Steve Jobs

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Steve Jobs

Jobs holding a white iPhone 4 at Worldwide Developers Conference 2010

Born Steven Paul Jobs

February 24, 1955 (age 56)[1]

San Francisco, California, U.S.[1]

Residence Palo Alto, California, U.S.[2]

Nationality American

Alma mater Reed College (dropped out in 1972)

Occupation Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc.[3]

Salary $1[4][5][6][7]

Net worth $8.3 billion (2011)[8]

Board member of The Walt Disney Company[9]

Religion Buddhism[10]

Spouse Laurene Powell (1991–present)

Children 4

Signature

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is an American business magnate and inventor. He is
the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of
Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in
2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. He was credited in the 1995 movie Toy Story as an
executive producer.[11]

In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula,[12] and others, designed,
developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the
Apple II series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the
mouse-driven graphical user interface which led to the creation of the Macintosh.[13][14] After losing a
power struggle with the board of directors in 1984,[15][16] Jobs resigned from Apple and founded
NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business
markets. Apple's subsequent 1996 buyout of NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded,
and he has served as its CEO since 1997.

In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as Pixar
Animation Studios.[17] He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1% until its acquisition by The
Walt Disney company in 2006.[3] Consequently Jobs became Disney's largest individual shareholder at
7% and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.[18][19][20][21]

Jobs' history in business has contributed much to the symbolic image of the idiosyncratic, individualistic
Silicon Valley entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of design and understanding the crucial role
aesthetics play in public appeal. His work driving forward the development of products that are both
functional and elegant has earned him a devoted following.[22]Contents [hide]

Steve Jobs at the WWDC 07

Jobs was born in San Francisco, California[1] and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs (née Hagopian)[23]
of Mountain View, California, who named him Steven Paul. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter,
who they named Patti. Jobs' biological parents — Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian[24] graduate student
who later became a political science professor,[25] and Joanne Simpson, an American graduate
student[24] who went on to become a speech language pathologist[26] — later married, giving birth to
and raising Jobs' biological sister, the novelist Mona Simpson.[27][28][29][30][31][32]

Jobs attended Cupertino Junior High School and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California,[22]
and frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California. He was
soon hired there and worked with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee.[33] In 1972, Jobs graduated
from high school and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only
one semester,[34] he continued auditing classes at Reed, such as one in calligraphy, while sleeping on
the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the
local Hare Krishna temple.[16] Jobs later stated, "If I had never dropped in on that single course in
college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."[16]

In the autumn of 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings of the Homebrew
Computer Club with Wozniak. He took a job as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of popular video
games, with the primary intent of saving money for a spiritual retreat to India.
Jobs then traveled to India with a Reed College friend (and, later, the first Apple employee), Daniel
Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing
traditional Indian clothing.[35][36] During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD
experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".[37] He has
stated that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his
thinking.[37]

Jobs returned to his previous job at Atari and was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game
Breakout. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered US$100 for each chip that was
eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest or knowledge in circuit board design and made a deal
with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips.
Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it
was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. At the time, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had only
given them $700 (instead of the actual $5000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[38][39][40][41]
[42][43]

Career

Beginnings of Apple Computer

See also: History of Apple

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference (D5) in 2007.

In 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne,[44] with later funding from a then-semi-retired
Intel product-marketing manager and engineer A.C. "Mike" Markkula Jr.,[12] founded Apple. Prior to co-
founding Apple, Wozniak was an electronics hacker. Jobs and Wozniak had been friends for several
years, having met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to
16-year-old Jobs. Steve Jobs managed to interest Wozniak in assembling a computer and selling it. As
Apple continued to expand, the company began looking for an experienced executive to help manage its
expansion.

