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7 Reasons You Should Read the Biography of Steve Jobs

by Ray Higdon | Nov 29, 2011 | The Millionaire Mind , Thoughts & Events , wealthy mindset

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7 Reasons to Read Steve Jobs Autobiography

I just finished the massive tome of a book that is the biography of Steve Jobs . I used to be but am no longer in the IT industry and don’t really care about Google vs Apple or any of that nonsense but I can tell you that this book is chock full of awesome business advice, reflection and strategies. If you are serious about almost any type of business, I highly suggest you read the biography of Steve Jobs and in this post I will share 7 reasons why.

7 Powerful Insights from Jobs

What drew me into Steve Jobs Autobiography was that Jobs had it sanctioned to be written but told the author he would NOT be editing it or even reading it before it was published. He wanted to give the opportunity to the author to get conflicting views and see all sides of his story, character and past.

1. Jobs was never known as a nice person. He used full candor with his staff, people he worked with, well, pretty much everyone around him. You and your body of work was either total crap or you were a genius (sometimes, on the same day). Takeaway : How many more people need candor in their lives? Brutal honesty in a company is powerful and is needed to create revolutionary businesses versus just pattycake everyone or appease teammates.

2. He quoted Wayne Gretzky, “Go where the puck is going, not where it’s been” . If you look at what Apple did with Steve at the helm, they did this, all the time. Getting music artists to agree to iTunes, the iPhone (and Google playing catchup with the Android), the graphical interface (that both Microsoft and Apple stole from Xerox but never marketed it) and the non-stylus driven iPad. He also talks about Henry Ford and the lack of relying on market research. Henry Ford is quoted as saying if he had asked people what they wanted before he invented the car, they would have told him a faster horse. Most people do not know exactly what conveniences or problems they may want solved in an exact way, until they see the solution.

3. He studied buddhism and eastern philosophy that relies more on intuition then on logic. Once a year he would read Autobiography of a Yogi (which you can download for free on the iPad). In some cases, his intuition was a much better indicator than logic. Example: The computer store had been tried and failed with Gateway so everyone advised Apple NOT to do stores. It is noted that in 2010, the Apple store in New York (been there) grossed more per square foot than any store in the world and more total dollars than ANY store in New York, that includes Saks, Macy’s, and Bloomingdales. Takeaway : There have been times when I went against my intuition with an opportunity and I cannot guarantee I was right 100% of the time, but it sure was close. Is there anything you are currently doing that deep down you know will not last?

4. He would have annual mastermind retreats with his top 100 employees, using a whiteboard he’d listen to ideas and new strategies, narrow it down to ten ideas then slash 7 and choose 3 ideas to focus on for the next year. Takeaway : When I look back over my varying careers or attempts at businesses, it is ONLY when I focused on a few key things that I had success. Are you currently focused on learning or growing too many things?

5. He put the pressure on him and his team by developing closed products. Microsoft achieved market dominance in computer software by being open and allowing anyone with any hardware to run their software. Apple did not. Not because they were against hackers but that they took the pressure upon the company to make the very best products.

6. Jobs only wanted A players in his team. Earlier in life I read the book, Straight from the gut, by Jack Welch and he talked about how across the board pay increases or across the board pay decreases was a company’s inability to address weakness. Welch also went on to suggest the letting go of the bottom 10% of every department annually to keep competition and the right players in the company. Steve Jobs had a very similar mindset that he believed A game players wanted to work with other A game players. Takeaway : I enjoy spending time with people that are hungry and motivated. I can spend 8 hours on the phone and time flies by. However, get me on the phone with complainers, people that are entitled, are needy in nature and looking for something outside of them to solve their problems and after 10 minutes I want to chew glass. How many people are you either working with or working on to get into your business that is simply not worthy of your time?

7. Jobs attempted to understand himself and teach others about how precious time is. Relating to my post yesterday on the precious asset of time , he did his Stanford commencement address on this concept.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. – Steve Jobs Takeaway : How much better would the world be if we all followed our heart?

Stanford Commencement

There are a lot of things in the Steve Jobs biography that displays his lack of balance in life and his lack of internal peace. He was certainly human and like all of his had his certain character flaws. However, the leadership lessons in this book makes it a must read in my view.

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Biography Online

Steve Jobs Biography

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, 1955, to two university students Joanne Schieble and Syrian-born John Jandali. They were both unmarried at the time, and Steven was given up for adoption.

Steven was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, whom he always considered to be his real parents. Steven’s father, Paul, encouraged him to experiment with electronics in their garage. This led to a lifelong interest in electronics and design.

Jobs attended a local school in California and later enrolled at Reed College, Portland, Oregon. His education was characterised by excellent test results and potential. But, he struggled with formal education and his teachers reported he was a handful to teach.

At Reed College, he attended a calligraphy course which fascinated him. He later said this course was instrumental in Apple’s multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts.

Steve Jobs in India

In 1974, Jobs travelled with Daniel Kottke to India in search of spiritual enlightenment. They travelled to the Ashram of Neem Karoli Baba in Kainchi. During his several months in India, he became aware of Buddhist and Eastern spiritual philosophy. At this time, he also experimented with psychedelic drugs; he later commented that these counter-culture experiences were instrumental in giving him a wider perspective on life and business.

“Bill Gates‘d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.” – Steve Jobs, The New York Times, Creating Jobs, 1997

Job’s first real computer job came working for Atari computers. During his time at Atari, Jobs came to know Steve Wozniak well. Jobs greatly admired this computer technician, whom he had first met in 1971.

Steve Jobs and Apple

In 1976, Wozniak invented the first Apple I computer. Jobs, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne then set up Apple computers. In the very beginning, Apple computers were sold from Jobs parents’ garage.

Over the next few years, Apple computers expanded rapidly as the market for home computers began to become increasingly significant.

In 1984, Jobs designed the first Macintosh. It was the first commercially successful home computer to use a graphical user interface (based on Xerox Parc’s mouse driver interface.) This was an important milestone in home computing and the principle has become key in later home computers.

Despite the many innovative successes of Jobs at Apple, there was increased friction between Jobs and other workers at Apple. In 1985, removed from his managerial duties, Jobs resigned and left Apple. He later looked back on this incident and said that getting fired from Apple was one of the best things that happened to him – it helped him regain a sense of innovation and freedom, he couldn’t find work in a large company.

Life After Apple

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Photo Joi Ito

On leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT computers. This was never particularly successful, failing to gain mass sales. However, in the 1990s, NeXT software was used as a framework in WebObjects used in Apple Store and iTunes store. In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $429 million.

Much more successful was Job’s foray into Pixar – a computer graphic film production company. Disney contracted Pixar to create films such as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo. These animation movies were highly successful and profitable – giving Jobs respect and success.

In 1996, the purchase of NeXT brought Jobs back to Apple. He was given the post of chief executive. At the time, Apple had fallen way behind rivals such as Microsoft, and Apple was struggling to even make a profit.

Return to Apple

Photo: Matt Buchanan

Jobs launched Apple in a new direction. With a certain degree of ruthlessness, some projects were summarily ended. Instead, Jobs promoted the development of a new wave of products which focused on accessibility, appealing design and innovate features.

The iPod was a revolutionary product in that it built on existing portable music devices and set the standard for portable digital music. In 2008, iTunes became the second biggest music retailer in the US, with over six billion song downloads and over 200 million iPods sold.

In 2007, Apple successfully entered the mobile phone market, with the iPhone. This used features of the iPod to offer a multi-functional and touchscreen device to become one of the best-selling electronic products. In 2010, he introduced the iPad – a revolutionary new style of tablet computers.

The design philosophy of Steve Jobs was to start with a fresh slate and imagine a new product that people would want to use. This contrasted with the alternative approach of trying to adapt current models to consumer feedback and focus groups. Job’s explains his philosophy of innovative design.

“But in the end, for something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

– Steve Jobs, BusinessWeek (25 May 1998)

Apple has been rated No.1 in America’s most admired companies. Jobs management has been described as inspirational, although c-workers also state, Jobs could be a hard taskmaster and was temperamental. NeXT Cofounder Dan’l Lewin was quoted in Fortune as saying of that period, “The highs were unbelievable … But the lows were unimaginable.”

