Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs - was an American information technology entrepreneur and inventor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc.; CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar Animation Studios; a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT Inc. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Parents

Jobs's adoptive father, Paul Reinhold Jobs (1922–1993), grew up in a Calvinist household, the son of an "alcoholic and sometimes abusive" father. The family lived on a farm in Germantown, Wisconsin. Paul, ostensibly bearing a resemblance to James Dean, had tattoos, dropped out of high school, and traveled around the midwest for several years during the 1930s looking for work. He eventually joined the United States Coast Guard as an engine-room machinist. After World War II, Paul Jobs decided to leave the Coast Guard when it docked in San Francisco. He made a bet that he would find his wife in San Francisco and promptly went on a blind date with Clara Hagopian (1924–1986). They were engaged ten days later and married in 1946. Clara, the daughter of Armenian immigrants, grew up in San Francisco and had been married before, but her husband had been killed in the war. After a series of moves, Paul and Clara settled in San Francisco's Sunset District in 1952. As a hobby, Paul Jobs rebuilt cars, but as a career he was a "repo man", which suited his "aggressive, tough personality." Meanwhile, their attempts to start a family were halted after Clara had an ectopic pregnancy, leading them to explore adoption in 1955.

Steve Jobs's biological father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (b. 1931), was born into a Muslim household and grew up in Homs, Syria. Jandali is the son of a self-made millionaire who did not go to college and a mother who was a traditional housewife. While an undergraduate at the American University of Beirut, he was a student activist and spent time in jail for his political activities. Although Jandali initially wanted to study law, he eventually decided to study economics and political science. He pursued a PhD in the latter subject at the University of Wisconsin, where he met Joanne Carole Schieble, a Catholic of Swiss and German descent, who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. As a doctoral candidate, Jandali was a teaching assistant for a course Schieble was taking, although both were the same age. Mona Simpson (Jobs's biological sister), notes that her maternal grandparents were not happy that their daughter was dating Jandali: "it wasn't that he was Middle-Eastern so much as that he was a Muslim. But there are a lot of Arabs in Michigan and Wisconsin. So it's not that unusual." Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs's official biographer, additionally states that Schieble's father "threatened to cut Joanne off completely" if she continued the relationship.

Birth

Schieble became pregnant in 1954 when she and Jandali spent the summer with his family in Homs, Syria. Jandali has stated that he "was very much in love with Joanne ... but sadly, her father was a tyrant, and forbade her to marry me, as I was from Syria. And so she told me she wanted to give the baby up for adoption." Jobs told his official biographer that Schieble's father was dying at the time, Schieble did not want to aggravate him, and both felt that at 23 they were too young to marry. In addition, as there was a strong stigma against bearing a child out of wedlock and raising it as a single mother, and as abortions were illegal and dangerous, adoption was the only option women had in the United States in 1954. According to Jandali, Schieble deliberately did not involve him in the process: "without telling me, Joanne upped and left to move to San Francisco to have the baby without anyone knowing, including me ... she did not want to bring shame onto the family and thought this was the best for everyone.” Schieble put herself in the care of a “doctor who sheltered unwed mothers, delivered their babies, and quietly arranged closed adoptions.”

Schieble gave birth to Jobs on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, and chose an adoptive couple for him that was "Catholic, well-educated, and wealthy." That couple, however, changed their mind and decided to adopt a girl instead. When the baby boy was then placed with the Bay Area blue collar couple Paul and Clara Jobs, neither of whom had a college education, Schieble refused to sign the adoption papers. She then took the matter to court, attempting to have her baby placed with a different family and only consented to releasing the baby to Paul and Clara after they promised that he would attend college. When Jobs was in high school, Clara admitted to his then-girlfriend, 17-year-old Chrisann Brennan, that she "was too frightened to love [Steve] for the first six months of his life ... I was scared they were going to take him away from me. Even after we won the case, Steve was so difficult a child that by the time he was two I felt we had made a mistake. I wanted to return him." When Chrisann shared this comment with Jobs, he stated that he was aware of it and would later say that he was deeply loved and indulged by Paul and Clara. Many years later, Jobs's wife Laurene also noted that "he felt he had been really blessed by having the two of them as parents." Jobs would become upset when Paul and Clara were referred to as "adoptive parents" as they "were my parents 1,000%." With regard to his biological parents, Jobs referred to them as "my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more." Jandali has also stated that "I really am not his dad. Mr. and Mrs. Jobs are, as they raised him. And I don't want to take their place."

Childhood

Paul and Clara adopted Jobs's sister Patricia in 1957 and the family moved to Mountain View, California in 1961. It was during this time that Paul built a workbench in his garage for his son in order to "pass along his love of mechanics." Jobs meanwhile admired his father's craftsmanship "because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him ... I wasn't that into fixing cars ... but I was eager to hang out with my dad." By the time he was ten, Jobs was deeply involved in electronics and befriended many of the engineers who lived in the neighborhood. He had difficulty making friends with children his own age, however, and was seen by his classmates as a "loner."

As Jobs had difficulty functioning in a traditional classroom and tended to resist authority figures, he frequently misbehaved and was suspended a few times. As Clara had taught him to read as a toddler, Jobs stated that he was "pretty bored in school and [had] turned into a little terror... you should have seen us in the third grade, we basically destroyed the teacher." At Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View, he frequently played pranks on others. However, his father (who was abused as a child) never reprimanded him, blaming the school instead for not challenging his brilliant son enough.

Jobs would later credit his fourth grade teacher, Imogene 'Teddy' Hill with turning him around: "She taught an advanced fourth grade class and it took her about a month to get hip to my situation. She bribed me into learning. She would say, 'I really want you to finish this workbook. I'll give you five bucks if you finish it.' That really kindled a passion in me for learning things! I learned more that year than I think I learned in any other year in school. They wanted me to skip the next two years in grade school and go straight to junior high to learn a foreign language but my parents very wisely wouldn't let it happen." Jobs skipped the fifth grade and transferred to the sixth grade at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View where he became a "socially awkward loner." Jobs "was often bullied" and gave his parents an ultimatum: they had to either take him out of Crittenden or he would drop out of school. Although the Jobs family was not well off, they used all of their savings to buy a new home.