In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to
be several turbulent years. In 1983, Steve Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as
Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come
with me and change the world?"[45][46] The following year, Apple aired a Super Bowl television
commercial titled "1984." At Apple's annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional
Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as
"pandemonium."[47] The Macintosh became the first commercially successful small computer with a
graphical user interface. The development of the Mac was started by Jef Raskin, and eventually taken
over by Jobs.
While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time
had described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. An industry-wide sales slump towards the
end of 1984 caused a deterioration in Jobs's working relationship with Sculley, and at the end of May
1985 – following an internal power struggle and an announcement of significant layoffs – Sculley
relieved Jobs of his duties as head of the Macintosh division.[48]

NeXT Computer

See also: NeXT

Around the same time, Jobs founded another computer company, NeXT Computer. Like the Apple Lisa,
the NeXT workstation was technologically advanced; however, it was largely dismissed by industry as
cost-prohibitive. Among those who could afford it, however, the NeXT workstation garnered a strong
following because of its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software
development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the scientific and academic fields because of the
innovative, experimental new technologies it incorporated (such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal
processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port).

The NeXTcube was described by Jobs as an "interpersonal" computer, which he believed was the next
step after "personal" computing. That is, if computers could allow people to communicate and
collaborate together in an easy way, it would solve many of the problems that "personal" computing
had come up against.

"1990 CERN: A Joint proposal for a hypertext system is presented to the management. Mike Sendall
buys a NeXT cube for evaluation, and gives it to Tim [Berners-Lee]. Tim's prototype implementation on
NeXTStep is made in the space of a few months, thanks to the qualities of the NeXTStep software
development system. This prototype offers WYSIWYG browsing/authoring! Current Web browsers used
in "surfing the Internet" are mere passive windows, depriving the user of the possibility to contribute.
During some sessions in the CERN cafeteria, Tim and I try to find a catching name for the system. I was
determined that the name should not yet again be taken from Greek mythology. Tim proposes "World-
Wide Web". I like this very much, except that it is difficult to pronounce in French..." by Robert Cailliau, 2
November 1995. [49]

During a time when e-mail for most people was plain text, Jobs loved to demo the NeXT's e-mail system,
NeXTMail, as an example of his "interpersonal" philosophy. NeXTMail was one of the first to support
universally visible, clickable embedded graphics and audio within e-mail. Jobs ran NeXT with an
obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by such things as the NeXTcube's magnesium case. This
put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000
machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel.

Pixar and Disney

In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics
division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.[50]

The new company, which was originally based at Lucasfilm's Kerner Studios in San Rafael, California, but
has since relocated to Emeryville, California, was initially intended to be a high-end graphics hardware
developer. After years of unprofitability selling the Pixar Image Computer, it contracted with Disney to
produce a number of computer-animated feature films, which Disney would co-finance and distribute.

The first film produced by the partnership, Toy Story, brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio
when it was released in 1995. Over the next ten plus years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter,
the company would produce the box-office hits A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc.
(2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up
(2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010). Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3
each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.

In the years 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief
executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership,[51] and in early 2004 Jobs
announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films once its contract with Disney
expired.

In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to patch up relations with
Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar
in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. Once the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney
Company's largest single shareholder with approximately 7% of the company's stock.[18] Jobs's holdings
in Disney far exceed those of Eisner, who holds 1.7%, and Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who
held about 1% of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner included the soured Pixar
relationship and accelerated his ousting. Jobs joined the company's board of directors upon completion
of the merger. Wikinews has related news: Disney buys Pixar

Jobs also helps oversee Disney and Pixar's combined animation businesses with a seat on a special six-
man steering committee.

Return to Apple

Jobs on stage at Macworld Conference & Expo, San Francisco, January 11, 2005.

See also: "1998–2005: Return to profitability" in Apple Inc.

In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $429 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996,
[52] bringing Jobs back to the company he had co-founded. He soon became Apple's interim CEO after
the directors lost confidence in and ousted then-CEO Gil Amelio in a boardroom coup. In March 1998, to
concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs immediately terminated a number of
projects such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a
fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the
doors opened. The reality was that Jobs' summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was
enough to terrorize a whole company."[53] Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh
clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.