“My job is not to be easy on people. My jobs is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.” – All About Steve Jobs [link]

Under Jobs, Apple managed to overtake Microsoft regarding share capitalization. Apple also gained a pre-eminent reputation for the development and introduction of groundbreaking technology. Interview in 2007, Jobs said:

“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.”

Despite, growing ill-health, Jobs continued working at Apple until August 2011, when he resigned.

“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”

– Steve Jobs

Jobs earned only $1million as CEO of Apple. But, share options from Apple and Disney gave him an estimated fortune of $8.3billion.

Personal life

In 1991, he married Laurene Powell, together they had three children and lived in Palo Alto, California.

In 2003, he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. Over the next few years, Jobs struggled with health issues and was often forced to delegate the running of Apple to Tim Cook. In 2009, he underwent a liver transplant, but two years later serious health problems returned. He worked intermittently at Apple until August 2011, where he finally retired to concentrate on his deteriorating health. He died as a result of complications from his pancreatic cancer, suffering cardiac arrest on 5 October 2011 in Palo Alto, California.

In addition to his earlier interest in Eastern religions, Jobs expressed sentiments of agnosticism.

“ Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it’s ’cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear.”

Quote in Biography by Walter Isaacson.

Steve Jobs is buried in an unmarked grave at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, a nonsectarian cemetery in Palo Alto.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Steve Jobs”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net. Published 25th Feb. 2012. Last updated 11th March 2019.

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography at Amazon

Related pages

•  Steve Jobs Quotes
• All About Steve Jobs
• Steve Jobs at BBC

This is beautiful. He’s one of my role models. RIP Jobs

• January 20, 2019 7:27 AM

This is very inspirational to all of us in the world today. He made the impossible the possible, he will always be remembered for his great work done. Congrats Steve you are an inspiration!

• January 16, 2019 5:29 PM

He made life easier for us all, nothing would be the way it is today without him.

• December 19, 2018 2:19 PM

Steve job amazing man

• October 27, 2018 7:01 AM
• By Rambharat

I agree 100%.

• December 05, 2018 9:13 PM
• By Roman Lopez

Very nice biography

• September 04, 2018 12:47 PM

Steve jobs! His lesson reminds alot,but Steve went to school ,through colleges he attained ajob that has resulted him into many champions in business and other s.now how can someone has no such gualification also leave such great impact.

• December 05, 2017 1:35 AM
• By Natanyakhu moses

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The strange eating habits of Steve Jobs

No matter your opinion on the legacy of Steve Jobs, we can likely all agree on this: Dude had some unconventional health habits. The new  biography by Walter Isaacson details some of the weirder ones, from extremely restrictive diets to questionable personal hygiene. (A personal favorite: One of his go-to stress relievers during Apple's early days was soaking his bare feet in the company toilets.)

We asked some nutrition experts to weigh in on some of the stranger, stricter eating habits of the legendary tech tycoon.

Apples-and-carrots only diet

The book details his occasional tendency to eat only one or two foods, like carrots or apples, for weeks at a time . Besides developing a sunset-like hue -- which those who worked with him are quoted as remembering -- there are other health issues that can come from adhering to such a limited diet, says Elisa Zied , registered dietitian and msnbc.com contributor. 

"Although apples and carrots are healthful and provide carbohydrates, they have very little protein -- unlike fat and carbohydrates, protein can’t be stored in the body, so it’s important to consume enough protein rich foods each day," explains Zied, who's the author of the book, "Nutrition at Your Fingertips."

Protein provides the body with energy and structural support -- it also helps preserve lean muscle tissue that keeps your metabolism raring to go, and it supports muscle function. But if you don't take in enough protein, your body will miss out on essential amino acids, Zied says. "These essential amino acids are used to make body proteins ... that support growth and maintenance of body tissues."

Another drawback of a carrots- or apples-only diet: You aren't getting enough fat. 

"Without enough dietary fat, your body’s fat stores can become depleted," Zied explains. "Your skin may suffer, you may feel more cold more often, and your organs and body tissues may be more vulnerable against injury -- especially risky for those with chronic illness."

Flirting with fruitarianism

Jobs also spent some time as a fruitarian, a subset of veganism that means eating only fruits, nuts, seeds, vegetables and grains -- absolutely no animal products. "Basically, the reproductive parts of plants that can be consumed without doing any harm to the plant itself," TODAY nutritionist Joy Bauer explains. This kind of diet does contain some very healthy foods, and many vegans manage to keep extremely healthful diets. But experts caution that without a careful eating plan, essential nutrients may be missing. 

"This type of diet is extremely restrictive as it eliminates dairy foods ...  and probably doesn’t contain enough dietary fat unless you’re eating lots of nuts and seeds," Zied explains. "And because the foods you can eat (or beverages you can drink) are so limited, you only get the nutrients provided in the specific foods."

Plus, it's an expensive diet to adhere to for a long period of time, Bauer points out. 

Veganism and the tyranny of the daily shower

Jobs also believed that his commitment to vegan diets meant his body was flushed of mucus -- and that it meant he was free from body odor, so he didn't need to wear deodorant or shower regularly. Unsurprisingly, the book quotes former coworkers saying that he was very, very wrong. 

Actually, the lack of complete proteins in vegan-style diets might impede the body's detoxification process, which "could make him smell even more," says JJ Virgin, nutrition expert and co-star of TLC's "Freaky Eaters." As for mucus -- Jobs may have had a point there. Dietary changes can help reduce the goo, especially for those who produce excessive mucus because of illness.

The agony and the ecstasy of fasting

Jobs would sometimes turn to fasting to create feelings of euphoria and ecstasy. What he was most likely experiencing was something called ketosis, which develops after a period of fasting and can lead to mild euphoria. When you're eating normally, glucose is the body's primary energy source, Zied explains. But when you're fasting, your body creates small chemicals called ketones that act as a substitute for glucose, and can be used for energy by most body cells. 

"If your body makes more ketones than it needs to create energy, a dangerous condition called ketosis develops," Zied says. "This increases the loss of sodium and water from the body and can contribute to nausea, weakness, fatigue."

What do think of some of Jobs' more unusual eating habits? (And, hey -- keep it civil.) What's the weirdest diet you've ever tried?

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The Spinoff

Books December 22, 2019

The steve jobs biography is a monster that won’t stop spawning.

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Eight years after publication, Walter Isaacson’s “iBio” Steve Jobs remains massively influential. Danyl Mclauchlan examines how the deeply flawed genius the book revealed continues to manifest. 

I t’s the end of the decade, and my social media aggregators are filled with lists of the best, most influential books of the last 10 years. For most writers and critics the best books and the most influential books seems to be the same thing, and I always look at these lists and wonder: “Are there books out there making the world a worse place, inadvertently or not?”

Whenever I finish a book I take a photo of the front cover. Then I put the image in a folder, and at the end of the year I print them all out. But I’m only allowed to print out covers of books that I’ve read to the end. This ritual is designed to combat my chronic habit of starting a book then getting distracted by another book and never finishing anything. 

It’s also a rudimentary reading diary, and scrolling through these folders at the end of the decade I see that most books I finish fall into a couple of categories. There’s a high proportion that I enjoyed but never thought about again (mostly contemporary literary fiction). There are books I’m obsessed with and keep rereading (mostly popular science writing, science fiction, essays, and memoirs: all of these genres are enjoying a prolonged golden age). 

And then there’s the books I didn’t fall in love with, but which lots of other people did, and so turned out to be a lot more influential than the books I liked. Like Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s biography of “the greatest CEO of all time”. This was published back in 2011, shortly after Jobs’ death. I read it in 2016 and I enjoyed it but didn’t love it. 

