Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was an American businessman, industrial designer, and co-founder of Apple Inc. whose three-decade career produced one of the foundational figures of late-20th and early-21st-century American consumer-electronics industry — particularly his 1976 co-founding of Apple Computer (with Steve Wozniak), his 1997–2011 second tenure as Apple CEO, and his 1986 acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios. He was born Steven Paul Jobs on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, into a Syrian-American adoptive family. His biological father Abdulfattah "John" Jandali was a Syrian-immigrant graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, and his biological mother Joanne Schieble was an American graduate student. He was given up for adoption at birth to Paul Jobs (a U.S. Coast Guard veteran turned mechanic) and Clara Jobs (a payroll clerk).

His education at Reed College in Portland, Oregon (1972; without earning a degree, after a six-month enrollment) and his subsequent 1974 Atari Inc. employment as a video-game designer launched his early-career path. His 1976 co-founding of Apple Computer Inc. with his Homestead High School friend Steve Wozniak — at the Jobs family Los Altos, California garage — launched his late-1970s and 1980s American consumer-electronics public profile.

His 1976 launch of the Apple I and his 1977 launch of the Apple II — the first successful mass-produced personal computer in American history — produced his late-1970s American personal-computer commercial breakthrough. His 1984 launch of the Apple Macintosh and the famous January 22, 1984 Super Bowl XVIII commercial directed by Ridley Scott ("1984") produced his 1980s American consumer-electronics public profile.

His May 1985 firing from Apple by CEO John Sculley preceded his 1986 founding of NeXT Computer and his 1986 acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios from George Lucas (for $5 million). The 1995 Pixar release of Toy Story (the first feature-length computer-animated film) and his 1996 return to Apple (after Apple's December 1996 acquisition of NeXT) launched his late-1990s and 2000s Apple turnaround. His 2000s and 2010s Apple product launches — particularly the 2001 iPod, the 2003 iTunes Store, the 2007 iPhone, and the 2010 iPad — produced one of the most-influential American consumer-electronics-industry careers of the early 21st century. He died on October 5, 2011, at age 56, in Palo Alto, California, of pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer.

His name Steve is the English short form of Stephen (from the Greek Stephanos meaning "crown"). Steve has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names since 1880.