With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most
notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance the company increased sales
significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs
and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped
the "interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that
he would be using the title 'iCEO.'[54]

In recent years, the company has branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital
appliances. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and
the iTunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. In 2007,
Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell
phone, which also included the features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionized the
mobile browsing scene. While stimulating innovation, Jobs also reminds his employees that "real artists
ship",[55] by which he means that delivering working products on time is as important as innovation and
attractive design.

Jobs is both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has
been dubbed the "reality distortion field" and is particularly evident during his keynote speeches
(colloquially known as "Stevenotes") at Macworld Expos and at Apple's own World Wide Developers
Conferences.

In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the U.S. by lashing
out at environmental and other advocates at Apple's Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April. However, a
few weeks later, Apple announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer
TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation
at which Jobs was the commencement speaker.[16] The banner read "Steve — Don't be a mini-player
recycle all e-waste". In 2006, he further expanded Apple's recycling programs to any U.S. customer who
buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and "environmentally friendly disposal" of their old
systems.[56]
Business life

Wealth

As of October 2009, Jobs owned 5.426 million shares of Apple, most of which was granted in 2003 when
Jobs was given 10 million shares. He also owned 138 million shares of Disney, which he had received in
exchange for Disney's acquisition of Pixar.[57] Forbes estimated his net wealth at $5.1 billion in 2009,
making him the 43rd wealthiest American.[58] After Bloomberg had accidentally published Jobs'
obituary in 2008, Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek magazine noted that "Jobs isn’t widely known for his
association with philanthropic causes", compared to Bill Gates' efforts.[59] After resuming control of
Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs.[60]

Stock options backdating issue

In 2001, Steve Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7.5 million shares of Apple with an
exercise price of $18.30, which allegedly should have been $21.10, thereby incurring taxable income of
$20,000,000 that he did not report as income. This indicated backdating. Apple overstated its earnings
by that same amount. If found liable, Jobs might have faced a number of criminal charges and civil
penalties. Apple claimed that the options were originally granted at a special board meeting that may
never have taken place. Furthermore, the investigation is focusing on false dating of the options
resulting in a retroactive $20 million increase in the exercise price. The case is the subject of active
criminal and civil government investigations,[61] though an independent internal Apple investigation
completed on December 29, 2006, found that Jobs was unaware of these issues and that the options
granted to him were returned without being exercised in 2003.[62] On July 1, 2008, a $7 billion class
action suit was filed against several members of the Apple Board of Directors for revenue lost due to the
alleged securities fraud.[63][64]

Management style

Much has been made of Jobs' aggressive and demanding personality. Fortune wrote that he "is
considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs."[65] Commentaries on his temperamental style
can be found in Mike Moritz's The Little Kingdom, one of the few authorized biographies of Jobs; The
Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young & William
L. Simon. In 1993, Jobs made the Fortune's list of America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his leadership
of Next. Cofounder Dan'l Lewin said, "The highs were unbelievable," "But the lows were unimaginable.
Job's office replied that his personality changed since then.[66]

Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs "would have made an excellent king of France,"
alluding to Jobs' compelling and larger-than-life persona.[67]
Jobs has always aspired to position Apple and its products at the forefront of the information
technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation and style. He summed up
that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January
2007 by quoting ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky:[68]

There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it
has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.

