderful place,’ he said.
“All of the successful technology people used to come there. Even Steve Jobs”
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