Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Job

Steve Jobs is the Chairman, CEO and co-founder of the company Apple that makes the iPod, ITunes, Mac laptops, desktop computers and the OS X operating system. Jobs was also CEO of a company he founded right after resigning from Apple, the NeXT Company.

On February 24, 1955 Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California. His biological parents Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali put Jobs up for adoption; Justin and Clara Jobs later adopted him. Jobs went to Cupertino Middle School and Homestead High School, both school reside in the town of Cupertino, California. Jobs spent a lot his time after school attending lectures at the Hewlett-Packard electronics firm. Jobs was eventually hired at the firm Hewlett-Packard one summer and there he met another employee Steve Wozniak. Steve Wozniak was also a drop out student from the University of California at Berkeley. Wozniak had a passion for making electronic gadgets.

Jobs graduated from Homestead High School in 1972 and enrolled into Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He ended up dropping out of college after one semester and returned to California. Around 1974 after going back to California he met up with Steve Wozniak at the Homebrew Computer Club meetings. He also landed a job at Atari, which is a company that makes popular video games. While working at Atari Jobs learned about a whistle that created tones needed to make free long distance call which was called the blue boxes. Jobs told Wozniak about the blue boxes and how they should manufacture some and sell them. This did not last long because they learned about the legal consequences for doing this. Jobs continued to work for Atari because he needed to save money so he could attend a spiritual retreat and backpack across India.

After returning from India he went back to work with Atari. Atari founder asked Jobs if he could minimize the number of chips in the circuit board on one of the games "Breakout". Jobs did not have much knowledge in the designing of circuit board so he told Wozniak they could split the money that Atari was paying Jobs if they could do it. Both Jobs and Wozniak loved computers but the difference between them was that Jobs loved to sell and market them, while Wozniak loved to build.

Jobs and Wozniak worked together on numerous projects but Jobs told Wozniak that they should start designing personal computers so they could sell and market them. Soon they go into business and create their first computer, which was the beginning of the company we know today as "Apple". The first apple computer, the "Apple I" sold for about $666.66. The Apple I was the first single board computer with built in video interface. It also had on board ROM, which lets the computer load programs from outside sources. Jobs and Wozniak earned almost $800,000 from the sales of the Apple I. The Apple II came out the following year; its design was similar to the Apple I simple and compact. The Apple II had circuitry built in which allows it to project color on the monitor instead just black and white.

Jobs knew if he wanted to compete with IBM he needed to get some better marketing skills. Through a lot of connections Jobs got in touch with Markkula who was a former marketing manager from the company Intel. Markkula looked into the company Apple and invested as much money as $91,000 to $250,000. Through Markkula Apple had credit with the Bank of America. Apples earnings grew to about $139,000,000, which is a 700% growth in sales. Apple went public and the price of the share went from $22 to $29, during the first day of trading Apple's market value rose to about $1.2 billion. By December of 1982 the stock was selling for about $30 per share.

IBM introduced their PC and they pass Apple in sales. IBM mainly targeted the business world with the computer they produced while Apple targeted the everyday