English eassy

1

Running head: ENGLISH

BIOGRAPHY OF STEVE JOBS

Biography

Shian Wu

University of Bridgeport

December 3, 2016

Biography of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs is an American businessman and technology visionary, who was a co-founder of the Apple, chairperson, and the chief executive officer of the Apple Inc. was born on February 24, 1995, in San Francisco, California. His parents were incapable of taking care of him. The early life of Steve Jobs was a little struggle for identity. He was adopted and raised by caring parents and the best his biological parents wished for him was a success in his academic endeavors. The parents were graduates from the University of Wisconsin Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali who were unmarried. Jandali was a teacher at Wisconsin when Steve was born.

He was adopted by Paul Reinhold Jobs at birth between the years (1922-1993) and Clara Jobs in the years (1924-1986). Steve jobs later claim that Paul and Clara were his parents 1000%, the biological parents were unknown to him. The parents then got married in the year December 1955 and begot a daughter by the novelist Mona Simpson in 1956 and filed a divorce in the year 1962. Most of Steve’s life was full of misery and confusion. Despite his portrayed humanity, he faced several challenges including the faith and belief, and that is all he could count on (Austen 2012).

Jobs lived in his head since he was brilliant for the product of his survival, much of the thoughts were extraordinary. His life is a testimony of a man who lived to give the entire globe his best. A life that almost made him a pariah.

Childhood and early life

Paul and Clara Jobs adopted Steve Jobs in the Bay area, California in the year 1955. Guardianship was surrounded by a range of issues right from the beginning by his biological mother, Joanne Carole Schieble. The mother wanted to offer her son to a familiar of intellects to enhance his college education. And she had a contrary thought of giving him up to the blue –collar couples and even went ahead to present the matter to court to legalize the adoption of their son after the two promised Steve of attending the University education. The new parents adopted a daughter known as Patricia and migrated moved to Mountain View, CA in 1961. At the age of 10 years, Steve developed a friendship with most of the engineers that were living in the neighborhood. He never had friends of his age and found it much easy in making friends with the adults.

Academics life

He lived in a countercultural environment in California in the early seventies. His parents made him learn not to follow directions but resist authority figures, and that is the reason for his resistance to the instructors in the elementary school, and most of the people were not surprised to see Jobs portrays such character.

Steve already knew how to write and read even when still at home. Clara acted as his first teacher, and it made him bored at school and as a result acted arrogantly. Pranks were part of his games on others and most of the time the teachers could feel scared and reduced to tears at the Mountain View.

The father was branded as being childish, and therefore never expected his son to undergo the same kind of humiliation. The father greatly believed in him and never minded to challenging him a lot at school. Steve made his fourth-grade teacher feel that he was his the biggest obstacle for the schooling. Therefore the teacher offered him five buck bribery to finish his school work. The corruption motivated him than before, and the fruits could be witnessed as compared to the previous years. ‘’that kindled my passion for learning than before, I learned more in that year than I think I had learned in any other academic year in that school. The teachers wanted me to skip the next two years in the grade school and move to the junior school straight away, where I could learn the foreign language but my parents never allowed that to happen.’’

At first, it was a suggestion that he could skip two years of his grade schooling but the parents refused, so he skipped only the fifth grade and got a transfer to the Crittenden middle school where he joined his sixth grade (Lakin 2015). Majority describes his character of making friends with the juniors as ‘’socially awkward loner’’. Paul and Clara later moved to Los Altos forcing them to take Steve to a better school in Cupertino. The fascinating thing is that he could find so many engineers within their neighborhood which was even to his advantage. Jobs met new friends like Bill Fernandez that was also talented in the electronics and of the same level in school as Jobs (Austen 2012). There are numerous contributions of Bill in Steve’s life, apart from being the only new friend in their new neighborhood, he introduced Steve to old alumni of their current school, Steve Wozniak an 18 years old boy.

The first job that Steve secured was at the age of 13 years old at the Hewlett-Packard in summer. He had not even applied for the job but had called requesting for parts.

High school education

After the grade education, Jobs proceeded to the homestead high school where he started his first year together with his friend Bill. None of them had an engineering background, but both were sincerely interested in the stuff. They both advanced knowledge on the electronics. By the mid- 1970s, Dylan Thomas, Shakespeare and the stuff for the classic literacy that motivated him to continue with the creative writing skills classes. And got interested in the music of their time much as unexpected that gave him another circle of friends (Lakin 2015). The two new friends were pursuing literature and electronics respectively. In the later years, he developed a strong friendship with his girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan and Wozniak who was in art class. The friendship with Wozniak could still continue even after him moving to Berkeley. They could pay each other a visit and have a joint study at the Stanford students’ center.

Reed College

In the year 1972, Steve enrolled at the Reed College in the Portland Oregon. The fees were entirely expensive for the parents to afford therefore he decided to drop out of college since he did not feel like spending every single penny of his parents on the education. But Steve continued attending by auditing classes despite being illegal and paid much attention to calligraphy course that was instructed by the Robert Palladino. He was sleeping on the floor in a friend’s dorm room and could receive free meals weekly at the local Hare Krishna temple and a little money for food by returning the coke bottles.

Career developments and achievements.

Pre-Apple career.

There is a video game, Pong that his friend Steve Wozniak designed in the year 1973. Steve took this game to Atari Inc., where he secured a job of being a technician because they thought he had built that game. His girlfriend could not put up with him because she believed that Steve was living a simple life in a cabin, working at Atari and considering some saving for Indian trip (Soderland, et al. 2013). His journey to India matured in the year 1974 with a few friend from Reeds College including Daniel Kottke to search for enlightenment. On their arrival, they trek along the riverbed of the Ganges to Ashram for a different guru in Uttar Pradesh, India.