—Steve Jobs

Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the
creative process of the filmmakers.[69]

In 2005, Steve Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to
their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.[70] In its 2010 annual earnings report,
Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad."[71]

Inventions

Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in over 230 awarded patents or patent
applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user
interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves,
lanyards and packages.[72][73]

Personal life

Jobs married Laurene Powell, on March 18, 1991. Presiding over the wedding was the Zen Buddhist
monk Kobun Chino Otogawa.[74] The couple have a son, Reed Paul Jobs,[75] and two other children.
Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter
Chrisann Brennan.[76] She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming
that he was sterile; he later acknowledged paternity.[76]

In the unauthorized biography, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, author Alan Deutschman reports that
Jobs once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed
College, as saying she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez
had been the lover of Bob Dylan." In another unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs by Jeffrey S.
Young & William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez, but her age at the
time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have children.
Jobs is also a Beatles fan. He has referenced them on more than one occasion at Keynotes and also was
interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on 60
Minutes, he replied:[77]

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in
check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in
business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.

In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in The San Remo, an apartment building in New York City with a
politically progressive reputation, where Demi Moore, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, and Princess
Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of Rita Hayworth, also had apartments. With the help of I.M. Pei, Jobs spent
years renovating his apartment in the top two floors of the building's north tower, only to sell it almost
two decades later to U2 frontman Bono. Jobs had never moved in.[78][79]

In 1984, Jobs purchased a 17,000-square-foot (1,600 m2), 14 bedroom Spanish Colonial mansion,
designed by George Washington Smith in Woodside, California, also known as Jackling House. Although
it reportedly remained in an almost unfurnished state, Jobs lived in the mansion for almost ten years.
According to reports, he kept an old BMW motorcycle in the living room, and let Bill Clinton use it in
1998. Since the early 1990s, Jobs has lived in a house in the Old Palo Alto neighborhood of Palo Alto.
President Clinton dined with Jobs and 14 Silicon Valley CEOs there on August 7, 1996.[80]

He allowed the mansion to fall into a state of disrepair, planning to demolish the house and build a
smaller home on the property; but he met with complaints from local preservationists over his plans. In
June 2004, the Woodside Town Council gave Jobs approval to demolish the mansion, on the condition
that he advertise the property for a year to see if someone would move it to another location and
restore it. A number of people expressed interest, including several with experience in restoring old
property, but no agreements to that effect were reached. Later that same year, a local preservationist
group began seeking legal action to prevent demolition. In January 2007 Jobs was denied the right to
demolish the property, by a court decision.[81] The court decision was overturned on appeal in March
2010 and the mansion was demolished beginning February 2011[82]

He usually wears a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by St. Croix, Levi's 501 blue jeans, and New
Balance 991 sneakers.[83] He is a pescetarian.[84]

His choice of car is a silver 2006 Mercedes SL 55 AMG, which has no licence plates.[85][86]

Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting when Jobs first criticized
Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes."[87] On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when
Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he owned then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut
it down and give the money back to the shareholders."[88] In 2006, Steve Jobs sent an email to all
employees when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's. The email read:[89]

Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock
market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different
tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.

Health concerns

In mid-2004, Jobs announced to his employees that he had been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in
his pancreas.[90] The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very grim; Jobs, however, stated that he
had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.[90] After initially resisting
the idea of conventional medical intervention and embarking on a special diet to thwart the disease,
Jobs underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004 that appeared to
successfully remove the tumor.[91][92] Jobs apparently did not require nor receive chemotherapy or
radiation therapy.[90][93] During Jobs' absence, Timothy D. Cook, head of worldwide sales and
operations at Apple, ran the company.[90]

Jobs at the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo.

In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the keynote for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
His "thin, almost gaunt" appearance and unusually "listless" delivery,[94][95] together with his choice to
delegate significant portions of his keynote to other presenters, inspired a flurry of media and internet
speculation about his health.[96] In contrast, according to an Ars Technica journal report, WWDC
attendees who saw Jobs in person said he "looked fine";[97] following the keynote, an Apple
spokesperson said that "Steve's health is robust."[98]