But I find myself thinking about it more and more. Partly because Steve Jobs is a very popular book. I see people reading it on the bus; usually the bus to university; usually a guy who is obviously studying engineering or compsci, maybe design. It’s still on the stands at airport bookstores: when I travel I usually spot a couple copies on the plane, being read by Accenture or PWC types. And when I visited Xero a few years ago I saw at least three different copies scattered around workspaces. In less than a decade, Steve Jobs has established itself as a central text in the tech nerd literary canon, up there with the Foundation books; 1979’s Godel, Escher, Bach; and Genius , the James Gleick biography of physicist Richard Feynman.   

But the appeal is wider than that. Goodreads curates lists of books across different categories and ranks them according to user ratings. In “popular technology” Steve Jobs is first on the list with over 850,000 ratings. The second entry – The Shallows , by Nicolas Carr – has just over 20,000. Steve Jobs is the most popular biography, the most popular business biography, one of the most popular entries in the “books I want to read” category. It’s huge. 

And Steve Jobs shows up in interesting places. Like Bad Blood , the 2018 book on the Theranos scandal by John Carreyrou, the reporter who broke the story. Theranos was a fraudulent multi-billion biotech company based in Silicon Valley, and the founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was briefly the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, but is now bankrupt and awaiting trial on multiple charges of criminal conspiracy. Holmes was obsessed with Jobs, and with Isaacson’s book. She dressed like Jobs. She listened to his favourite music (Dylan, the Beatles). She drank the same kale smoothies. She treated her staff with the same brutal, withering contempt. She hired former Apple staff in an attempt to appropriate her guru’s aura, and she tried to imitate Jobs’ famous “reality distortion field”, in which teams of brilliant experts told Jobs something couldn’t be done, and he’d declare they were wrong, and would (sometimes) be proved right. The staff at Theranos, Carreyrou writes, “were all reading the book too and could pinpoint which chapter she was on based on which period of Jobs’ career she was impersonating”.

A lot of modern tech CEOs worship at the altar of Jobs. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey describes him as “a mentor from afar”; Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel has a portrait of Jobs in his office; Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick – forced out by his board after a rolling series of scandals revealing that the company’s internal culture was toxic beyond belief – wore the black turtleneck and, after he was fired, announced that he was “Steve Jobsing it”, meaning he’d return to take over his old company once it self-destructed in his absence. 

Jobs is also worshipped by people like Adam Neumann, the former CEO of WeWork, a cult-like property management start-up that wasn’t a tech company in any conceivable way, but managed to convince their investors that it was, thus inflating WeWork’s valuation by several orders of magnitude (at its height the company was valued at $47 billion USD, even though it was losing billions a year and had no IP, virtually no assets, and a business model indistinguishable from its profitable, established competitors). Just like Steve Jobs, Neumann announced that his company’s goal was to “elevate the world’s consciousness”. Although Neumann dabbled in Kabbalah rather than Zen, reportedly basing his company’s first bond offering on auspicious numerological combinations then adding on a couple more million. And from this Vanity Fair take on Neumann’s catastrophic leadership style and failed IPO: 

After sitting with Neumann in his office, outfitted with a Peloton bike, infrared sauna, and cold water plunge, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson told Fast Company that Neumann reminded him of the Apple cofounder. Neumann later told colleagues that Isaacson might write his biography. (Isaacson never considered writing such a book.)

Isaacson’s Jobs biography does four things very convincingly: he shows us that Steve Jobs was (a) a genius, (b) a hateful and poisonous human being, (c) prone to making stupid mistakes that no person of even average intelligence would ever make, and (d) a very eclectic, unique personality, at least until half the tech industry started imitating him. 

Isaacson doesn’t really tie these things together. He’s mildly censorious of the fact that Jobs is such a monster (for example, on his deathbed he told his estranged daughter that she smelled like a toilet). The sustained awfulness of his personality detracted from his accomplishments, his biographer feels. 

And the eclecticism is just part of the package. We forget how weird Jobs was because most of his behaviour – meditation, bare feet, bizarre fasts and extreme diets, taking LSD, press releases and product launches filled with mystical pronouncements about changing the world and saving the universe – are now standard tech culture affectations. But they were all unprecedentedly weird things for a business executive to do back when Jobs first did them, and they were a big part of him being fired by his own company in the mid-1980s. It feels like there’s a stronger link than Isaacson admits between Jobs being brilliant and visionary, Jobs making dumb decisions even though everyone begged him not to (NeXT computers, the iPhone 4 antennae, countless other product failures, trying to cure his operable cancer with juice fasts), Jobs being generally very weird, and Jobs behaving in ways that were unacceptable to most other humans. 

Steve Jobs is very tolerant of the chaotic and disruptive nature of modern tech culture, but the most interesting apologia for tech contrarianism is Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Silicon Valley philosopher-king, sinister billionaire and honorary New Zealand citizen, Peter Thiel.   

Thiel’s ideas are influenced by the conservative thinker René Girard, who argued that humans are a “memetic” species: most of our thoughts, beliefs, values and desires come from simply imitating one another’s behaviour, especially that of high ranking/high status members of our society or in-group. Girard was a literary philosopher but his disciples like to point to the recent neuroscience literature on mirror neurons – brain cells found in primate species that facilitate learning by firing when we mirror the behaviour of another animal – to validate his model. 

The way memetic imitation plays out in a capitalist society, according to Thiel, is that most aspiring entrepreneurs copy people or businesses that already exist. But if you can do this then so can anyone else, and you’ll find yourself trapped in a zero sum state of competition: a race to the bottom on price or profit, cognate to the self-defeating vision of capitalism you find in Marx. Thiel thinks an obsession with competition and “disruption” is one of the main things that’s wrong with contemporary business culture ( real capitalism, he declares, is the opposite of competition). All you accomplish by imitating existing success is increasing the availability of that product from one to n. What you need to do is build something that no one else is producing and establish a monopoly on it, i.e. to take a product “from zero to one”. 

By monopoly Thiel means a new, previously unimagined product or service that’s so superior no one can realistically compete against you. Most successful companies accomplish this via a mixture of proprietary technology, scale and network effects. If you want to compete against Google you have to build a better search engine, a better planet-sized IT infrastructure, and a better advertising platform. If you want to compete against Amazon you have to build a global network of AI optimised and roboticised warehouses and be able to compete against Jeff Bezos on price as he undersells you for years until you go bankrupt. To compete against Facebook you need to offer people a social network that has more of their friends on it than Facebook does. Try to be at least 10 times better than any viable competitor, Thiel helpfully suggests. 

Or you can use marketing to convince customers that your product is unique. Thiel’s example of this is Steve Jobs. Jobs invented new products, but he also understood branding in a really deep, contrarian way. He was the first titan of capitalism to commodify the anticonsumerist counterculture ethos of the 1960s and use it to sell luxury brand consumer products. Nobody else thought of that. And incredibly this still works. Apple is the world’s first trillion dollar company, but many of its most loyal customers still believe that to buy its products – even queuing up for them overnight – is to signify themselves as free thinking radicals. 

Thiel believes that the best contrarian ideas emerge from start-ups, by which he means small, innovative, entrepreneurial organisations. The Royal Society. The US’ ‘Founding Fathers’. Fairchild Semiconductor. It’s hard to do anything in big bureaucratic organisations and even harder to get anything done by yourself. This aligns with a point that Isaacson makes in his less popular, non-Steve-Jobs related history of digital technology, The Innovators . Most of the breakthroughs in the digital revolution emerged from small collaborative teams or partnerships, usually involving a contrarian visionary who finds someone to put their impossible dreams into practice, a tradition he traces all the way back to Lovelace and Babbage. Turing in Hut 8. Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. 

Forming collaborative partnerships is exactly what Steve Jobs did for the productive components of his career. But as a career path, being a contrarian visionary who grows up in Silicon Valley and is childhood friends with Wozniak at the dawn of the digital age is difficult to emulate. Which goes a long way towards explaining why contemporary tech executives read the Jobs biography then dress up in black turtlenecks, drink kale smoothies, babble about mysticism and scream at their staff. Those Steve-Jobs-like qualities are all really easy to imitate. And, true to Thiel’s memetic theory of human nature, there are venture capitalists handing out billions of dollars to these people because they’re being contrarian and unconventional in a way that is now deeply conventional and orthodox.   

