Steve Jobs was an American entrepreneur and the co-founder of Apple, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of personal computing and consumer technology. Born in 1955 in San Francisco and adopted as an infant, he combined a fierce design sensibility with a gift for marketing.
Jobs grew up in what would become Silicon Valley, in a house in Los Altos, California, where his adoptive father, a machinist, taught him the rudiments of electronics and craftsmanship in the family garage. That same garage later served as the first workspace of Apple, giving rise to one of the most famous origin stories in business.
As a teenager Jobs was bright but unconventional, drawn equally to electronics and to counterculture, art, and Eastern philosophy. He met his future partner Steve Wozniak in high school, then dropped out of college after a single semester while continuing to sit in on classes that interested him, including a calligraphy course he later credited for the Mac's typography.
In 1976 Jobs co-founded Apple with Wozniak, whose engineering genius complemented Jobs's drive and vision. The Apple II, released the following year, became one of the first highly successful mass produced personal computers and helped launch an entire industry.
The 1984 Macintosh introduced the graphical user interface, with its windows, icons, and mouse, to a mass audience, a leap that would eventually define how nearly everyone uses computers.
After a power struggle with the chief executive he had recruited, Jobs was stripped of his responsibilities and left Apple in 1985, a humbling fall for the company's young founder.
In the wilderness years Jobs founded the computer company NeXT and acquired the studio that became Pixar, which went on to revolutionize animated film with *Toy Story* and a string of hits. The detour proved formative, sharpening both his technology and his management.
When a struggling Apple bought NeXT in 1997, Jobs returned and led one of the great corporate turnarounds in business history. He oversaw a run of products that reshaped entire industries: the iMac, the iPod and iTunes, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad.
Known for his exacting standards and his "reality distortion field," Jobs built Apple into one of the most valuable companies in the world. He died in 2011 after a long battle with cancer, leaving a profound mark on how people use technology.
