History UsefulNotes / SteveJobs

[[caption-width-right:350:''"Start small, think big. Don't worry about too many things at once."''.]]

[[quoteright:345:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/steve_jobs_205.jpg]]

Although a post-secondary dropout, Jobs's flair for technology and how to design and market it combined with the technical mastery of his partner Steve Wozniak, helped create [[Creator/{{Apple}} Apple Computer]] in 1976, starting with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I Apple I]], whose introductory sale price was $666.66, because Wozniak liked repeating digits, and the price was a 1/3 markup from $500.00. From that partnership, Apple grew to be a major player in the embryonic consumer market with innovative products like the UsefulNotes/AppleII and the UsefulNotes/{{Macintosh}}.

Although a post-secondary dropout, Jobs's flair for technology and how to design and market it combined with the technical mastery of his partner, Steve Wozniak, helped create [[Creator/{{Apple}} Apple Computer]] in 1976, starting with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I Apple I]], whose introductory sale price was $666.66, because Wozniak liked repeating digits, and the price was a 1/3 markup from $500.00. From that partnership, Apple grew to be a major player in the embryonic consumer market with innovative products like the UsefulNotes/AppleII and the UsefulNotes/{{Macintosh}}.

However, Jobs' abrasive personality and stubbornly selective acknowledgement of reality alienated much of the staff and management. This extended before Apple such as when Jobs was at Creator/{{Atari}}, he got the job to create the classic game, ''Breakout'', only to convince Wozniak to do the major programming work and secretly kept most of the bonus money for himself. Eventually Apple's market difficulties in the mid-1980s enabled the Apple board to have him KickedUpstairs - he was still the chairman of the company, but was [[ReassignedToAntarctica stripped off all decision-making powers and assigned to an almost-empty building instead]]. Jobs was not fooled by this move and after a losing power struggle to prevent this, he quit.

This spectacular success made Jobs so important to Disney that a crisis occurred when the company CEO, Michael Eisner, insulted Pixar, and by extension Jobs, in 2003 when he publicly denigrated the upcoming film, ''WesternAnimation/FindingNemo'', as a sure flop bound to take them down a peg. When that film became yet another critically hailed smash hit that topped all the others just as Pixar's contract with Disney was about to expire, Jobs, who loathed Eisner even before that insult, was ready to walk away and entertain the certain flood of offers with rival film companies. To prevent that corporate disaster, on top of other complaints about Eisner's arrogant incompetence, Disney investors rose up to fire Eisner in part to placate Jobs. Furthermore, when the new CEO decided to then outright purchased Pixar as a subsidiary in 2006, Jobs became the single biggest shareholder of the corporation while Lasseter was put in charge of all of the company's animation.

In 1996, [=NeXT=] was bought by Apple and Jobs returned to the company to find that while he was gone, several [=CEOs=] came and went as multiple failing product lines had drove the company on its way to bankruptcy. Now under his control again, the company soon prospered with the iMac computer line, but also branched out into new products that made a deep impact in pop culture. Jobs oversaw the creation of the iPod [=MP3=] player that became the pre-eminent example of a new music market, which was complemented by the iTunes Store that redefined online media retail, while he also manipulated desperate companies in the sagging music industry to cooperate in an arrangement shamelessly stacked in Apple's favor.

However, his stubborn personality and eccentricities also led to him not properly dealing with his declining health, leading to him officially departing Apple in August 2011. Six weeks later on October 5, 2011 Jobs collapsed at his Palo Alto home and died of pancreatic cancer. He was 56 years old.

Steve Jobs has been hailed as one of the great American business innovators and leaders of modern times, with a popular culture impact at least as profound. For instance for his work running Pixar, Jobs was listed in the [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward Academy Awards]] ''InMemoriam'' montage for the year of his death and is officially honored as a Disney Legend of that company's history.

Jobs has had a ton of documentaries and at least ''four'' {{Biopic}}s made about him: the first being a 1999 TV docudrama, ''Film/PiratesOfSiliconValley'', starring Creator/NoahWyle and focusing on his rivalry with Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates; a 2013 indie film entitled ''Film/{{Jobs}}'' starring Creator/AshtonKutcher in the title role; the 2015 Creator/DannyBoyle film, ''Film/SteveJobs'', based on the biography of the same name with Jobs being played by Creator/MichaelFassbender, and ''Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine'' by CNN Films.

Steve Jobs has been hailed as one of the great American business innovators and leaders of modern times, with a popular culture impact at least as profound. For instance for his work running Pixar, Jobs was listed in the [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward Academy Awards]] ''In Memoriam'' montage for the year of his death and is officially honored as a Disney Legend of that company's history.

On his own, Jobs founded the [=NeXT=] computer company, which struggled under his exacting design specifications and slow sales of [=PCs=] that proved to be ahead of their time in many respects. The lasting legacy of [=NeXT=] included British scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee using one of their computers to develop first World Wide Web browser and server, and the company's operating system, [=NeXTSTEP=], becoming the basis for classic Mac OS's replacement, Mac OS X (now known as macOS), as well as the company's subsequent operating systems [=iOS=], [=watchOS=] and [=tvOS=].

On his own, Jobs founded the [=NeXT=] computer company, which struggled under his exacting design specifications and slow sales of [=PCs=] that proved to be ahead of their time in many respects. The lasting legacy of [=NeXT=] included British scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee using one of their computers to develop first World Wide Web browser and server, and the company's operating system, [=NeXTSTEP=], becoming the basis for classic Mac OS's replacement, Mac OS X (now known as macOS).