Contribution
Co-founding Apple Inc.; founding NeXT; leading Pixar to success; spearheading transformative products such as the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
Bio
Steven Paul Jobs was co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc.; founder of NeXT; and chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar, which he sold to Disney, joining its board. He helped usher in the era of personal computing and transformed music, phones, and animation industries.
Stories
1. Signing the Macintosh
Jobs asked the Mac team to sign their names on the inside metal chassis, saying, “Great products are made by people who take pride in their work.” Those signatures remain in every classic Macintosh.
2. Convincing Atari
As a teenager, Jobs convinced Atari to let him work the night shift to save money for a blue box phone-phreaking device—an early lesson in both persuasion and ethics.
3. Garage Beginnings
In 1976, Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple I in Jobs’s parents’ garage and sold circuit boards to a local computer store, marking the start of Apple Computer.
4. NeXT and the Return
After being ousted from Apple in 1985, Jobs founded NeXT. In 1997 Apple acquired NeXT, bringing Jobs back as CEO and setting the stage for the company’s revival.
5. Pixar’s Success
Jobs bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm in 1986, renaming it Pixar. Under his leadership, Pixar released Toy Story in 1995, the first feature-length computer-animated film.
