Jobs, Steve (1955- 2011)

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California on 24 February 1955. The adopted son of machine-shop technician Paul Jobs and his wife Clara, he grew up in the working-class communities of Mountain View and adjoining Los Altos, which are located in the area of northern California that came to be known as Silicon Valley when the original American developers of the miniature transistor turned the area into a centre for high-technology research and manufacture. An early interest in electronic gadgets prompted Steve Jobs to attend after-school lectures by engineers and scientists at the Hewlett-Packard electronics firm, where, at the age of thirteen, he landed his first summer job, working on an assembly line. Demonstrating the brashness that would become the hallmark of his character, Jobs phoned company co-founder Bill Hewlett at home to ask for electronic parts. A bemused Hewlett acquired the parts for him and offered him a summer internship. (Butcher, 12-20)

Also employed at Hewlett-Packard at that time was Steve Wozniak, five years Jobs's senior. Despite the age difference, the two became friends. They also became partners in crime when, as a prank, they designed and marketed for profit a 'blue box' system for making long-distance phone calls without payment. In 1972 Jobs finished high school and enrolled in Reed College, a liberal arts junior college in Portland, Oregon. He grew his hair long, experimented with psychedelic drugs, embraced Zen Buddhism, became a vegetarian, and lived in a rural commune, where he subsisted on a diet of apples, pears and other fruit. In early 1974 he returned to California and worked as an electronics technician for Atari, a company that manufactured shopping-arcade video games. He left after three months to visit India in search of spiritual enlightenment. When he returned, he resumed employment with Atari. (Deutschman,45-50)

In January 1975 Popular Electronics magazine in the United States ran a cover story on a newly developed computer kit for hobbyists called the Altair, and announced that the era of personal computing was at hand. Jobs and Wozniak joined a local computer hobbyists' club and started talking about ways to turn this emerging technology into a product with mass appeal. They formed a partnership, calling themselves Apple Computer after Jobs's favourite fruit. Working in the garage of Jobs's parents' home, Wozniak and Jobs designed and built a prototype of the Apple I, a preassembled computer circuit board. A local electronics equipment retailer ordered fifty of the boards, and sold them at $666.66 apiece, more than twice what it cost the two young entrepreneurs to build them.

Because the Apple I came without a keyboard, monitor, power supply or case, it appealed only to hobbyists and electronics enthusiasts. The Apple II followed, with features more suited to the general user. Microcomputers from other manufacturers appeared on the market at the same time, but the Apple II quickly outpaced its competitors. The marketing drive and missionary zeal of Steve Jobs, coupled with his ability to attract media attention, became key factors in ...