Thus in 1967, the Jobs family moved to a three-bedroom home on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California which was in the better Cupertino School District, Cupertino, California (in 2013 when it was owned by Patty and occupied by Jobs's step-mother Marilyn, this home – the first site for Apple Computer – was declared a historic site). The new house was embedded in an environment that was even more heavily populated with engineering families than the Mountain View home. Bill Fernandez, a fellow electronics hobbyist who was in the same grade as him at Cupertino Junior High, was his first friend after the move. Fernandez later commented that "for some reason the kids in the eighth grade didn't like [Jobs] because they thought he was odd. I was one of his few friends." Fernandez eventually introduced Jobs to 18-year-old electronics whiz and Homestead High alumn Steve Wozniak, who lived across the street from Fernandez.

In mid-1968 when he was 13, Jobs was given a summer job by Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett Packard) after Jobs cold-called him to ask for parts for an electronics project: "He didn't know me at all, but he ended up giving me some parts and he got me a job that summer working at Hewlett-Packard on the line, assembling frequency counters...well, assembling may be too strong. I was putting in screws. It didn't matter; I was in heaven."

Reed College

Later in the year, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Reed was an expensive college which Paul and Clara could ill afford. They were spending much of their life savings on their son's higher education. Brennan remained involved with Jobs while he was at Reed College. She also met his Reed friend Daniel Kottke for the first time. Jobs also became friends with Reed's student body president Robert Friedland.

Brennan (who was now a senior at Homestead) did not have plans to attend college, and was supportive of Jobs when he told her he planned to drop out of Reed because he did not want to spend his parents' money on it (neither her father nor Jobs's adoptive parents had gone to college). He continued to attend by auditing classes, including a course on calligraphy taught by Robert Palladino, but since he was no longer an official student, Brennan stopped visiting him. Jobs later asked her to come and live with him in a house he rented near the Reed campus, but she refused. He had started seeing other women, and she was interested in someone she met in her art class. Brennan speculates that the house was Jobs's attempt to make their relationship monogamous again. In a 2005 commencement speech for Stanford University, Jobs states that during this period, he slept on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returned Coke bottles for food money, and got weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. In that same speech, Jobs said: "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

Pre-Apple

In 1973, Steve Wozniak designed his own version of the classic video game Pong. After finishing it, Wozniak gave the board to Jobs, who then took the game down to Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California. Atari thought that Jobs had built it and gave him a job as a technician. Atari's cofounder Nolan Bushnell later described him as "difficult but valuable", pointing out that "he was very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know that."

In mid-1972, Jobs moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area and was renting his own apartment. Brennan states by this point that their "relationship was complicated. I couldn't break the connection and I couldn't commit. Steve couldn't either." Jobs hitchhiked and worked around the West Coast and Brennan would occasionally join him. At the same time, Brennan notes, "little by little, Steve and I separated. But we were never able to fully let go. We never talked about breaking up or going our separate ways and we didn't have that conversation where one person says it's over." They continued to grow apart, but Jobs would still seek her out, and visit her while she was working in a health food store or as a live-in babysitter. They remained involved with each other while continuing to see other people.

By early 1973, Jobs was living what Brennan describes as a "simple life" in a Los Gatos cabin, working at Atari, and saving money for his impending trip to India. Brennan visited him twice at the cabin. She states in her memoir that her memories of this cabin consist of Jobs reading Be Here Now (and giving her a copy), listening to South Indian music, and using a Japanese meditation pillow. Brennan felt that he was more distant and negative toward her. Brennan states in her memoir that she met with Jobs right before he left for India and that he tried to give her a $100 bill that he had earned at Atari. She initially refused to accept it but eventually accepted the money.

Jobs traveled to India in mid-1974 to visit Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi ashram with his Reed friend (and eventual Apple employee) Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. When they got to the Neem Karoli ashram, it was almost deserted because Neem Karoli Baba had died in September 1973. Then they made a long trek up a dry riverbed to an ashram of Haidakhan Babaji. In India, they spent a lot of time on bus rides from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.

After staying for seven months, Jobs left India and returned to the US ahead of Daniel Kottke. Jobs had changed his appearance; his head was shaved and he wore traditional Indian clothing. During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, later calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life." He spent a period at the All One Farm, a commune in Oregon and Brennan joined him there for a period.

During this time period, both Jobs and Brennan became practitioners of Zen Buddhism through the Zen master Kōbun Chino Otogawa. Jobs was living with his parents again, in their backyard toolshed which he had converted into a bedroom with a sleeping bag, mat, books, a candle, and a meditation pillow. Jobs engaged in lengthy meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest Sōtō Zen monastery in the US. He considered taking up monastic residence at Eihei-ji in Japan, and maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen. Jobs would later say that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.

Jobs then returned to Atari and was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Bushnell, Atari offered US$100 for each TTL chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little specialized knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari engineers, Wozniak reduced the TTL count to 46, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the $5,000 paid out), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and explained that he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.

Wozniak had designed a low-cost digital "blue box" to generate the necessary tones to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. Jobs decided that they could make money selling it. The clandestine sales of the illegal "blue boxes" went well and perhaps planted the seed in Jobs's mind that electronics could be both fun and profitable. Jobs, in a 1994 interview, recalled that it took six months for him and Wozniak to figure out how to build the blue boxes. Jobs said that if not for the blue boxes, there would have been no Apple. He states it showed them that they could take on large companies and beat them.