Two years later, similar concerns followed Jobs' 2008 WWDC keynote address;[99] Apple officials stated
Jobs was victim to a "common bug" and that he was taking antibiotics,[100] while others surmised his
cachectic appearance was due to the Whipple procedure.[101] During a July conference call discussing
Apple earnings, participants responded to repeated questions about Steve Jobs' health by insisting that
it was a "private matter." Others, however, voiced the opinion that shareholders had a right to know
more, given Jobs' hands-on approach to running his company.[102] The New York Times published an
article based on an off-the-record phone conversation with Jobs, noting that "while his health issues
have amounted to a good deal more than 'a common bug,' they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t
have a recurrence of cancer."[103]

On August 28, 2008, Bloomberg mistakenly published a 2500-word obituary of Jobs in its corporate
news service, containing blank spaces for his age and cause of death. (News carriers customarily
stockpile up-to-date obituaries to facilitate news delivery in the event of a well-known figure's untimely
death.) Although the error was promptly rectified, many news carriers and blogs reported on it,[104]
[105][106] intensifying rumors concerning Jobs' health.[107] Jobs responded at Apple's September 2008
Let's Rock keynote by quoting Mark Twain: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated";[108] at a
subsequent media event, Jobs concluded his presentation with a slide reading "110/70", referring to his
blood pressure, stating he would not address further questions about his health.[109]

On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that marketing vice-president Phil Schiller would deliver the
company's final keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2009, again reviving questions
about Jobs' health.[110][111][112] In a statement given on January 5, 2009 on Apple.com,[113] Jobs
said that he had been suffering from a "hormone imbalance" for several months.[114] On January 14,
2009, in an internal Apple memo, Jobs wrote that in the previous week he had "learned that my health-
related issues are more complex than I originally thought" and announced a six-month leave of absence
until the end of June 2009 to allow him to better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who had previously
acted as CEO in Jobs' 2004 absence, became acting CEO of Apple,[115] with Jobs still involved with
"major strategic decisions."[115]

In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in
Memphis, Tennessee.[116][117] Jobs' prognosis was "excellent."[117]

On January 17, 2011, one and a half years after Jobs returned from his liver transplant, Apple announced
that he had been granted a medical leave of absence. Jobs announced his leave in a letter to employees,
stating his decision was made "so he could focus on his health." As during his 2009 medical leave, Apple
announced that Tim Cook would run day-to-day operations and that Jobs would continue to be involved
in major strategic decisions at the company.[118][119]

On March 2, 2011 Steve Jobs made an appearance at the iPad 2 launch event.

Honors

He was awarded the National Medal of Technology from President Ronald Reagan in 1984 with Steve
Wozniak (among the first people to ever receive the honor),[120] and a Jefferson Award for Public
Service in the category "Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under" (aka the Samuel S.
Beard Award) in 1987.[121]

On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by Fortune Magazine.
[122]
On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted
Jobs into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the
Arts.[123]

In August 2009, Jobs was selected the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers on a survey by
Junior Achievement.[124]

On November 5, 2009, Jobs was named the CEO of the decade by Fortune Magazine.[125]

In November 2009 Jobs was ranked #57 on Forbes: The World's Most Powerful People.[126]

In December 2010, the Financial Times named Jobs its person of the year for 2010, ending its essay by
stating, "In his autobiography, John Sculley, the former PepsiCo executive who once ran Apple, said this
of the ambitions of the man he had pushed out: 'Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer
products company. This was a lunatic plan. High-tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer
product.' How wrong can you be".[127]

In popular culture

Due to his young age, great wealth, and charisma, after Apple's founding Jobs became a symbol of his
company and industry. When Time named the computer as the 1982 "Machine of the Year", it published
a long profile of him as "the most famous maestro of the micro."[128][129] Jobs was prominently
featured in three films about the history of the personal computing industry:

Triumph of the Nerds — a 1996 three-part documentary for PBS, about the rise of the home
computer/personal computer.

Nerds 2.0.1 — a 1998 three-part documentary for PBS, (and sequel to Triumph of the Nerds) which
chronicles the development of the Internet.

Pirates of Silicon Valley — a 1999 docudrama which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft. He was
portrayed by Noah Wyle.

See also