The world is full of people who think they’re radicals or contrarians or critical thinkers because they can regurgitate online conspiracy theories or ideologies they were indoctrinated with at university. But being an actual freethinker is rare. Thiel boils it down to one simple formula: you have to believe that there are secrets in the world that have not yet been discovered – and that you are a person who can unearth them and “bring them to market”. But he describes the proportion of people and companies that succeed at this as following a power law distribution: almost all of them fail – the key is that they fail fast – while the tiny proportion that succeed then enjoy monopolistic power over the new, uncontested sphere of the global economy that they’ve conjured up. “A great company,” Thiel writes, “is a conspiracy to change the world.” If they succeed, they become the Facebooks, Googles, Apples and Amazons; the Zuckerbergs, Musks, Thiels, Bezos and Jobs. They rule, serene and primal, while the rest of us scurry about thinking conventional thoughts and memetically cooperating with or competing against one another because that’s what everyone else does.   

J obs’ iconic “Think Different” campaign, launched in 1997, turned Bob Dylan, Picasso, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Albert Einstein into brand ambassadors for Apple Corporation and celebrated “the crazy ones”:   

The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Thiel makes a convincing argument that in a technological global marketplace, the people best placed to beat the efficient market hypothesis and change the world are less like Einstein or Gandhi and a lot more like Steve Jobs and Peter Thiel: i.e. brilliant contrarians who are also ruthless capitalists with contempt for conventional values and institutions, and who specialise in maximising their wealth and power while avoiding any responsibility or accountability. (One of Jobs’ most profitable innovations at Apple was the company’s labyrinthine tax structure, artfully designed to ensure that the most valuable corporation in the world paid as little tax as possible. Yet another Jobs invention that the rest of tech vigorously imitates.) Thiel celebrates the empowerment of contrarian tech visionaries because he’s one of them; he thinks the process needs to be accelerated. Despite the superficial appearances of change we live in an age of technological stagnation, he warns. We’re not building the future fast enough. 

It feels pretty fast though. Thiel invested in Facebook in 2004; Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in 2007. At the end of 2019 there are billions of smartphones, billions of Facebook users, ubiquitous new high speed wireless networks so that we can always be connected, all of the time. And we’re still discovering the fishhooks hidden inside these new products: that contrary to all the connectivity rhetoric they’re also isolating, antisocial technologies; that they’re designed to surveil, commodify and modify our behaviour. If you think you’re too smart to be influenced by modern advertising, Thiel warns his readers, you’re being fooled twice.   

More Reading

Steve Jobs died in October of 2011. Steve Jobs was published three weeks later. The important literary books of that year are almost entirely forgotten but people are still reading the Jobs biography. It allows for multiple interpretations: some readers conclude that if you imitate his extravagant personality – describe your business in spiritual terms; always park in mobility-parking spots; lie about almost everything; treat everyone around you with contempt – you’ll flourish in the tech industry. And some of those people (Holmes, Neumann, Kalanick) are correct at least for a while.   

But there’s a deeper reading. An esoteric reading, as Thiel might say: that the deeper premise at the heart of Jobs’ life is true. If you really think differently you can use technology to change the world. You can bet against the conventions and assumptions and core values of your own society, and if you win you can build the future and no one can stop you. It’s an idea that sounded a lot better at the start of the decade than it does at the end of it. Because the deeper we get into the future designed and controlled by contrarian geniuses – who resist any accountability for their power because, like Jobs, they’re locked into a perception of themselves as anti-establishment radicals – the bleaker and more frightening it seems to the rest of us. 

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou (Knopf, $25) is available from Unity Books.

The Spinoff Books section is proudly brought to you by Unity Books and Creative New Zealand. Visit Unity Books online today. 

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Steve Jobs Biography Reviewed and Other Tidbits From the Book

• Thread starter MacRumors
• Start date Oct 23, 2011
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• Oct 23, 2011

"Steve Jobs" greatly admires its subject. But its most adulatory passages are not about people. Offering a combination of tech criticism and promotional hype, Mr. Isaacson describes the arrival of each new product right down to Mr. Jobs's theatrical introductions and the advertising campaigns. But if the individual bits of hoopla seem excessive, their cumulative effect is staggering. Here is an encyclopedic survey of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it deserves. Click to expand...

macrumors member

Literally can't wait until tomorrow!  

macrumors 65816

Just pre ordered via iBooks. That's the way Steve would have wanted us to buy it. I can't wait to read this.  

macrumors 6502

Coming home this weekend, and this will be there when I get in! Cant wait  

Apple Big Mac

Macrumors newbie.

That statement to Sculley is surprising. I wonder how much more SJ would have been able to accomplish if he had continued leading Apple instead of getting forced out and going on the NeXT path.  

sterlingindigo

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3) Cannot wait!  

TheSuperSteve

Awesome revelations! Now i wont have to buy the book!  

this will be the first book on my new Kindle device. Sorry, iPad, but you're only good for newspapers/magazines. Color is your beauty, not long texts...  

macrumors regular

Textbooks are certainly an industry and paradigm that's ripe for such a transformation, in all the same ways as the pre-iTunes music industry, and a few more, besides. The costs underlying the high sale prices of textbooks are twisted, with relatively little of your money contributing to the writing and editing of the book -- i.e., the things that could actually make it a better tool. And for a lot of subjects, the whole format is an inefficient means for teaching and archiving information. The iPad seems the perfect hardware for ushering in a change. I hope there are others in and around Apple with the vision and influence to bring forth such a transformation.  

macrumors 6502a

Preordered on iBooks for my iPad. Will it pop onto our devices at the stroke of midnight?  

The penultimate sentence. It makes no sense.  

MultiMediaWill

Macrumors 68000.

Thumbs up if you bought the book.  

can't wait to get my hands on it. edit: I live in Dubai, is here anyway i can watch the 60 Minutes interview online?  

Apple Big Mac said: That statement to Sculley is surprising. I wonder how much more SJ would have been able to accomplish if he had continued leading Apple instead of getting forced out and going on the NeXT path. Click to expand...

Going to Costco tomorrow to have a look at the hardcover version, then will get a copy on my Kindle.  

AmbiguousNinja

Yeah, I bought the hardcover about a week ago from Amazon. Should be an interesting read.  

GrendelsBane

lifeinhd said: The penultimate sentence. It makes no sense. Click to expand...

BlueParadox

The sample via iBooks on the iPad... Here in Australia, the book is now available. So I downloaded the sample in iBooks to read on my iPad 2. There appear to be many glitches in the layout. The list of characters, for example, has a lot of lettering double-ups and such. Anyone else had the same issues? I'll probably buy the ebook but it would be a pity if there was this problem throughout the rest of the book. Whatever the case, this book will make for a great read.  

macrumors 601

MacRumors said: We've covered some of the big revelations in previous articles, but here are a few others that are notable. Click to expand...

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15 Inspiring Facts About Steve Jobs

Did you know that Steve Jobs has over 300 patents with his name on them?

Steve Jobs is most famous for creating Apple Inc, the multimillion-dollar brand that has taken over the world, from MacBook computers to iPods and iPhones.

But where did his journey start, and how did he create Apple?

This curious inventor was quiet about his personal life during his career, but he started to open up during his last few years.

Here are 15 inspiring facts about Steve Jobs that you should know.

Steve Jobs was adopted.

Steve Jobs was born on February 24 , 1955, to Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble.

Jandali came from a Muslim background and Schieble from a Catholic background, and they weren’t married when Schieble fell pregnant.

Both at the University of Wisconsin at the time, Schieble fled to California to have the birth.

Schieble put Jobs up for adoption after deciding that she should not keep the baby.

However, years later, they had a daughter that they kept.

Jobs almost became a Buddhist monk.

In 1974 Jobs traveled to India to stay at the Neem Karoli ashram, seeking spiritual enlightenment.

Unfortunately, upon his arrival, he had learned of Neem Karoli’s death the previous year, so he altered his trip.

Instead, he headed to the ashram of Haidakhan Babaji, where he spent seven months before returning to the US.

Jobs started to practice Zen Buddhism, which became a huge part of his life.