Apple

Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak in 1975. In 1976, Wozniak invented the Apple I computer. After Wozniak showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it, they and Ronald Wayne formed Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs's Los Altos home on Crist Drive. Wayne stayed only a short time, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the active primary cofounders of the company. A neighbor on Crist Drive recalled Jobs as odd, an individual who would greet his clients "with his underwear hanging out, barefoot and hippie-like." Another neighbor, Larry Waterland, who had just finished his PhD at Stanford in chemical engineering, recalled dismissing Jobs's budding business: " 'You punched cards, put them in a big deck,' he said about the mainframe machines of that time. 'Steve took me over to the garage. He had a circuit board with a chip on it, a DuMont TV set, a Panasonic cassette tape deck and a keyboard. He said, 'This is an Apple computer.' I said, 'You've got to be joking.' I dismissed the whole idea.' " Jobs's friend from Reed College and India, Daniel Kottke, recalled that he "was the only person who worked in the garage ... Woz would show up once a week with his latest code. Steve Jobs didn't get his hands dirty in that sense." Kottke also stated that much of the early work took place in Jobs's kitchen, where he spent hours on the phone trying to find investors for the company.

They received funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product marketing manager and engineer Mike Markkula. Scott McNealy, one of the cofounders of Sun Microsystems, said that Jobs broke a "glass age ceiling" in Silicon Valley because he'd created a very successful company at a young age.

After she returned from her own journey to India, Brennan visited Jobs at his parent's home, where he was still living. It was during this period that Jobs and Brennan fell in love again, as Brennan noted changes in him that she attributes to Kobun (whom she was also still following). It was also at this time that Jobs displayed a prototype Apple computer for Brennan and his parents in their living room. Brennan notes a shift in this time period, where the two main influences on Jobs were Apple and Kobun. By the early 1977, she and Jobs would spend time together at her home at Duveneck Ranch in Los Altos, which served as a hostel and environmental education center. Brennan also worked there as a teacher for inner city children who came to learn about the farm.

In 1977, Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire. It was the first consumer product sold by Apple Computer and was one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak. Jobs oversaw the development of the Apple II's unusual case and Rod Holt developed the unique power supply.

Jobs usually wore a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by Issey Miyake (it was sometimes reported as St. Croix brand), Levi's 501 blue jeans, and New Balance 991 sneakers to work. He said his choice was inspired by that of Stuart Geman, a noted applied mathematics professor at Brown University. Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson "...he came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style."

As Jobs and Apple became more successful, his relationship with Brennan grew more complex. In 1977, with the success of Apple now a part of their relationship, Brennan, Daniel Kottke, and Jobs moved into a house near to the Apple office in Cupertino. Brennan eventually took a position at Apple in the shipping department. Brennan's relationship with Jobs was deteriorating as his position with Apple grew, and she began to consider ending the relationship through small changes. In October 1977, Brennan was approached by Rod Holt, who asked her to take "a paid apprenticeship designing blueprints for the Apples." Both Holt and Jobs felt that it would be a good position for her, given her artistic abilities. Holt was particularly eager that she take the position and puzzled by her ambivalence toward it. Brennan's decision, however, was overshadowed by the fact that she realized she was pregnant and that Jobs was the father. It took her a few days to tell Jobs, whose face, according to Brennan "turned ugly" at the news. At the same time, according to Brennan, at the beginning of her third trimester, Jobs said to her: “I never wanted to ask that you get an abortion. I just didn’t want to do that.” He also refused to discuss the pregnancy with her. Brennan herself felt confused about what to do. She was estranged from her mother and afraid to discuss the matter with her father. She also did not feel comfortable with the idea of having an abortion. She chose instead to discuss the matter with Kobun, who encouraged her to have and keep the baby, and pledged his support. Meanwhile, Holt was waiting for her decision on the internship. Brennan states that Jobs continued to encourage her to take the internship, stating she could "be pregnant and work at Apple, you can take the job. I don’t get what the problem is.” Brennan however notes that she "felt so ashamed: the thought of my growing belly in the professional environment at Apple, with the child being his, while he was unpredictable, in turn being punishing and sentimentally ridiculous. I could not have endured it."

Brennan thus turned down the internship and decided to leave Apple. She states that Jobs told her "If you give up this baby for adoption, you will be sorry" and “I am never going to help you.” Now alone, Brennan was on welfare and cleaning houses to earn money. She would sometimes ask Jobs for money but he always refused. Brennan hid her pregnancy for as long as she could, living in a variety of homes and continuing her work with Zen meditation. At the same time, according to Brennan, Jobs "started to seed people with the notion that I slept around and he was infertile, which meant that this could not be his child." A few weeks before she was due, Brennan was invited to have her baby at the All One Farm in Oregon and Brennan accepted the offer. When Jobs was 23 (the same age as his biological parents when they had him) Brennan gave birth to her baby, Lisa Brennan on May 17, 1978.

Jobs went there for the birth after he was contacted by Robert Friedland, their mutual friend and owner of the All One Farm. While distant, Jobs worked with her on a name for the baby, which they discussed sitting in the fields on a blanket. Brennan suggested the name "Lisa" which Jobs also liked and notes that Jobs was very attached to the name "Lisa" while he "was also publicly denying paternity." She would discover later that during this time, Jobs was preparing to unveil a new kind of computer that he wanted to give a female name (his first choice was "Claire" after St. Clare). She also states that she never gave him permission to use the baby's name for a computer and he hid the plans from her. Jobs also worked with his team to come up with the phrase, "Local Integrated Software Architecture" as an alternative explanation for the Apple Lisa (decades later, however, Jobs admitted to his biographer Walter Isaacson that "obviously, it was named for my daughter"). Brennan would come under intense criticism from Jobs who claimed that "she doesn't want money, she just wants me." According to Brennan, Apple's Mike Scott wanted Jobs to give her money, while other Apple executives "advised him to ignore me or fight if I tried to go after a paternity settlement."

