Steve Jobs, Chairman of Apple Computer, passed away Oct. 5, 2011.

He was responsible for innovations such as the Apple I, Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

As of June 2011 Apple had a market cap of $301 billion, second only to oil giant Exxon Mobil, at $345 billion, and net worth of $255 billion, larger than Microsoft, IBM, Dell, HP, ...
However, Microsoft still has a large lead in market share.

Apple was the number 1 brand (value in terms of advertising and public appeal) in the world, ahead of Google, IBM, and Microsoft.

Steve Jobs in 60 seconds at ABCnews

Brief Timeline:
1955 -- Born Feb. 24 in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali.

1955 -- Adopted from infancy by Paul and Clara Jobs in San Francisco. Moves to Mountain View, California, five months later.

1969 -- Offered a summer job at Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) by William Hewlett.

1971 -- Meets Steve Wozniak; the two later found Apple Computer Inc.

1972 -- Registers at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, and drops out after one semester.

1973 -- Goes to India in search of enlightenment.
Later he had an association with Japanse-born Zen master, or roshi, named Kobun Chino Otogawa. He had a buddhist wedding [1991], but was not a practicing buddhist.
See The Zen of Steve Jobs - CNN.com Blogs

1975 -- Starts attending meetings of the "Homebrew Computer Club," which discussed home computers.

1976 -- Jobs and Wozniak raise US$1,750 and build their first marketable table-top computer, the Apple I.

1976 -- Founds Apple Computer Company with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Wayne sells his stake two weeks later.

1976 -- Jobs and Wozniak launch Apple I for $666.66, the first single-board computer with a video interface and an onboard Read Only Memory (ROM), which instructed the machine on how to load programs from an external source.

1977 -- Apple launches Apple II, the world's first widely used personal computer. Microsoft (Bill Gates) writes a floating point basic interpreter for it.

1978 -- Jobs has first child, Lisa, with Chrisann Brennan.

1979 -- Development of Macintosh starts.

1981 -- IBM introduces the 5150 personal computer.

1983 -- Recruits John Sculley as Apple president and chief executive officer.

1983 -- Announces "Lisa," the first mouse-controlled computer. It fails in the marketplace.

1984 -- Jobs announces the Macintosh with software including Apples own MacPaint and MacWrite plus Lotus 123, Microsoft Word, the PFS suite and other software with Bill Gates of Microsoft, Mitch Kapor of Lotus and Fred Gibbons of Software Publishing standing beside him. (ad pictures)
Macintosh intro lead up in 1983
The Apple ad campaign opens with with a splashy ad on Super Bowl Sunday.

1985 -- Jobs ousted from Apple after boardroom struggle with Sculley. Jobs resigns and takes five Apple employees with him.

1985 -- Founds Next Inc. to develop computer hardware and software. Company later renamed Next Computer Inc.

1986 -- Buys Pixar from George Lucas for less than $10 million. Company later renamed Pixar Animation Studios.

1987 -- Apple releases Bill Atkinson's HyperCard that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web.

1989 -- Pixar wins Academy Award for animated short film "Tin Toy."

1991 -- Jobs marries Laurene Powell in a small Buddhist ceremony in Yosemite National Park. They will have 3 children together.

1993 -- Apple releases the Color Classic

1993 -- Apple releases the Netwon personal digital assistant (PDA). Development was stopped in 1998.

1996 -- Apple acquires Next Computer for $427 million in cash and Apple stock; Jobs becomes advisor to Apple Chairman Gilbert F. Amelio.

1997 -- In July 1997 its shares reached a 10-year low. Bill Gates announced that his company would invest $150 million in Apple and would develop versions of its Microsoft Office software suite, Internet Explorer browser, and other software for the Macintosh.

1997 -- Jobs becomes interim CEO and chairman of Apple Computer Inc., after Amelio is ousted. Jobs' salary is $1.

1998 -- Apple releases the all-in-one iMac computer designed with the Internet in mind, which sells millions of units, financially reviving the company and boosting its share price by 400 percent.

2001 -- Apple launches next-generation operating system -- the Unix-based OS X, with subsequent upgrades over the years.

2001 -- Apple makes first foray into consumer electronics market with launch of iPod, the portable MP3 player. (It sells more than 4.4 million iPods in fiscal 2004.)

2002 -- Launches the flat-panel all-in-one personal computer iMac. It makes the cover of Time Magazine that year and wins numerous design awards.

2003 -- Jobs announces the iTunes Music Store, which sells encoded songs and albums.

2004 -- In August, Jobs is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and undergoes surgery. He recovers and returns to work in September.

2007 -- Jobs announces the iPhone, one of the first smartphones without a keyboard, at Macworld Expo.

June 2009 -- The Wall Street Journal reports that Jobs underwent a liver transplant. A Tennessee hospital later releases a statement confirming the operation.

January 2010 -- Apple announces the iPad tablet computer, which becomes an instant success and spawns a new category of mobile computing devices.

August 2011 -- Jobs announces he is stepping aside as CEO, with Tim Cook, Chief Operation Officer, taking over that role. It also is announced that the board has elected Jobs chairman.
According to rumor Apple has four years of products in the hopper, so Jobs legacy will live on.

September 2011 -- Steve spends his last month with his wife and kids.

The physician Dean Ornish, a preventive health advocate, was a close friend of Jobs. "Steve made choices," Dr. Ornish said. "I once asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, 'It's 10,000 times better than anything I've ever done.'"

Oct. 5, 2011 -- Jobs dies at age 56.

Source: NetworkWorld.com

Known for his complex and combative temperament, Mr. Jobs was a private man. But in a June 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, he talked openly about his pancreatic cancer, diagnosed in 2004, in a video that became an Internet sensation.
He also shared the philosophy that drove him. In it he says,

"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."


See:

apple.com
www.wired.com
washingtonpost.com
ABCnews.com
  Steve Jobs Dies
  Top 5 Steve Jobs quotes 
Steve Jobs'  Life - ABC News
Steve Jobs: "Death Is Very Likely The Single Best Invention Of Life" - Forbes

Steve Jobs: A Timeline at NewtrworkWorld.com
Mac Hardware Innovations
Macintosh intro lead up 1983
History of Personal Computing
Bill Gates statement on Jobs death at TheGatesNotes.com
"Why Entrepreneurs Love Steve Jobs"
  and "10 Things to Thank Steve Jobs For" at entrepreneur.com
David Bunnell: Steve Jobs
Videos:
Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh
2005 Stanford Commencement video 
ZDNet:
  Steve Jobs retrospective video
  Steve Jobs: Magic moments on stage at ZDNet
  Steve Jobs at Apple: A photo retrospective 
Steve Jobs in 60 seconds

How to Change the World: Macintosh 25th Anniversary Reunion by Guy Kawasaki

12 Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Guy Kawasaki
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates interviews at the D5 Conference (All Things Digital) - 2007

Note: This website, which gets 60,000 hits per month, evolved from a set of templates written for Filevision, a hypermedia program introduced with the Mac in 1984. Filevision was named software product of the year.
My filevision templates, called Mac TravelGuide, were written up as "What's Hot" in Macazine. It had maps of cities showing restaurants, hotels, hospitals, ATM (they were hard to find in 1985) etc. This was 10 years before web browsers and 20 years before google maps. The information expanded to include things like an area code database, which was also a top item in the freeware lists, and was ported to Hypercard on the Mac and eventually the web. Both filevision and hypercard had functionality still not available in web browsers.


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last updated 8 Oct 2011