Steve Jobs’ Death

Steve Jobs, the man who revolutionized Apple Computers technology, passed away on October 5, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. at 56 years old. He had been battling with pancreatic cancer since 2003, and his postponement of his surgeries in hopes to continue his career at Apple proved to take a toll.

 Jobs was born on February 24, in San Francisco, California. His parents, Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali, being University of Wisconsin graduate students, gave him up for adoption after their failed marriage. Paul and Clara Jobs became his adoptive parents and together, they moved to Mountain View, California and adopted a daughter soon after, named Patti Jobs. Paul Jobs was a machinist and was a big inspiration when Jobs was growing up. Jobs struggled at school while still maintaining outstanding test scores. He attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California where he met his best friend and future colleague, Steve Wozniak.  

After dropping out of Reed College at Portland, Oregon, Jobs took several creative classes which helped him develop his minimalist Apple style in the future. Jobs was employed at Atari in 1974 but quit soon after when he decided to travel to India and discover his spiritual personality through psychedelic drugs and visits to various Buddhist priests. Together, in Jobs’ garage, Jobs and Wozniak created Apple Computers when Jobs was only 21. After the first design of the Apple computer, the company started to decline. Jobs left Apple to start a software company, NeXT, in collaboration with an animation company, which later became known as Pixar Animation Studios. While Pixar took off financially and creatively, NeXT began to run downhill. The same year that Jobs returned to Apple, Apple bought NeXT. Since returning to Apple, Jobs’ company began to grow significantly in popularity. While at first developing easy-to-use laptop and desktop computers, Jobs created other devices, such as the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, all of which gave Apple great success and a great reputation. Jobs used his highly effective speeches at his product launches and his simplistic yet intriguing product designs to create an appeal to all of his audiences. Jobs’ personal life was shrouded in secrecy for all of his adult life. But his wife, Laurene Powell and he had three daughters at their house in Palo Alto, California.

 Jobs had an incredible impact on technology and American lifestyle. His products are seen with people across the world, and many people can identify the Apple logo when they see it. Ben Liebersohn, a senior at Urbana High School, and an owner of an iPod Touch and an iMac, became interested in computers because of Apple. “I started learning basic HTML on my iMac and did some basic iPod hacking with a friend at Uni.” Leibersohn’s curiosity in computer science can be traced back to Apple’s continuous success. “Apple has kept a competitive edge in the market, and without them I probably would not have an interest in computer science.” Both Jobs and his company will be remembered for a long time from now, and it will be interesting to see where Apple goes from here.