When Jobs denied paternity a DNA test was given that established him as Lisa's father. It required him to give Brennan $385 a month in addition to returning the money she had received from welfare. Jobs gave her $500 a month at the time when Apple went public, and Jobs became a millionaire. Brennan worked as a waitress in Palo Alto. Later, Brennan agreed to give an interview with Michael Moritz for Time magazine for its Time Person of the Year special, released on January 3, 1983, in which she discussed her relationship with Jobs. Rather than name Jobs the Person of the Year, the magazine named the computer the "Machine of the Year". In the issue, Jobs questioned the reliability of the paternity test (which stated that the "probability of paternity for Jobs, Steven... is 94.1%"). Jobs responded by arguing that "28% of the male population of the United States could be the father." Time also noted that "the baby girl and the machine on which Apple has placed so much hope for the future share the same name: Lisa."

Jobs was worth a million dollars when he was 23 (1978), 10 million when he was 24, and over 100 million when he was 25. He was also one of the youngest "people ever to make the Forbes list of the nation's richest people – and one of only a handful to have done it themselves, without inherited wealth."

In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?"

In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in the two top floors of The San Remo, a Manhattan building with a politically progressive reputation. Although he never lived there, he spent years renovating it with the help of I. M. Pei. In 2003, he sold it to U2 singer Bono.

In 1984, Jobs bought the Jackling House and estate, and resided there for a decade. After that, he leased it out for several years until 2000 when he stopped maintaining the house, allowing exposure to the weather to degrade it. In 2004, Jobs received permission from the town of Woodside to demolish the house in order to build a smaller contemporary styled one. After a few years in court, the house was finally demolished in 2011, a few months before he died.

In early 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, which was based on The Lisa (and Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface). The following year, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled "1984." At Apple's annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as "pandemonium."

Despite the fanfare, the expensive Macintosh was a hard sell. Shortly after its release in 1985, Bill Gates' then-developing company, Microsoft, threatened to stop developing Mac applications unless it was granted "a license for the Mac operating system software. Microsoft was developing its graphical user interface ... for DOS, which it was calling Windows and didn't want Apple to sue over the similarities between the Windows GUI and the Mac interface." Sculley granted Microsoft the license which later led to problems for Apple. In addition, cheap IBM PC clones that ran on Microsoft software and had a graphical user interface began to appear. Although the Macintosh preceded the clones, it was far more expensive, so "through the late '80s, the Windows user interface was getting better and better and was thus taking increasingly more share from Apple." Windows based IBM-PC clones also led to the development of additional GUIs such as IBM's TopView or Digital Research's GEM, and thus "the graphical user interface was beginning to be taken for granted, undermining the most apparent advantage of the Mac...it seemed clear as the '80s wound down that Apple couldn't go it alone indefinitely against the whole IBM-clone market."

Sculley and Jobs's visions for the company greatly differed. The former favored open architecture computers like the Apple II, sold to education, small business, and home markets less vulnerable to IBM. Jobs wanted the company to focus on the closed architecture Macintosh as a business alternative to the IBM PC. President and CEO Sculley had little control over chairman of the board Jobs's Macintosh division; it and the Apple II division operated like separate companies, duplicating services. Although its products provided 85% of Apple's sales in early 1985, the company's January 1985 annual meeting did not mention the Apple II division or employees. Many left including Wozniak, who stated that the company had "been going in the wrong direction for the last five years" and sold most of his stock. The Macintosh's failure to defeat the PC strengthened Sculley's position in the company.

In May 1985, Sculley (encouraged by Arthur Rock) decided to reorganize Apple, and proposed a plan to the board that would remove Jobs from the Macintosh group and put him in charge of "New Product Development." This move would effectively render Jobs powerless within Apple. In response, then Jobs developed a plan to get rid of Sculley and take over Apple. However, after the plan was leaked and Jobs confronted, he said that he would leave Apple. The Board declined his resignation and asked him to reconsider. Sculley also told Jobs that he had all of the votes needed to go ahead with the reorganization. A few months later, on September 17, 1985, Jobs turned in a letter of resignation to the Apple Board. Five additional senior Apple employees also resigned and joined Jobs in his new venture, NeXT.

NeXT Computer

Jobs founded NeXT Inc. in 1985 after his resignation from Apple with $7 million. A year later he was running out of money, and with no product on the horizon, he sought venture capital. Eventually, Jobs attracted the attention of billionaire Ross Perot who invested heavily in the company. The NeXT computer was shown to the world at what was considered Jobs's comeback event, a lavish (invitation only) gala launch event and was described as a multimedia extravaganza. It was held at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, California on Wednesday October 12, 1988.

NeXT workstations were first released in 1990, priced at US$9,999. Like the Apple Lisa, the NeXT workstation was technologically advanced, but was largely dismissed as cost-prohibitive by the educational sector for which it was designed. The NeXT workstation was known for its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the financial, scientific, and academic community, highlighting its innovative, experimental new technologies, such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on a NeXT computer at CERN.

The revised, second generation NeXTcube was released in 1990. Jobs touted it as the first "interpersonal" computer that would replace the personal computer. With its innovative NeXTMail multimedia email system, NeXTcube could share voice, image, graphics, and video in email for the first time. "Interpersonal computing is going to revolutionize human communications and groupwork", Jobs told reporters. Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by the development of and attention to NeXTcube's magnesium case. This put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel. The company reported its first profit of $1.03 million in 1994. In 1996, NeXT Software, Inc. released WebObjects, a framework for Web application development. After NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc. in 1997, WebObjects was used to build and run the Apple Store, MobileMe services, and the iTunes Store.

Pixar and Disney

In 1986, Jobs funded the spinout of The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital and $5 million of which was paid to Lucasfilm for technology rights.

The first film produced by Pixar with its Disney partnership, Toy Story (1995), with Jobs credited as executive producer, brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released. Over the next 15 years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company produced box-office hits A Bug's Life (1998); Toy Story 2 (1999); Monsters, Inc. (2001); Finding Nemo (2003); The Incredibles (2004); Cars (2006); Ratatouille (2007); WALL-E (2008); Up (2009); and Toy Story 3 (2010). Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.

In 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership, and in early 2004, Jobs announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films after its contract with Disney expired.