At one point, he considered becoming a monk at Eihei-Ji in  Japan .

Steve Jobs was a college dropout.

Like many successful entrepreneurs, Jobs was a college dropout.

In 1972 Jobs enrolled at Reed College but dropped out after one semester.

He explained to his parents that he didn’t want to waste their money on education that was meaningless to him.

Jobs’ adopted parents had promised his biological mother Schieble that they would pay for his education.

Steve Jobs Founded Apple Inc in 1976.

Alongside Steve Wozniak, Jobs created the first Apple computer in March 1976.

Wozniak designed the Apple I, and together with Jobs, they decided to sell it to the public.

By April 1 , 1976, the two set up Apple Computer Company as a business partnership alongside Ronald Wayne, now known as Apple Inc.

The business was registered at Jobs’ parents’ home on Crist Drive. Jobs’ bedroom was their office, which later moved to the garage.

The name “Apple” came from Jobs’ time on the All One Farm commune in Oregon .

Jobs spent a lot of time in the apple orchard and decided that should be the company name.

Jobs named an Apple computer after his daughter.

Out of Steve’s four children, only three were with his wife, Laurene Powell.

His first child was with his Homestead High on and off girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan.

When Brennan found out she was pregnant, Jobs denied responsibility for the pregnancy, which resulted in Brennan ending her relationship with Jobs.

Lisa Nicole Brennan-Jobs was born May 17 , 1978. Jobs was not present for Lisa’s birth but went to visit Brennan three days later. Together they named their daughter Lisa.

Jobs then named the computer he was working on the Apple Lisa .

He then denied publically that he named the system after his daughter and that LISA stood for “Local Integrated Systems Architecture.”

In later years he has admitted that the project was named after his daughter.

He married one of his students.

Jobs first met his wife-to-be in 1989 during a lecture he was giving at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Laurene Powell was sat in the front row of Jobs’ lecture, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

Following the lecture, Jobs met with Powell in the car park and invited her to dinner.

Jobs proposed to Powell in 1990, and they married at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park on March 18 , 1991.

Jobs met his biological sister at age 27.

Due to being adopted as a child and not knowing his biological family, it took a long time to find out about his sister.

Jobs tracked down his sister, author Mona Simpson, and met her when he was 27 years old.

Her first book was titled “Anywhere But Here,” which was about her relationship with her parents, Jobs’ biological family.

In 1986 Steve Jobs funded the Graphics Group, which later became Pixar.

Initially, it was a sub-company under Disney until Jobs invested, and the company became its own spin-off company.

The first Pixar film “Toy Story” (1995), was a joint venture with Disney, but because of Jobs’ investment, it meant he was credited as executive producer.

Disney bought back the company in 2006 .

As part of the takeover, Disney converted Pixar shares into Disney shares, which made Jobs one of Disney’s largest shareholders for a short amount of time.

He has over 300 patents to his name.

The exact number of patents that include Jobs’ name as either sole inventor or co-inventor varies across the board.

Jobs has 43 patents on “inventions” to his name, whilst the rest are all design-related.

He has patents for speakers, staircases, packages, power adaptors, phones, etc.

Jobs received the patent for the Mac OS X Dock user interface the day before he died.

Since his death, he has received another 141 patents to his name. Thus, there are hundreds of patents that contain Jobs’ name.

Jobs wore the same outfit daily.

Not the exact same garments, but the same style.

Jobs adopted a dress code that consisted of a black turtleneck, jeans , and sneakers.

His style was simple, but he became known for it.

He would only wear Levis jeans , and it is rumored that he owned around 100 pairs of them.

Jobs had a liver transplant.

In 2003 Steve Jobs was diagnosed with cancer, a tumor in his pancreas.

Initially, Jobs ignored suggested medical treatment in search of alternatives.

It is thought that the alternative treatment is possibly why jobs experienced such an early death.

In 2004 he finally underwent surgery to remove the tumor from his pancreas. Sadly in 2006, his tumor returned, but not everyone knew.

Tim Cook offered Jobs a part of his liver as they both have a rare blood type.

In April 2009, Jobs had a liver transplant in Memphis, Tennesse, at the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute.

In January 2011, Apple granted Jobs medical leave to focus on his health.

2007 was a good year for Jobs.

In 2007 Jobs was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.

It is located in The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.

The first iPhone was released on June 29 , 2007, after being worked on since 2005.

Also, in 2007, Fortune Magazine named Jobs the most powerful person in business.

He had a net worth of $10.2 billion the year of his death.

In 1978, at the young age of 23, Steve Jobs’ net worth was $1 million. Just two years later, Jobs was worth $250 million.

At the time of his death in 2011 , his net worth was $10.2 billion.

Most of this was from his stock in Disney as opposed to Apple.

Jobs’ biography was released 19 days after his death.

In 2009 Steve Jobs began to open up about his life and take part in interviews with journalists.

Jobs allowed Walter Isaacson to write his only biography.

Isaacson was given all the rights to create the biography except for the cover image.

Jobs allowed Isaacson to get truthful interviews from friends, family, and coworkers to make the book a true account of his life.

Isaacson based the book on over 40 interviews with Jobs and conducted hundreds of interviews with people who were part of his life.

Jobs stated that he did not want to read the book before it was published as he wanted it to be a true account and not have any influence.

Sadly Jobs passed away on October 5 , 2011, and his biography wasn’t published until October 24 , just 19 days after his death.

Steve Jobs has his own statue in Budapest, Hungary.

There is a nearly 7-foot (2.1 meters) tall bronze statue of Jobs in the capital city of Hungary.

Artist Erno Toth made the sculpture for Graphisoft, a Hungarian software company.

The statue was erected on December 21 , 2011, following his death that year.

The statue was put up to commemorate Jobs’ contributions to the tech industry and the support he gave Graphisoft during their communist rule.

The statue is located at Graphisoft Park, where other tech and science companies are based.

Steve Jobs has had an interesting life, starting with being adopted but finding a spiritual path through Buddhism.

His interest in electronics and computers was his gateway to a successful and innovative future, creating Apple Inc.

Jobs shaped personal computer systems and technology so much that even today, his work is a part of everyday life.

His legacy will live on as Apple continues to create and invent.

Apple , Computers & Internet

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Steve Jobs Biography

Birthday: February 24 , 1955 ( Pisces )

Born In: San Francisco, California, United States

Popularly known as the ‘Father of the Digital World’, Steve Jobs an American entrepreneur, investor, co-founder of Apple Inc. Not the one to be satisfied with a single achievement, he moved on to make history in the world of consumer electronics with his foray into the music and cellular industry. The founder of Apple Inc, Pixar Animation Studios and NeXT Inc, Jobs gave information technology its life and blood. A master of innovation, he was known for his perfectionist attitude and futuristic vision. He foresaw trend in the field of information technology and worked hard to embrace the same in his line of products. With about 346 US patents by his side, Steve Jobs created a revolution in his field with his novel ideas and unique concepts. During his years at the Apple, he administered the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. He was the mastermind behind the working of the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store. Interestingly, with so much to fall back upon, it is quite amusing to know that this legendary innovator was not much educated, in fact a college dropout.

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Also Known As: Steven Paul Jobs

Died At Age: 56

Spouse/Ex-: Laurene Powell (m. 1991–2011)

father: Abdulfattah John Jandali

mother: Joanne Carole Schieble

siblings: Mona Simpson , Patricia Ann Jobs

children: Erin Siena Jobs , Eve Jobs , Lisa Brennan-Jobs , Reed Jobs

Born Country: United States

American Men Reed College

Died on: October 5 , 2011

place of death: Palo Alto, California, United States

Ancestry: German American, Swiss American, Syrian American

Cause of Death: Respiratory Arrest

U.S. State: California

Personality: ENTJ

City: San Francisco, California

Founder/Co-Founder: Apple Inc, Pixar Animation Studios, Next Computer, Inc

discoveries/inventions: IPod, IPhone, IPad, Macintosh

education: Reed College

awards: 1985 - National Medal of Technology 1987 - Jefferson Award for Public Service 2012 - Grammy Trustees Award 2002 - PGA Vanguard Award

You wanted to know

What were steve jobs' most significant contributions to the technology industry.

