Steve JobsEarly Life
Born in San Francisco, California, to parents that were unable to care for him, Steve Jobs early life was a struggle for identity. An adopted child raised by caring parents, one of the early wishes of his biological parents was academic success. The Apple Inc cofounder reflected on this publicly in one of his famous speeches, explaining how important academic success was to his biological family.
However, young Steve Jobs was far from an academic. Despite his immense intelligence, he wasnt interested in schooling, aside from a few select classes. The teenage Steve, raised in Mountain View in the 1970s, was much more interested in pranking phone computers, creating innovative business ideas, and messing around with machinery alongside his close friend Steve Wozniak.
Jobs approach to education has been explained very publicly – he only felt he could really learn after he had dropped out of college. The twenty-something year old Jobs left college after his first year, claiming that he couldnt see the point in attending. Over the course of the next few years, he created computers in his garage with high school friend Wozniak, eventually building the Apple 1.
Career
Initial success with the Apple 1 pushed Jobs and Wozniak to create bigger and better computers, and by the late 1970s they had created what would become Apples first big success: the Apple 2. A high speed business workstation, the computer was a hit in their native California, and Jobs soon became a millionaire from the computers heavy sales throughout the state, and later the country.
However, things turned sour for Jobs when he sought to expand Apple further, hiring former Pepsi chief executive John Sculley to lead Apple in a new direction. The experienced chief executive had no patience for Jobs controversial and demanding management style, and after just two years, they had no time for each other. In a boardroom coup, Jobs was ousted from the company he founded.
His dismissal at Apple ignited a fire in Jobs, one that burned for the remainder of his career. Just a year later, he purchased a struggling animation studio from Star Wars mastermind George Lucas. It bled money for over ten years – money that Jobs himself was spending on the studio – until it had a fantastic 1997 hit with the movie Toy Story.
Likewise, he created another company called NeXT, which specialized in high-end workstations for the business community. A commercial failure, NeXT bled money until it was purchased by Apple a decade later, bringing Jobs back to the company he built. Over the next few years, Jobs went from a small position at Apple to the companys interim CEO, eventually taking on the position full time.
" Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. "- Steven Paul Job
Jobs second period at Apple produced many of the companys most successful devices. From the iPad to the iMac, the Jobs-led Apple surged past its previous milestones and grew into the biggest company in the technology sector. Although it took a heavy blow to set Jobs on the right path, his experience reflects a true genius, and is regarded as the greatest second act in business history.