Tribute to Steve Jobs
Steve jobs [February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011] was born in San Francisco. His biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate, and she decided to put him up for adoption. Paul Reinhold Jobs (1922-1993) and Clara Jobs (1924-1986) were his new parents. Steve attended Monta Loma Elementary, Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. Later joined Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
He decided to drop the course after only 1 semester, mainly because he could not afford the course. The financial difficulties didn’t stop the young man’s passion, he rolled auditing classes at Reed College. Since then, he collected and returned Coke bottles just to get himself some food money, and got his weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.
Jobs’ first job was with Hewlett-Packard, as a summer employee. He then took a job as a technician at Atari to create circuit board for a game. In the same year, he traveled to Neem Karoli Baba, India with Dan Kottke. They went in search of spiritual enlightenment. He came back as a Buddhist, with his head shaved and he was wearing traditional Indian clothing.
In 1976, at the age of 21, Steve founded Apple with Steve Wozniak. The company was later funded by an angel investor, Armas Clifford Markkula, who brought in USD $250,000.
In 1983 company hired Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO. Later, Jobs persuaded John Sculley, who was the CEO of Pepsi-Cola, to serve as Apple’s CEO, with a very famous question: “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?”
In 1985 jobs was fired from his own founded company, Apple by Sculley. Describing it to be the best thing happened to his life quoted that “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
Next he founded NeXT, which produced highly advanced computer. But unfortunately he could sell just 50,000 units due to the cost. He purchased the ‘The Graphics Group’ with the price of $10 million in 1986 and named PIXAR. But it was then taken over by Disney in 2006.
He resumed with apple in 1996 as the interim chief executive. The first thing he did was to terminate number of projects which he though were useless. Apple’s employees were having fear to encounter the Jobs while riding the elevator that time, fearing that they might be the next batch to be fired by Jobs.
In 2004, jobs was diagnosed to have cancerous tumor in his pancreas and was thought to live no longer than 3-6 months. Resisting conventional medical intervention (chemotherapy/radiation therapy), he opted for rather natural therapy and embraced the diet method to cure the disease. It was a successful tactic, the tumor was reported to be "apparently removed".
In 2005 Jobs delivered his commencement speech to the Stanford’s graduate. The speech ended with the advice from Jobs – “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.”
In 2007, he introduced the most addictive gadget of all time-iPhone-to the world. And finally in 2010, the day came when he unveiled the gadget which made a history – iPad – and also grabbed millions of other new apple fans. His last presentation included the release of iOS5 and iCloud service.
5th October 2011, the day when the world lost a genius. The man who changed the way the world looked at gadgets, the man who grabbed billions of fans, the man with an extraordinary sense was now resting in peace. He taught us not to let ourselves down even in the toughest times. And today we pay our homage to that divine soul.
Rest in Peace Steve.
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