Steve Jobs was instrumental in the development and popularization of the Macintosh computer, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, revolutionizing the way people interact with technology.

How did Steve Jobs impact the way we consume music and other media?

Steve Jobs played a key role in the creation of iTunes, which revolutionized the music industry by allowing users to purchase and download individual songs legally and easily.

What was Steve Jobs' leadership style at Apple?

Steve Jobs was known for his visionary leadership style, emphasizing innovation, attention to detail, and a focus on creating products that were both user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing.

How did Steve Jobs' departure from and return to Apple impact the company?

Steve Jobs' departure from and subsequent return to Apple were significant moments in the company's history, with his return leading to a period of immense growth and innovation, including the development of iconic products like the iPod and iPhone.

What was Steve Jobs' approach to marketing and branding at Apple?

Steve Jobs was known for his keen understanding of marketing and branding, emphasizing simplicity, elegance, and a focus on the customer experience in all Apple products and marketing campaigns.

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In 1976, Steve Jobs cofounded Apple Computer Inc. with Steve Wozniak. Under Jobs’ guidance, the company pioneered a series of revolutionary technologies, including the iPhone and iPad.

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Who Was Steve Jobs?

Quick facts, steve jobs’ parents and adoption, early life and education, founding and leaving apple computer inc., creating next, steve jobs and pixar, returning to and reinventing apple, wife and children, pancreatic cancer diagnosis and health challenges, death and last words, movies and book about steve jobs.

Steve Jobs was an American inventor, designer, and entrepreneur who was the cofounder, chief executive, and chairman of Apple Inc. Born in 1955 to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for adoption, Jobs was smart but directionless, dropping out of college and experimenting with different pursuits before cofounding Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976. Jobs left the company in 1985, launching Pixar Animation Studios, then returned to Apple more than a decade later. The tech giant’s revolutionary products, which include the iPhone, iPad, and iPod, have dictated the evolution of modern technology. Jobs died in 2011 following a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

FULL NAME: Steven Paul Jobs BORN: February 24, 1955 DIED: October 5, 2011 BIRTHPLACE: San Francisco, California SPOUSE: Laurene Powell (1991-2011) CHILDREN: Lisa, Reed, Erin, and Eve ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Pisces

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, two University of Wisconsin graduate students. The couple gave up their unnamed son for adoption. As an infant, Jobs was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant, and Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist.

Jobs’ biological father, Jandali, was a Syrian political science professor. His biological mother, Schieble, worked as a speech therapist. Shortly after Jobs was placed for adoption, his biological parents married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that he was able to uncover information on his biological parents.

Jobs lived with his adoptive family in Mountain View, California, within the area that would later become known as Silicon Valley. He was curious from childhood, sometimes to his detriment. According to the BBC’s Science Focus magazine, Jobs was taken to the emergency room twice as a toddler—once after sticking a pin into an electrical socket and burning his hand, and another time because he had ingested poison. His mother Clara had taught him to read by the time he started kindergarten.

As a boy, Jobs and his father worked on electronics in the family garage. Paul showed his son how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby that instilled confidence, tenacity, and mechanical prowess in young Jobs.

Although Jobs was always an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. Jobs was a prankster in elementary school due to boredom, and his fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school—a proposal that his parents declined.

While attending Homestead High School, Jobs joined the Explorer’s Club at Hewlett-Packard. It was there that he saw a computer for the first time. He even picked up a summer job with HP after calling company cofounder Bill Hewlett to ask for parts for a frequency counter he was building. It was at HP that a teenaged Jobs met he met his future partner and cofounder of Apple Computer Steve Wozniak , who was attending the University of California, Berkeley.

After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking direction, he withdrew from college after six months and spent the next year and a half dropping in on creative classes at the school. Jobs later recounted how one course in calligraphy developed his love of typography.

In 1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. Several months later, he left the company to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling further and experimenting with psychedelic drugs.

In 1976, when Jobs was just 21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computer Inc. in the Jobs’ family garage. Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak his beloved scientific calculator to fund their entrepreneurial venture. Through Apple, the men are credited with revolutionizing the computer industry by democratizing the technology and making machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive, and accessible to everyday consumers.

Wozniak conceived of a series of user-friendly personal computers, and—with Jobs in charge of marketing—Apple initially marketed the computers for $666.66 each. The Apple I earned the corporation around $774,000. Three years after the release of Apple’s second model, the Apple II, the company’s sales increased exponentially to $139 million.

In 1980, Apple Computer became a publicly-traded company, with a market value of $1.2 billion by the end of its first day of trading. However, the next several products from Apple suffered significant design flaws, resulting in recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly surpassed Apple in sales, and Apple had to compete with an IBM/PC-dominated business world.

Jobs looked to marketing expert John Sculley of Pepsi-Cola to take over the role of CEO for Apple in 1983. The next year, Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the computer as a piece of a counterculture lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative. But despite positive sales and performance superior to IBM’s PCs, the Macintosh was still not IBM-compatible.

Sculley believed Jobs was hurting Apple, and the company’s executives began to phase him out. Not actually having had an official title with the company he cofounded, Jobs was pushed into a more marginalized position and left Apple in 1985.

After leaving Apple in 1985, Jobs personally invested $12 million to begin a new hardware and software enterprise called NeXT Inc. The company introduced its first computer in 1988, with Jobs hoping it would appeal to universities and researchers. But with a base price of $6,500, the machine was far out of the range of most potential buyers.

The company’s operating system NeXTSTEP fared better, with programmers using it to develop video games like Quake and Doom . Tim Berners-Lee, who created the first web browser, used an NeXT computer. However, the company struggled to appeal to mainstream America, and Apple eventually bought the company in 1996 for $429 million.

In 1986, Jobs purchased an animation company from George Lucas , which later became Pixar Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar’s potential, Jobs initially invested $50 million of his own money in the company.

The studio went on to produce wildly popular movies such as Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), and Up (2009) . Pixar merged with Disney in 2006, which made Jobs the largest shareholder of Disney. As of June 2022, Pixar films had collectively grossed $14.7 billion at the global box office.

In 1997, Jobs returned to his post as Apple’s CEO. Just as Jobs instigated Apple’s success in the 1970s, he is credited with revitalizing the company in the 1990s.

With a new management team, altered stock options, and a self-imposed annual salary of $1 a year, Jobs put Apple back on track. Jobs’ ingenious products like the iMac, effective branding campaigns, and stylish designs caught the attention of consumers once again.

In the ensuing years, Apple introduced such revolutionary products as the Macbook Air, iPod, and iPhone, all of which dictated the evolution of technology. Almost immediately after Apple released a new product, competitors scrambled to produce comparable technologies. To mark its expanded product offerings, the company officially rebranded as Apple Inc. in 2007.

Apple’s quarterly reports improved significantly that year: Stocks were worth $199.99 a share—a record-breaking number at that time—and the company boasted a staggering $1.58 billion profit, an $18 billion surplus in the bank, and zero debt.

In 2008, fueled by iTunes and iPod sales, Apple became the second-biggest music retailer in America behind Walmart. Apple has also been ranked No. 1 on Fortune ’s list of America’s Most Admired Companies, as well as No. 1 among Fortune 500 companies for returns to shareholders.

Apple has released dozens of versions of the iPhone since its 2007 debut. In February 2023, an unwrapped first generation phone sold at auction for more than $63,000.

According to Forbes , Jobs’ net worth peaked at $8.3 billion shortly before he died in 2011. Celebrity Net Worth estimates it was as high as $10.2 billion.

Apple hit a market capitalization of $3 trillion in January 2022, meaning Jobs’ initial stake in the company from 1980 would have been worth about $330 billion—enough to comfortably make him the richest person in the world over Tesla founder Elon Musk had he been alive. But according to the New York Post , Jobs sold off all but one of his Apple shares when he left the company in 1985.