In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to mend relations with Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. When the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest single shareholder with approximately seven percent of the company's stock. Jobs's holdings in Disney far exceeded those of Eisner, who holds 1.7 percent, and of Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who until his 2009 death held about one percent of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner – especially that he soured Disney's relationship with Pixar – accelerated Eisner's ousting. Upon completion of the merger, Jobs received 7% of Disney shares, and joined the board of directors as the largest individual shareholder. Upon Jobs's death his shares in Disney were transferred to the Steven P. Jobs Trust led by Laurene Jobs.

Floyd Norman, of Pixar, described Jobs as a "mature, mellow individual" who never interfered with the creative process of the filmmakers. In early June 2014, Pixar cofounder and Walt Disney Animation Studios President Ed Catmull revealed that Jobs once advised him to "just explain it to them until they understand" in disagreements. Catmull released the book Creativity Inc. in 2014, in which recounts numerous experiences of working with Jobs. Regarding his own manner of dealing with Jobs, Catmull writes:

    In all the 26 years with Steve, Steve and I never had one of these loud verbal arguments and it's not my nature to do that. ... but we did disagree fairly frequently about things. ... I would say something to him and he would immediately shoot it down because he could think faster than I could. ... I would then wait a week ... I'd call him up and I give my counter argument to what he had said and he'd immediately shoot it down. So I had to wait another week, and sometimes this went on for months. But in the end one of three things happened. About a third of the time he said, 'Oh, I get it, you're right.' And that was the end of it. And it was another third of the time in which [I'd] say, 'Actually I think he is right.' The other third of the time, where we didn't reach consensus, he just let me do it my way, never said anything more about it.

iMac

Apple iMac was introduced in 1998 and its innovative design was directly the result of Jobs's return to Apple. Apple boasted "the back of our computer looks better than the front of anyone else's." Described as "cartoonlike", the first iMac, clad in Bondi Blue plastic, was unlike any personal computer that came before. In 1999, Apple introduced the Graphite gray Apple iMac and since has varied the shape, colour and size considerably while maintaining the all-in-one design. Design ideas were intended to create a connection with the user such as the handle and a breathing light effect when the computer went to sleep. The Apple iMac sold for $1,299 at that time. The iMac also featured some technical innovations, such as having USB ports as the only device inputs. This latter change resulted, through the iMac's success, in the interface being popularised among third party peripheral makers – as evidenced by the fact that many early USB peripherals were made of translucent plastic (to match the iMac design).

iPod

The first generation of iPod was released October 23, 2001. The major innovation of the iPod was its small size achieved by using a 1.8" hard drive compared to the 2.5" drives common to players at that time. The capacity of the first generation iPod ranged from 5G to 10 Gigabytes. The iPod sold for US$399 and more than 100,000 iPods were sold before the end of 2001. The introduction of the iPod resulted in Apple becoming a major player in the music industry. Also, the iPod's success prepared the way for the iTunes music store and the iPhone. After the 1st generation of iPod, Apple released the hard drive-based IPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, video-capable iPod Nano, screenless iPod Shuffle in the following years.

iTunes Store

iTunes is a media player, media library, online radio broadcaster, and mobile device management application developed by Apple Inc. It is used to play, download, and organize digital audio and video (as well as other types of media available on the iTunes Store) on personal computers running the OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The iTunes Store is also available on the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.

Through the iTunes Store, users can purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, audiobooks, podcasts, movies, and movie rentals in some countries, and ringtones, available on the iPhone and iPod Touch (fourth generation onward). Application software for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch can be downloaded from the App Store.

iPhone

Apple began work on the first iPhone in 2005 and the first iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. The iPhone created such a sensation that a survey indicated six out of ten Americans were aware of its release. Time Magazine declared it "Invention of the Year" for 2007. The Apple iPhone is a small device with multimedia capabilities and functions as a quad-band touch screen smartphone. A year later, the iPhone 3G was released in July 2008 with three key features: support for GPS, 3G data and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA. In June 2009, the iPhone 3GS, whose improvements included voice control, a better camera, and a faster processor, was introduced by Phil Schiller. The iPhone 4 is thinner than previous models, has a five megapixel camera capable of recording video in 720p HD, and adds a secondary front-facing camera for video calls. A major feature of the iPhone 4S, introduced in October 2011, was Siri, a virtual assistant capable of voice recognition.

iPad

iPad is an iOS-based line of tablet computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPad was released on April 3, 2010; the most recent iPad models, the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 4, were released on October 22, 2014 and September 9, 2015. The user interface is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard. The iPad includes built-in Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity on select models. As of April 2015, there have been over 250 million iPads sold.

Return to Apple

In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $427 million. The deal was finalized in February 1997, bringing Jobs back to the company he had cofounded. Jobs became de facto chief after then-CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997. He was formally named interim chief executive in September. In March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs terminated a number of projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs's summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company." Jobs changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.

With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance, the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the "interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title "iCEO."

The company subsequently branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. On June 29, 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also included the features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionized the mobile browsing scene. While nurturing innovation, Jobs also reminded his employees that "real artists ship."

Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting in 1987, when Jobs first criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes." On October 6, 1997, at a Gartner Symposium, when Dell was asked what he would do if he ran the then-troubled Apple Computer company, he said: "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." Then, in 2006, Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's:

    Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.

Jobs was both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the "reality distortion field" and was particularly evident during his keynote speeches (colloquially known as "Stevenotes") at Macworld Expos and at Apple Worldwide Developers Conferences.

Jobs was a board member at Gap Inc. from 1999 to 2002.

In 2001, Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7.5 million shares of Apple with an exercise price of $18.30. It was alleged that the options had been backdated, and that the exercise price should have been $21.10. It was further alleged that Jobs had thereby incurred taxable income of $20,000,000 that he did not report, and that Apple overstated its earnings by that same amount. As a result, Jobs potentially faced a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. The case was the subject of active criminal and civil government investigations, though an independent internal Apple investigation completed on December 29, 2006 found that Jobs was unaware of these issues and that the options granted to him were returned without being exercised in 2003.

