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Steven Paul Jobs was an American inventor and entrepreneur, and was also the chairman and co-founder of Apple Inc. Apple, a major American electronics company, is best known for their extensive line of Mac computers and hand-held devices named with the signature lower-case “i,” such as the iPad, iPhone and iPod. Apple also has it’s own recognizable operating system for their computer line (OS X) as well as a complete line of software applications. Most of this was possible because of Steve Jobs, who single-handedly help change the future of electronics.
Jobs was born on February 24th, 1955 to a Syrian father and a Swiss mother who almost immediately gave him up for adoption due to the fact that he was born out of wed-lock. Jobs was adopted by an Armenian-American couple who raised him into adolescence. At a young age, Steve’s adoptive father, Paul, taught him how to take apart and put together small electronics and his adoptive mother, Clara, taught him to read before he started school. In school, although a prankster, Steve was exceptionally bright and even skipped a grade. After high school, Jobs attended Reed College in Oregon, but did not stay longer than a semester because his parents could not afford to pay his tuition.
Eventually, Jobs began working for Atari, one of the first video gaming corporations, where he created hardware for video games. Steve Jobs paired up with a high school friend, Steve Wozniak, and formed their own business in 1976, which they named “Apple Computer Company.” They invented their first computer and paired up with an Intel employee. A few years later, Jobs resigned from Apple due to a conflict within the company. He then joined a company called NeXTStep, a hardware company that produced computers but ultimately turned out to be unsuccessful. From there, Steve purchased a graphic film company, which would later be named Pixar. Eventually Jobs returned to Apple where the successful business began expand, creating the apple store and iTunes. Jobs stayed with Apple until 2011 when he resigned from the company, but stayed on as chairman.
Jobs also had a biological sister who he eventually met in 1985. In the biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson mentions how close jobs and his sister, Mona Simpson, became. They both also tried to locate their father and Mona was successful, but Jobs became uninterested in meeting him, through some of the things he learned about his father. Mona, an accomplished writer, actually married a writer for the show “The Simpsons,’ which is more-or-less the way the show got its name. The two remained in contact for the duration of Jobs’s life.
So what exactly made Steve Jobs so important? He is important to me personally because I happen to work for an independent Apple repair store called Dr. Brendan Mac Repair, next to TekServe in Chelsea, NY. In a more broad sense, he was the co-founder of Apple, which he built from the ground up and today is the worlds second largest technology company. The evolution of the Macintosh line of computers is astounding to see, along with the various electronic hand-held devices that have completely revolutionized the social media/cyberspace world. Perhaps the biggest, next to the Mac computer line, is the iPhone, one of the first smartphones that doubles as an iPod, along with the iPad, a multi-purpose hand held device with Wi-Fi. Just before his death, jobs stated his future dream of designing an Apple car called the iCar, which I imagine would have been well equipped with it’s own interface, the famous Siri, and lots of glass.
It is widely known that Jobs rejected a lot of product proposals, and that he believed that the design of an object should go hand in hand with its performance. Take the iPhone for example. It is a small and sleek device available in white or black and is made with glass which is considered classier and more delicate than plastic. It isn’t the most durable electronic, but it definitely speaks money and sophistication when compared to the leading competitors. Jobs also frequently references in his book a calligraphy class that he took in college as being one of the factors that prepped him for success. Jobs also revolutionized the music industry by developing portable devices with access to world-wide music, (purchasable through the iTunes store), for a generation that thrives off of music. Prior to the release of the iPad, it was thought it would not be a trendy product, but wound up kicking off the tablet craze, which thankfully brought life to reading books in a dying age.
Steve Jobs died on October 5th, 2011 from a tumor of the pancreas, and even though he never finished college, he was worth about $2 billion. Although many people helped create and expand Apple Inc. jobs is the most widely known for his accomplishments. Today, Apple is known for being a well-made user-friendly product, which I would more or less have to disagree with, being that I fix these products nearly every day of my life. In a city like New York, it is easy to see the popularity of this product by simply people-watching on the subway or some other public place. People everywhere are playing games on their iPhones, watching movies on their Mac laptops and listening to music on their iPod. The first Apple computer was bought for $600 and the company today is worth $400 billion.

Resources:

-http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/A-Tribute-to-a-Great-Artist–Steve-Jobs.html
-http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-said-he-wanted-apple-to-eventually-make-a-car-2013-2
-http://www.crunchbase.com/person/steve-jobs
-http://adage.com/article/agency-news/book-jobs-a-student-advertising/230612/ utm_source=daily_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#iPhone
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
-Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson. Published by Simon & Schuster, Print, 2011.
-http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/A-Tribute-to-a-Great-Artist–Steve-Jobs.html