Most of Jobs’ net worth came from a roughly 8 percent share in Disney he acquired when he sold Pixar in 2006. Based on Disney’s 2022 value, that share—which he passed onto his wife—is worth $22 billion.

Jobs and Laurene Powell married on March 18, 1991. The pair met in the early 1990s at Stanford business school, where Powell was an MBA student. They lived together in Palo Alto with their three children: Reed (born September 22, 1991), Erin (born August 19, 1995), and Eve (born July 9, 1998).

Jobs also fathered a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, with girlfriend Chrisann Brennan on May 17, 1978, when he was 23. He denied paternity of his daughter in court documents, claiming he was sterile. In her memoir Small Fry , Lisa wrote DNA tests revealed that she and Jobs were a match in 1980, and he was required to begin making paternity payments to her financially struggling mother. Jobs didn’t initiate a relationship with his daughter until she was 7 years old. When she was a teenager, Lisa came to live with her father. In 2011, Jobs said , “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.”

In 2003, Jobs discovered that he had a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare but operable form of pancreatic cancer. Instead of immediately opting for surgery, Jobs chose to alter his pesco-vegetarian diet while weighing Eastern treatment options.

For nine months, Jobs postponed surgery, making Apple’s board of directors nervous. Executives feared that shareholders would pull their stock if word got out that the CEO was ill. But in the end, Jobs’ confidentiality took precedence over shareholder disclosure.

In 2004, Jobs had successful surgery to remove the pancreatic tumor. True to form, Jobs disclosed little about his health in subsequent years.

Early in 2009, reports circulated about Jobs’ weight loss, some predicting his health issues had returned, which included a liver transplant. Jobs responded to these concerns by stating he was dealing with a hormone imbalance. Days later, he went on a six-month leave of absence.

In an email message to employees, Jobs said his “health-related issues are more complex” than he thought, then named Tim Cook , Apple’s then–chief operating officer, as “responsible for Apple’s day-today operations.”

After nearly a year out of the spotlight, Jobs delivered a keynote address at an invite-only Apple event on September 9, 2009. He continued to serve as master of ceremonies, which included the unveiling of the iPad, throughout much of 2010.

In January 2011, Jobs announced he was going on medical leave. In August, he resigned as CEO of Apple, handing the reins to Cook.

Jobs died at age 56 in his home in Palo Alto, California, on October 5, 2011. His official cause of death was listed as respiratory arrest related to his years-long battle with pancreatic cancer.

The New York Times reported that in his final weeks, Jobs had become so weak that he struggled to walk up the stairs in his home. Still, he was able to say goodbye to some of his longtime colleagues, including Disney CEO Bob Iger; speak with his biographer; and offer advice to Apple executives about the unveiling of the iPhone 4S.

In a eulogy for Jobs , sister Mona Simpson wrote that just before dying, Jobs looked for a long time at his sister, Patty, then his wife and children, then past them, and said his last words: “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”

Jobs’ closest family and friends remembered him at a small gathering, then on October 16, a funeral for Jobs was held on the campus of Stanford University. Notable attendees included Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates ; singer Joan Baez , who once dated Jobs; former Vice President Al Gore ; actor Tim Allen; and News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch .

Jobs is buried in an unmarked grave at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto. Upon the release of the 2015 film Steve Jobs , fans traveled to the cemetery to find the site. Because the cemetery is not allowed to disclose the grave’s location, many left messages for Jobs in a memorial book instead.

Before his death, Jobs granted author and journalist Walter Isaacson permission to write his official biography. Jobs sat for more than 40 interviews with the Isaacson, who also talked to more than 100 of Jobs’ family, friends, and colleagues. Initially scheduled for a November 2011 release date, Steve Jobs hit shelves on October 24, just 19 days after Jobs died.

Jobs’ life has been the subject of two major films. The first, released in 2013, was simply titled Jobs and starred Ashton Kutcher as Jobs and Josh Gad as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. Wozniak told The Verge in 2013 he was approached about working on the film but couldn’t because, “I read a script as far as I could stomach it and felt it was crap.” Although he praised the casting, he told Gizmodo he felt his and Jobs’ personalities were inaccurately portrayed.

Instead, Wozniak worked with Sony Pictures on the second film, Steve Jobs , that was adapted from Isaacson’s biography and released in 2015. It starred Michael Fassbender as Jobs and Seth Rogen as Wozniak. Fassbender was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and co-star Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Apple and NeXT marketing executive Joanna Hoffman.

In 2015, filmmaker Alex Gibney examined Jobs’ life and legacy in the documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine .

• Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world? [Jobs inviting an executive to join Apple]
• It’s better to be a pirate than join the Navy.
• In my perspective... science and computer science is a liberal art. It’s something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life.
• It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.
• 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.
• You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.
• I think humans are basically tool builders, and the computer is the most remarkable tool we’ve ever built.
• You just make the best product you can, and you don’t put it out until you feel it’s right.
• With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again.
• Things don’t have to change the world to be important.
• I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates .
• If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.
• Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful—that’s what matters to me.
• I like to believe there’s an afterlife. I like to believe the accumulated wisdom doesn’t just disappear when you die, but somehow, it endures. But maybe it’s just like an on/off switch and click—and you’re gone. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like putting on/off switches on Apple devices.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

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The Truth About Steve Jobs' Last Words Before He Died

There's no doubt that Steve Jobs was one of the most influential figures of his time. The products that he helped pioneer at Apple , from the Macintosh computer to the iPhone, changed the shape of society. His vision for the future of technology has, in many regards, become the look of the 21st century as we know it. 

While Jobs' name and legacy have been immortalized, though, the man himself was all too mortal. As made clear by Walter Isaacson's posthumous biography , Jobs was a harsh, demanding figure, prone to anger and depression, who couldn't help but be a complicated figure in the public imagination: as much as Jobs could be petulant, shortsighted, and childish, he was also an honest visionary, whose blunt attitude led to an unprecedented volume of earth-shaking products. As a flawed, real human being, Jobs was also prone to the weaknesses of the human body, and so he spent his last decade of life battling pancreatic cancer, according to Biography , and died in 2011. 

Since then, there has often been speculation — and outright fabrications — regarding what Jobs said on his deathbed. 

The meme-worthy 'deathbed speech' of Steve Jobs isn't real

Steve Jobs was an important figure in technology history, but he wasn't always a person who others looked upon favorably. He was a complex figure with many flaws , to put it mildly. However, back in 2015, an essay circulated across social media, claiming to be Jobs' final deathbed speech, whereupon he apologized for all of his past behavior, and cautioned others to not follow his example. In the speech, Jobs allegedly told anyone reading it to treasure their family and friends, and that, "Now I know, when we have accumulated sufficient wealth to last our lifetime, we should pursue other matters that are unrelated to wealth ... should be something that is more important: Perhaps relationships, perhaps art, perhaps a dream from younger days. Non-stop pursuing of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me." The essay finishes with a sentimental treatise on how the only book that matters is the so-called Book of Healthy Life ... which, no, you won't find in stores. Duh.

It's all a bit soap opera-ish, to put it bluntly. Seriously, can you picture Steve Jobs saying this? Maybe at the end of a Disney movie, but certainly not in real life. Sure enough, Snopes debunked the whole thing soon after it arrived. That said, there should have never been a need to cook up a phony final speech for Jobs, because his actual final words are well-documented. 

Steve Jobs' final words were far more mysterious

When you're wondering what a famous person's last thoughts on life might've been, it pays to know who was in the actual room. As it happens, Jobs' sister Mona Simpson was there by his side, and she discussed the Apple titan's last statement when she was giving his eulogy, according to the New York Times . As she tells it, in Jobs' final moments of consciousness, he looked at his family, then stared past their shoulders into the great beyond behind them, and uttered the repeated phrase: "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."

What did this mean? Honestly, there's no way to know. Depending on one's spiritual beliefs regarding the afterlife, there are many ways to read into these words. Nonetheless, it's fascinating to ponder the mystery.

The great beyond

Now, if one wants to prove what Steve's final words meant, you'd first have to prove what really happens after death. Good luck with that. Humankind has been trying to figure that puzzle out for the past, oh, 200,000 years or so, and cooked up plenty of fun theories.