In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the US by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple's annual meeting in Cupertino in April. A few weeks later, Apple announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the commencement speaker. The banner read "Steve, don't be a mini-player—recycle all e-waste."

In 2006, he further expanded Apple's recycling programs to any US customer who buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and "environmentally friendly disposal" of their old systems. The success of Apple's unique products and services provided several years of stable financial returns, propelling Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company in 2011.

Jobs was perceived as a demanding perfectionist who always aspired to position his businesses and their products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting innovation and style trends. He summed up this self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky:

    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.

On July 1, 2008, a US$7 billion class action suit was filed against several members of the Apple board of directors for revenue lost because of alleged securities fraud.

In a 2011 interview with biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs revealed that he had met with U.S. President Barack Obama, complained about the nation's shortage of software engineers, and told Obama that he was "headed for a one-term presidency." Jobs proposed that any foreign student who got an engineering degree at a U.S. university should automatically be offered a green card. After the meeting, Jobs commented, "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done . . . . It infuriates me."

Family

Chrisann Brennan notes that after Jobs was forced out of Apple, "he apologized many times over for his behavior" towards her and Lisa. She also states that Jobs "said that he never took responsibility when he should have, and that he was sorry." By this time, Jobs had developed a strong relationship with Lisa and when she was nine, Jobs had the name on her birth certificate changed from "Lisa Brennan" to "Lisa Brennan-Jobs." In addition, Jobs and Brennan developed a working relationship to co-parent Lisa, a change Brennan credits to the influence of his newly found biological sister, Mona Simpson (who worked to repair the relationship between Lisa and Jobs). Jobs found Mona after first finding his birth mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson, shortly after he left Apple.

Jobs did not contact his birth family during Clara's (his adoptive mother) lifetime, however. He would later tell his official biographer Walter Isaacson: "I never wanted [Paul and Clara] to feel like I didn't consider them my parents, because they were totally my parents [...] I loved them so much that I never wanted them to know of my search, and I even had reporters keep it quiet when any of them found out." However, in 1986 when he was 31, Clara was diagnosed with lung cancer. He began to spend a great deal of time with her and learned more details about her background and his adoption, information that motivated him to find his biological mother. Jobs found on his birth certificate the name of the San Francisco doctor to whom Schieble had turned when she was pregnant. Although the doctor did not help Jobs while he was alive, he left a letter for Jobs to be opened upon his death. As he died soon afterwards, Jobs was given the letter which stated that "his mother had been an unmarried graduate student from Wisconsin named Joanne Schieble."

Jobs only contacted Schieble after Clara died and after he received permission from his father, Paul. In addition, out of respect for Paul, he asked the media not to report on his search. Jobs stated that he was motivated to find his birth mother out of both curiosity and a need "to see if she was okay and to thank her, because I'm glad I didn't end up as an abortion. She was twenty-three and she went through a lot to have me." Schieble was emotional during their first meeting (though she wasn't familiar with the history of Apple or Jobs's role in it) and told him that she had been pressured into signing the adoption papers. She said that she regretted giving him up and repeatedly apologized to him for it. Jobs and Schieble would develop a friendly relationship throughout the rest of his life and would spend Christmas together. When Jobs died in 2011, Schieble was suffering from dementia and living in a nursing home. She was not told about his death.

During this first visit, Schieble told Jobs that he had a sister, Mona, who was not aware that she had a brother. Schieble then arranged for them to meet in New York where Mona worked. Her first impression of Jobs was that "he was totally straightforward and lovely, just a normal and sweet guy." Simpson and Jobs then went for a long walk in order to get to know each other. Jobs later told his biographer that "Mona was not completely thrilled at first to have me in her life and have her mother so emotionally affectionate toward me . . . . As we got to know each other, we became really good friends, and she is my family. I don't know what I'd do without her. I can't imagine a better sister. My adopted sister, Patty, and I were never close."

Jobs then learned his family history. Six months after he was given up for adoption, Schieble's father died, she wed Jandali, and they had a daughter, Mona. Jandali states that after finishing his PhD he returned to Syria to work and that it was during this period that Schieble left him (they divorced in 1962). He also states that after the divorce he lost contact with Simpson for a period of time: "I also bear the responsibility for being away from my daughter when she was four years old, as her mother divorced me when I went to Syria, but we got back in touch after 10 years. We lost touch again when her mother moved and I didn’t know where she was, but since 10 years ago we’ve been in constant contact, and I see her three times a year. I organized a trip for her last year to visit Syria and Lebanon and she went with a relative from Florida." A few years later, Schieble married an ice skating teacher, George Simpson. Mona Jandali took her step father's last name thus became Mona Simpson. In 1970, after they divorced, Schieble took Mona to Los Angeles and raised her on her own.

Jobs told his official biographer that after meeting Simpson he wanted to become involved in her ongoing search for their father. When he was found working in Sacramento, they decided that only Simpson would meet him. Jandali and Simpson spoke for several hours at which point he told her that he had left teaching for the restaurant business. He also said that he and Schieble had given another child away for adoption but that "we'll never see that baby again. That baby's gone." (Simpson did not mention that she had met Jobs). Jandali further told Simpson that he once managed a Mediterranean restaurant near San Jose and that "all of the successful technology people used to come there. Even Steve Jobs ... oh yeah, he used to come in, and he was a sweet guy and a big tipper." After hearing about the visit, Jobs recalled that "it was amazing .... I had been to that restaurant a few times, and I remember meeting the owner. He was Syrian. Balding. We shook hands." However, Jobs did not want to meet Jandali because "I was a wealthy man by then, and I didn't trust him not to try to blackmail me or go to the press about it . . . . I asked Mona not to tell him about me." Jandali later discovered his relationship to Jobs through an online blog. He then contacted Simpson and asked "what is this thing about Steve Jobs?" Simpson told him that it was true and later commented, "My father is thoughtful and a beautiful storyteller, but he is very, very passive . . . . He never contacted Steve." Because Simpson, herself, researched her Syrian roots and began to meet members of the family, she assumed that Jobs would eventually want to meet their father, but he never did. Jobs also never showed an interest in his Syrian heritage or the Middle East. Simpson fictionalized the search for their father in the 1992 novel, The Lost Father.