Jobs returned to Atari, and he was offered the task of designing circuit boards for the video games including the breakout. And he received an offer of a hundred dollars for every chip that was eliminated from the machine. Great history has been in place since he decided to invite his friend Wozniak to assist him in the task. The two could design circuit boards that were unique and cannot be reproduced in the assembling process. The interest for the electronics grew when they could develop a low-cost blue-box that could manipulate the telephone network enabling free long-distance calls. And the two started selling the blues box in an illegal manner.

The development and innovations of Apple computer

Wozniak in the year 1976 invented Apple 1 computer that Steve suggested that they could sell. The two together with Ronald Wayne created a company in the garage of Steve Jobs in Los Altos home, naming it Apple computers. He was the only person working in the garage then Wozniak was supplying the codes. They received support from the former and semi-retired product manager from Intel, who was also an engineer, Mike Markkula (Austen 2012).

By the dawns of the year 1977, a prototype of the computer was in place. Later the same year they launched the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire. It formed the first product for the consumers that was sold by the Apple Company and a successful production of the many another micro- computer products. The principal designer was Wozniak. Steve continued with the job and moved in with his friend Bremen at the aged of 23 years. He was worth a million dollars at this age and could count on ten million dollars at the age of 24years old.

Jobs hired Mike Scotts to assume the position of the CEO for the few following years. The company experienced tough moments during this time. Later on, Steve recruited John Sculley as the Apple’s chief executive officer from PepsiCo. In the year 1985, Bill Gates threatened not to develop applications from Mac OS. Microsoft purchased the license as the main IBM computers that operate on the Microsoft software started using Macintosh and Windows. The reduction in the cost of the windows snatched the market from Apple. Jobs resigned from the company a few months later (Soderland, et al. 2013). After his resignations from the Apple Inc., he founded another computer firm in the year 1985 with the help of Ross Perot. Ross invested in the company, and show cased their products to the market that valued Steve job’s come -back effect (Doeden 2012). They released their workstation in 1990, though it was technologically advanced but expensive in the long run just like the Lisa computers. It could not satisfy the need for the general public and educational sector that it was designed to serve. Steve Jobs founded the graphic group Pixar and Disney in the year 1986. It was a computer graphics section of George Lucas’ movies at the cost of ten million dollars. In 1996, the Apple Inc., advertised their interest to buy for the next $427 million and the accomplishment of the deal brought Steve Jobs back to the firm he co-founded (Rughinis & Matei 2013, May). He became the CEO of the de facto after the resignation of Gil Amelio. Jobs created Mac OS X in the year 2000 and became the permanent chief executive officer of the Apple Inc. he launched the Apple’s first multi-touch cell phone (iPhone) that had the iPod features as well and webmaster. Steve is credited for making the phones ‘’smart’’, portable computers and the iPad tablets.

Health issues (illness)

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October, in the year 2003. He was suffering from the less aggressive type of growth. Steve Jobs denied treatment for a while by trying on the natural remedies to control the spread of the disease, but all was in vain. He practiced the vegan diet, herbal treatments, acupuncture and any other possible treatment that could be accessed online (Soderland, et al. 2013).

When he was taken for surgery to remove the tumor, though lucky but the doctor realized that it was already late. His surgery never required chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Later in 2008, his health deteriorated and Apple was quite adamant on Steve Job’s health status. In the year 2009, he delivered a statement claiming that he has been suffering from the imbalance of hormones for several months and applied for health leave in January same year. In April 2009, Steve went through a liver transplant in Tennessee.

He took another leave for medical in January 2011 after the liver transplant. But could still make some strategic and vital decision in the company. And announced his resignation from the Apple’s CEO in August 2011 and joined the board as the chairperson and named Cook as the successor at the helm of Apple (Sherry, et al. 2016).

Death of Steve Jobs

Jobs died at his home in Palo Alto in California on October 5th, 2011 in the afternoon. The death was due to the respiratory arrest that was an effect of the complications from the relapse of his pancreatic cancer. He died peacefully with his family around him. The family members arranged for a small but private funeral that was not disclosed to the public in respect of the household members.

The date October 6th to October 12th, 2011 was marked with the flags of Pixar, Apple, Microsoft and Disney half-way in respect of their hero. His remains are buried at the automation Memorial Park, and the grave is unmarked in the unique non-denominational cemetery in Palo Alto California.

References

Austen, B. (2012). The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale? Wired Magazine, 23.

Lakin, P. (2015). Steve Jobs: Thinking Differently. Simon and Schuster.

Rughinis, C., & Matei, S. (2013, May). Learning through Massively Co-Authored Biographies: Making Sense of Steve Jobs on Wikipedia through Delegated Voice. In 2013 19th International Conference on Control Systems and Computer Science (pp. 590-596). IEEE.

Soderland, S., Gilmer, J., Bart, R., Etzioni, O., & Weld, D. S. (2013). Open information extraction to KBP relations in 3 hours. In Text Analysis Conference.

Doeden, M. (2012). Steve Jobs: Technology Innovator and Apple Genius. Lerner Publications.

Sherry, S. B., Mackinnon, S. P., & Gautreau, C. M. (2016). Perfectionists Do Not Play Nicely With Others: Expanding the Social Disconnection Model. In Perfectionism, health, and well-being (pp. 225-243). Springer International Publishing.

6