That said, Jobs' final words do hint toward something wonderfully ethereal and fascinating, which can't help but get the mind buzzing. In that regard, understanding Jobs' own spiritual views may be helpful: looking back on his life, he once said that his experimentation with psychedelic drugs were a transformative experience, and according to CNN , his travels through India led to him eventually converting to Buddhism. His wedding to Laurene Powell was presided over by a monk, Kobun Chino. While his overall belief system was complex, it was perhaps best summarized when, in an interview with Time Magazine , he stated that, "I believe life is an intelligent thing, that things aren't random." He also once stated that his big goal in life was to "put a dent in the universe." Now, to be clear, there are many details about Jobs' life that didn't particularly line up with his philosophies, most notably his oft-stated lack of philanthropic giving. Nonetheless, his beliefs were a huge, guiding force in his life, and one can only assume whatever he saw at the end — whatever it was that made him repeat "Oh wow" three times — it was somehow connected to all this.

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Steve Jobs Hardcover – Big Book, October 24, 2011

• Print length 656 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Simon & Schuster
• Publication date October 24, 2011
• Dimensions 6.13 x 2.2 x 9.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1451648537
• ISBN-13 978-1451648539
• Lexile measure 1080L
• See all details

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com review.

Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Walter Isaacson

Q: It's becoming well known that Jobs was able to create his Reality Distortion Field when it served him. Was it difficult for you to cut through the RDF and get beneath the narrative that he created? How did you do it?

Isaacson: Andy Hertzfeld, who worked with Steve on the original Macintosh team, said that even if you were aware of his Reality Distortion Field, you still got caught up in it. But that is why Steve was so successful: He willfully bent reality so that you became convinced you could do the impossible, so you did. I never felt he was intentionally misleading me, but I did try to check every story. I did more than a hundred interviews. And he urged me not just to hear his version, but to interview as many people as possible. It was one of his many odd contradictions: He could distort reality, yet he was also brutally honest most of the time. He impressed upon me the value of honesty, rather than trying to whitewash things.

Q: How were the interviews with Jobs conducted? Did you ask lots of questions, or did he just talk?

Isaacson: I asked very few questions. We would take long walks or drives, or sit in his garden, and I would raise a topic and let him expound on it. Even during the more formal sessions in his living room, I would just sit quietly and listen. He loved to tell stories, and he would get very emotional, especially when talking about people in his life whom he admired or disdained.

Q: He was a powerful man who could hold a grudge. Was it easy to get others to talk about Jobs willingly? Were they afraid to talk?

Isaacson: Everyone was eager to talk about Steve. They all had stories to tell, and they loved to tell them. Even those who told me about his rough manner put it in the context of how inspiring he could be.

Q: Jobs embraced the counterculture and Buddhism. Yet he was a billionaire businessman with his own jet. In what way did Jobs' contradictions contribute to his success?

Isaacson: Steve was filled with contradictions. He was a counterculture rebel who became a billionaire. He eschewed material objects yet made objects of desire. He talked, at times, about how he wrestled with these contradictions. His counterculture background combined with his love of electronics and business was key to the products he created. They combined artistry and technology.

Q: Jobs could be notoriously difficult. Did you wind up liking him in the end?

Isaacson: Yes, I liked him and was inspired by him. But I knew he could be unkind and rough. These things can go together. When my book first came out, some people skimmed it quickly and cherry-picked the examples of his being rude to people. But that was only half the story. Fortunately, as people read the whole book, they saw the theme of the narrative: He could be petulant and rough, but this was driven by his passion and pursuit of perfection. He liked people to stand up to him, and he said that brutal honesty was required to be part of his team. And the teams he built became extremely loyal and inspired.

Q: Do you believe he was a genius?

Isaacson: He was a genius at connecting art to technology, of making leaps based on intuition and imagination. He knew how to make emotional connections with those around him and with his customers.

Q: Did he have regrets?

Isaacson: He had some regrets, which he expressed in his interviews. For example, he said that he did not handle well the pregnancy of his first girlfriend. But he was deeply satisfied by the creativity he ingrained at Apple and the loyalty of both his close colleagues and his family.

Q: What do you think is his legacy?

Isaacson: His legacy is transforming seven industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, digital publishing, and retail stores. His legacy is creating what became the most valuable company on earth, one that stood at the intersection of the humanities and technology, and is the company most likely still to be doing that a generation from now. His legacy, as he said in his "Think Different" ad, was reminding us that the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Photo credit: Patrice Gilbert Photography

About the Author

Excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (October 24, 2011)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 656 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1451648537
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1451648539
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1080L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.16 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 2.2 x 9.25 inches
• #14 in Computers & Technology Industry
• #85 in Biographies of Business & Industrial Professionals
• #384 in Leadership & Motivation

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About the author

Walter isaacson.

Walter Isaacson is writing a biography of Elon Musk. He is the author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race; Leonardo da Vinci; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is also the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He is a Professor of History at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and editor of Time magazine.

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Customers find the book marvelous, engrossing, and fascinating. They also find it informative, objective, and a great case study of three companies. Readers describe the writing quality as easy to read, beautiful, and well-written. They mention the biography is rich and telling. They describe the storytelling as compelling, exciting, and entertaining. Readers praise the author's writing style as compelling and frank.

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Read Bill Gates' answer to a Reddit question about whether he copied Steve Jobs

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs built two of the biggest names in technology today: Microsoft and Apple, respectively.

Both companies are considered pioneers in the industry, creating software and hardware that revolutionized how we live, communicate, and do business.

But it's no secret that the two moguls were more rivals than friends.

Though they had a somewhat amicable relationship early on, Jobs became furious when Microsoft released its first iteration of Windows in 1985, accusing Gates of ripping off his Macintosh computer. It started a competitive feud between the two that spurred years of back-and-forth insults. However, it was clear that the two men had mutual respect for each other. 

During a recent Reddit AMA , or "ask me anything," one participant posed the following question to Gates, point-blank: "Did you copy Steve Jobs or did he copy you?"

Here's Gates' response :

"The main "copying" that went on relative to Steve and me is that we both benefited from the work that Xerox Parc did in creating graphical interface — it wasn't just them, but they did the best work. Steve hired Bob Belville, I hired Charles Simonyi. We didn't violate any IP rights Xerox had, but their work showed the way that led to the Mac and Windows."

It's not the first time Gates has said something of this nature.

Back when Jobs first accused Gates of ripping off his idea, the two met in a conference room at Apple, where Jobs ripped into Gates, yelling, "I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us!"

As Walter Isaacson reported in his Steve Jobs biography, Gates responded : "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

Watch: Bill Gates has a net worth of over $96 billion — here's how he makes and spends his money

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Read Bill Gates' answer to a Reddit question about whether he copied Steve Jobs

Emmie martin   .

Joi Ito / Flickr

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had a love-hate relationship.

Both companies are considered pioneers in the industry, creating software and hardware that revolutionized how we live, communicate, and do business.

But it's no secret that the two moguls were more rivals than friends.

Though they had a somewhat amicable relationship early on, Jobs became furious when Microsoft released its first iteration of Windows in 1985, accusing Gates of ripping off his Macintosh computer. It started a competitive feud between the two that spurred years of back-and-forth insults. However, it was clear that the two men had mutual respect for each other .

During a recent Reddit AMA , or "ask me anything," one participant posed the following question to Gates, point-blank: "Did you copy Steve Jobs or did he copy you?"

Here's Gates' response :

"The main "copying" that went on relative to Steve and me is that we both benefited from the work that Xerox Parc did in creating graphical interface - it wasn't just them, but they did the best work. Steve hired Bob Belville, I hired Charles Simonyi. We didn't violate any IP rights Xerox had, but their work showed the way that led to the Mac and Windows."

It's not the first time Gates has said something of this nature.

Back when Jobs first accused Gates of ripping off his idea, the two met in a conference room at Apple, where Jobs ripped into Gates, yelling, "I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us!"

As Walter Isaacson reported in his Steve Jobs biography, Gates responded : "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

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