Jobs first met his future wife, Laurene Powell, in 1989 when she was a student in the Stanford Graduate School of Business and he gave a lecture there. Soon after the event, he stated that Laurene “was right there in the front row in the lecture hall, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her . . . kept losing my train of thought, and started feeling a little giddy.” After the lecture, Jobs met up with her in the parking lot and invited her out to dinner. From that point forward, they were together (with a few minor exceptions) for the rest of his life. Powell's father died when she was very young, and her mother raised her in a middle class New Jersey home similar to the one Jobs grew up in. After she received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania she spent a short period in high finance but found it didn't interest her, so she decided to pursue her MBA at Stanford instead. In addition, unlike Jobs, she was athletic and followed professional sports. She also brought as much self-sufficiency to the relationship as he did and was more of a private than public person. Jobs proposed on New Year's Day 1990 with "a fistful of freshly picked wildflowers." They married on March 18, 1991, in a Buddhist ceremony at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. Fifty people, including his father Paul and his sister Mona, attended. The ceremony was conducted by Jobs's guru, Kobun Chino Otogawa. The vegan wedding cake was in the shape of Yosemite's Half Dome, and the wedding ended with a hike (during which Laurene's brothers had a snowball fight). Jobs is reported to have said to Mona: "You see, Mona [...], Laurene is descended from Joe Namath, and we're descended from John Muir."

Jobs and Powell's first child, Reed, was born September 1991. Jobs' father, Paul, died a year and a half later, on March 5, 1993. Jobs and Powell had two more children, Erin, born in August 1995, and Eve, born in 1998. The family lived in Palo Alto, California. A journalist who grew up locally remembered him as owning the house with "the scariest [Hallow'een] decorations in Palo Alto...I don't remember seeing him. I was busy being terrified."

Death

Jobs died at his Palo Alto, California home around 3 p.m. on October 5, 2011, because of complications from a relapse of his previously treated islet-cell neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer, resulting in respiratory arrest. He had lost consciousness the day before and died with his wife, children, and sisters at his side. His sister, Mona Simpson, described his death thus: "Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s final words were: "OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW." He then lost consciousness and died several hours later. A small private funeral was held on October 7, 2011, of which details were not revealed out of respect to Jobs's family. At the time of his death, his biological mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson, was living in a nursing home and suffering from dementia. She was not told that he died.

Apple and Pixar each issued announcements of his death. Apple announced on the same day that they had no plans for a public service, but were encouraging "well-wishers" to send their remembrance messages to an email address created to receive such messages. Both Apple and Microsoft flew their flags at half-staff throughout their respective headquarters and campuses. Bob Iger ordered all Disney properties, including Walt Disney World and Disneyland, to fly their flags at half-staff from October 6 to 12, 2011. For two weeks following his death, Apple's corporate Web site displayed a simple page, showing Jobs's name and lifespan next to his grayscale portrait. A private memorial service for Apple employees was held on October 19, 2011, on the Apple Campus in Cupertino. Present were Cook, Bill Campbell, Norah Jones, Al Gore, and Coldplay, and Jobs's widow, Laurene. Some of Apple's retail stores closed briefly so employees could attend the memorial. A video of the service is available on Apple's website.

Governor Jerry Brown of California declared Sunday, October 16, 2011, to be "Steve Jobs Day." On that day, an invitation-only memorial was held at Stanford University. Those in attendance included Apple and other tech company executives, members of the media, celebrities, close friends of Jobs, and politicians, along with Jobs's family. Bono, Yo Yo Ma, and Joan Baez performed at the service, which lasted longer than an hour. The service was highly secured, with guards at all of the university's gates, and a helicopter flying overhead from an area news station. Each attendee was given a small brown box as a "farewell gift" from Jobs. The box contained a copy of the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former owner of what would become Pixar, George Lucas, former rival, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and President Barack Obama all offered statements in response to his death.

Jobs is buried in an unmarked grave at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, the only nondenominational cemetery in Palo Alto.

Stephen (or Stephan) Gary "Steve" Wozniak , nicknamed "Woz", is an American inventor, electronics engineer, programmer, and technology entrepreneur who co-founded Apple Inc. He is known as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Early life

Steve Wozniak was born in San Jose, California, the son of Margaret Elaine (Kern) and Jacob Francis "Jerry" Wozniak. He is of Polish and Swiss-German ancestry on his father's side and of German, Irish, and English descent on his mother's.

The name on Wozniak's birth certificate is "Stephan Gary Wozniak", but Steve's mother said that she intended it to be spelled "Stephen", and "Steve" is what he uses.

Wozniak has been referred to frequently by the nickname "Woz", "The Wonderful Wizard of Woz", "The Second Steve", or "The Woz" or "WoZ" (short for "Wheels of Zeus") is also the name of a company Wozniak founded. The city of San Jose named a street "Woz Way" in his honour.

In the early 1970s, Wozniak was also known as "Berkeley Blue" in the phone phreak community, after he made a blue box.

Origins of Apple

In 1969, Wozniak returned to the Bay area after being expelled from University of Colorado Boulder in his first year for hacking into the institution's computer system. He later re-enrolled at De Anza College and transferred to University of California, Berkeley in 1971. Following a ten-year stint of employment at Hewlett-Packard where he and Steve Jobs befriended one another, he went on to complete his Engineering degree in 1986.

Steve Wozniak was introduced to Jobs by friend Bill Fernandez, who attended Homestead High School with Jobs in 1971. Jobs and Wozniak became friends when Jobs worked for the summer at Hewlett-Packard (HP), where Wozniak too was employed, working on a mainframe computer. This was recounted by Wozniak in a 2007 interview with ABC News, of how and when he first met Steve Jobs:

    "We first met in 1971 during my college years, while he was in high school. A friend said, 'you should meet Steve Jobs, because he likes electronics and he also plays pranks.' So he introduced us."

