Bicycles for the Mind

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco. His biological parents, unmarried graduate students, put him up for adoption. He was raised by Paul and Clara Jobs in Cupertino, in what would become Silicon Valley. Paul was a machinist who taught his son to work with his hands.

Jobs dropped out of Reed College after one semester, audited calligraphy classes, traveled to India, and came back to work at Atari. In 1976, he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer in the Jobs family garage. The Apple II, released in 1977, became one of the first mass-market personal computers and made both men millionaires before 30.

In 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh, the first successful personal computer with a graphical interface. A year later, the board fired Jobs from his own company. He spent the next decade founding NeXT, which struggled commercially but built elegant software, and buying Pixar, which produced Toy Story and became the most successful animation studio in history.

the original apple macintosh, released january 24, 1984 — the consumer product that brought the graphical user interface to a mass market and established the design language that would define personal computing for decades. source: wikimedia commons

Apple bought NeXT in 1997 and brought Jobs back. Over fourteen years, he oversaw the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, each reshaping its industry. The iPhone, launched in 2007, was arguably the most consequential consumer product of the century. Jobs didn't invent the smartphone. He redesigned it until people wanted it.

He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 and died on October 5, 2011, at 56. His last words, according to his sister: "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow." He built products the way others build arguments: with obsessive attention to what doesn't belong.