Steve Jobs: The Man Who Changed Everything – A Journey from Garage to Global Icon

Get ready to learn about Steve Jobs – a tech icon. He started from nothing and transformed the world with his brilliant ideas and tech skills. Going from a simple garage to Apple is amazing, his story is all about never giving up and always trying your best. Let’s discover it together!

Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman, inventor, and investor who was best known for being one of the founders of Apple Inc., one of the most successful companies in the world. As head of Apple, Jobs introduced many popular electronic products, including the Macintosh computer and the iPhone.

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco. He was adopted by an encouraging and loving family. As a child, Jobs liked reading, swimming, music, but he also spent a lot of time building electronics. He developed an interest for computers and engineering at a young age, inspired by his father’s machinist job and love for electronics. When Jobs was in high school, he met his future business partner, Steve Wozniak, with whom he bonded over their shared love for electronics and computer chips.

After Jobs finished high school he went to college and after just one semester he dropped out, which he later explained was because he did not want to spend his parents’ money on an education that seemed meaningless to him. However, he continued living on campus with friends and auditing classes, including Shakespeare, modern dance, and calligraphy.

Just four years later, Apple Computer company was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne as a partnership.

The company’s first product was the Apple I, which Jobs and Wozniak started building in Jobs’ garage and sold it without a monitor, keyboard, or casing (which they decided to add on in 1977).

They started selling their product to computer stores for a price of $666.66. By August of 1976, Wozniak started designing an advanced version of their product, Apple II. They introduced it to the public by April 1977. The Apple II was more successful than the first model, and sales increased by 700%.

In January 1984, Steve Jobs himself introduced The Macintosh, now called the Mac, at a retail price of $2,495. It was the first widely sold personal computer (PC) with a graphical user interface and a mouse.

In 1985, Jobs departed Apple after a long power struggle with the company’s board and its then-CEO, John Sculley. Jobs took some Apple employees with him and started a new software and hardware company, NeXT Inc.

One year later, in 1986, Jobs purchased  an animation company from George Lucas, which later became Pixar Animation Studios. Jobs believed in Pixar’s potential and invested $50 million dollars in the company. Pixar then became a very successful company and its first major success being Toy Story released on November 22, 1995, which took four years to make.

Steve Job’s new company NeXT was an epic fail. Apple bought the company in 1997 for a price of $400 million, and Jobs returned to Apple as CEO. In the 2000s, Jobs became a permanent CEO of Apple, and under his leadership, the company developed numerous innovative devices – namely, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and iTunes.

Unfortunately in 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. On July 31, 2004 he underwent a successful surgery to remove a tumor related to the cancer.

In 2005, Jobs held his commencement speech at Stanford University, in which he said: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary…Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

In 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the Apple iPhone at Macworld in San Francisco and a year later he introduced theTime Capsule, a new Apple TV, and the original MacBook Air. In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant. In January 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad. A year later in 2011 Jobs’ pancreatic cancer relapsed and he stepped down as Apple CEO in August of that year, when he accepted the role of chairman.  He died of complications from pancreatic cancer at the age of 56 on Oct. 5, 2011.

Steve Jobs wasn’t only a tech icon. He was an example for the youth by showing the progress in his career and inspiring them with different speeches that were about the battles he went through and showing how committed he was to the work. His main focus was to make an impact and influence the world, which we can understand more from his famous quote: “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”.