The Steve Jobs Legacy

Steven Paul Jobs was born on 24th February 1955 to Syrian born Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Carole Schieble, an American of Swiss and German descent.  The two were studying at the University of Wisconsin at the time.  Schieble's father refused to let her marry Jandali.  She was taken to California until the birth, whereupon the baby was given up for adoption.

Subsequently, Schieble's father died; she and Jandali married.  The couple went on to have a little girl called Mona, Steve Jobs' full biological sister.  Nevertheless, their firstborn son had been adopted by Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs, whom Jobs stated in his autobiography he regarded as his parents, "100%".

Paul and Clara Jobs went on to adopt a daughter, Patty.  The family lived in Mountain View, California.  Paul Jobs was a mechanic and carpenter by trade and taught Steve rudimentary electronics, showing him how to take apart and reassemble electronics such as televisions and radios.  It was thus quite early on that Steve Jobs became interested in tinkering with technology.

Clara Jobs worked as an accountant.  She taught Steve to read before he attended school.  Steve Jobs attended Cupertino Junior High followed by Homestead High School where he met and became friends with Bill Fernandez, a neighbour who shared Jobs's interest in electronics.  Bill Fernandez introduced Jobs to Steve Wozniak, nicknamed "Woz", an electronics whiz kid.  Wozniak showed Jobs a computer board he and Fernandez had started building in 1969 which they had named the "Cream Soda Computer" (owing to Fernandez's addiction to the beverage).  Steve Jobs became very interested in the duo.

After graduating High School in 1972, Steve Jobs enrolled at Portland, Oregon's Reed College.  His parents Paul and Clara could ill afford to send him, but an assurance that Jobs would attend college was a stipulation of his biological mother when she gave him up for adoption.  As it turned out, Jobs dropped out of college after just six months, spending the next 18 dropping in on creative courses including a calligraphy glass.  Jobs recalled later in interview having spent many nights bedding down on the floors of friends' dorms, returning Coca Cola bottles in exchange for money and food, relying on free meals from the local Hare Krishna temple.  Steve Jobs cited the calligraphy class he dropped in on at Reed College as being instrumental in his idea from multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts in the development of the Apple Mac.

By 1972, Wozniak had developed a video game computer board - his own version of the classic game Pong.  Wozniak asked for Jobs' help.  Jobs approached Atari.  Atari thought Jobs' had built the computer board himself and promptly gave him a job as a technician.  Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell later remembered Jobs as a difficult but valuable employee, citing that Jobs was very often the cleverest guy in the room, and had no issue with letting everyone know it.

In 1974, Jobs travelled to India to visit Neem Karoli Baba, in search of spiritual enlightenment.  When he arrived with friend (and latterly Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, they found the Karoli ashram virtually deserted, Neem Karoli Baba having died in September of the previous year.  They travelled around India, spending much time in Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.  Jobs left India ahead of Kottke seven months later, returning to the United States a convert from the Lutheran faith to Zen Buddhism.

Upon his return to the US, Jobs began working for Atari once more, working on a circuit board for the arcade game, Breakout.  Atari offered a $100 bonus for every TTL chip Jobs could successfully eliminate.  Jobs struck a deal with Wozniak to split the fee 50/50 if Wozniak minimised the number of chips, Wozniak being somewhat of an expert in compiling circuit boards.  To the amazement of Atari's team of engineers, Wozniak reduced the total number of TTL chips to just 46, albeit with a design too tight to be recreated on a mass assembly line.  Wozniak and Jobs continued to work together on the "Blue Box", a low cost digital box designed to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long distance calls.  Clandestine sales went well, Jobs citing the success of the Blue Box as being a pre-curser to Apple, showing the duo that they could take on large companies and beat them.

Jobs and Wozniak formed the Apple Computer Company in 1976, named after Jobs' favourite summer job picking the fruit.  They started out in business selling circuit boards.

On 11th April 1976, the duo released the Apple I, a somewhat rudimentary forefather to today's Apple products, featuring a homemade wooden computer case.  The price was fixed at $666.66, largely on the basis of Wozniak's liking of repetitive digits combined with the 1/3 mark up on the wholesale price of $500.  Jobs struck a deal with the Byte Shop of California for 50 computers.  Apple delivered their first order within 10 days.  Approximately 200 Apple Is were manufactured.  Today there are a reported 63 still in existence, with a working example fetching a hammer price of $365,000 at Christie's in 2014.

Steve Jobs made many mistakes throughout his career.  He made several well documented blunders.  Nevertheless, it is for his brilliance; for the things he got spectacularly right - the Apple Mac, the iPhone, the iPod and the iPad - that Steve Jobs is remembered today.  Apple's contribution to the technological world has been game-changing.  There really is an App for everything.  From shopping to ship navigation to corporate consumers like Tony Freeman, Jobs changed not only the way we use technology, but the way we live our lives today.