In 1973, Jobs was working for arcade game company Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California. He was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, by using RAM for the brick representation. Too complex to be fully comprehended at the time, the fact that this prototype also had no scoring or coin mechanisms meant Woz's prototype could not be used. Jobs was paid the full bonus regardless. Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 and that Wozniak's share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the actual $5,000 bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.

On June 29, 1975 Wozniak tested his first working prototype, displaying a few letters and running sample programs. It was the first time in history that a character displayed on a TV screen was generated by a home computer. With the Apple I design, he and Jobs were largely working to impress other members of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club, a local group of electronics hobbyists interested in computing. The Club was one of several key centers which established the home hobbyist era, essentially creating the microcomputer industry over the next few decades. Unlike other Homebrew designs, the Apple had an easy-to-achieve video capability that drew a crowd when it was unveiled.

In 1976, Wozniak developed the computer that eventually made him famous. He alone designed the hardware, circuit board designs, and operating system for the Apple I. Jobs had the idea to sell the Apple I as a fully assembled printed circuit board. Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by Jobs that even if they were not successful they could at least say to their grandkids they had had their own company. Together they sold some of their possessions (such as Wozniak's HP scientific calculator and Jobs' Volkswagen van), raised $1,300, and assembled the first boards in Jobs' bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in Jobs' garage. Wozniak's apartment in San Jose was filled with monitors, electronic devices, and some computer games Wozniak had developed. The Apple I sold for $666.66. (Wozniak later said he had no idea about the relation between the number and the mark of the beast, and "I came up with [it] because I like repeating digits.") Jobs and Wozniak sold their first 50 system boards to Paul Terrell, who was starting a new computer shop, called the Byte Shop, in Mountain View, California.

On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer (along with administrative supervisor Ronald Wayne, whose participation in the new venture was short lived). Wozniak resigned from his job at Hewlett-Packard and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. Wozniak's Apple I was similar to the Altair 8800, the first commercially available microcomputer, except the Apple I had no provision for internal expansion cards. With expansion cards the Altair could attach to a computer terminal and be programmed in BASIC. In contrast, the Apple I was a hobbyist machine. Wozniak's design included a $25 microprocessor (MOS 6502) on a single circuit board with 256 bytes of ROM, 4K or 8K bytes of RAM, and a 40-character by 24-row display controller. Apple's first computer lacked a case, power supply, keyboard, and display, all components the user had to provide.

After the success of the Apple I, Wozniak designed the Apple II, the first personal computer that had the ability to display color graphics, and BASIC programming language built-in. Inspired by "the technique Atari used to simulate colors on its first arcade games", Wozniak found a way of putting colors into the NTSC system by using a $1 chip, while colors in the PAL system were achieved by "accident" when a dot occurred on a line, and to this day he has no idea how it works. During the design stage, Steve Jobs argued that the Apple II should have two expansion slots, while Wozniak wanted six. After a heated argument, during which Wozniak had threatened for Jobs to 'go get himself another computer', they decided to go with eight slots. The Apple II became one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers.

Career

One thing Wozniak wanted to do was teach elementary school because of the important role teachers play in students' lives. Eventually, he did teach computer classes to children from the fifth through ninth grades and teachers as well.

Wozniak remains an employee of Apple and receives a stipend, estimated to be $120,000 per year. He is also an Apple shareholder. He also maintained a fine acquaintance with Steve Jobs until Jobs' death in October 2011, although, in 2006, Wozniak stated that he and Jobs were not as close as they used to be. In a 2013 interview, Wozniak said that the Macintosh "failed" under Steve Jobs, and that it was not until Jobs left that it became a success. Jobs called the Apple Lisa group, the team that had kicked Jobs out, idiots for making the Lisa computer too expensive. To compete with the Lisa, Jobs and his new team produced a cheaper computer, one that, according to Wozniak, was "weak", "lousy" and "still at a fairly high price". "He made it by cutting the RAM down, by forcing you to swap disks here and there", says Wozniak. He attributed the eventual success of the Macintosh to people like John Sculley "who worked to build a Macintosh market when the Apple II went away".

Wozniak founded a new venture called CL 9, which developed and brought the first programmable universal remote control to market in 1987.

In 2001, Wozniak founded Wheels of Zeus (WOZ), to create wireless GPS technology to "help everyday people find everyday things much more easily." In 2002, he joined the Board of Directors of Ripcord Networks, Inc., joining Ellen Hancock, Gil Amelio, Mike Connor, and Wheels of Zeus co-founder Alex Fielding, all Apple alumni, in a new telecommunications venture. Later the same year he joined the Board of Directors of Danger, Inc., the maker of the Hip Top (a.k.a. Side Kick from T-Mobile).

In 2006, Wheels of Zeus was closed, and Wozniak founded Acquicor Technology, a holding company for acquiring technology companies and developing them, with Apple alumnae Ellen Hancock and Gil Amelio.

In March 2006, Wozniak attended the FIRST National Competition in Atlanta to show off Lego robots. In 2010, he attended another FIRST event, a regional event in downtown Phoenix Arizona at the Arizona State Fairgrounds. In 2012, he attended and was a judge at another FIRST event, the FRC Las Vegas Regional.

In September 2006, Wozniak published his autobiography, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. It was co-authored by writer Gina Smith.

In September 2007, Wozniak joined Scottevest as an Advisory Board Member.

In February 2009, Wozniak joined Fusion-io, a data storage and server company in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, as their chief scientist.

On November 18, 2010, Wozniak gave a speech at the Science & Technology Summit at the World Forum Convention Center in The Hague in which he predicted that Android would be dominant over the iPhone market-wise but the iPhone would retain the quality edge.

On June 9, 2011, Wozniak joined members of Fusion-io’s management team to celebrate the company’s first day of trading on the NYSE by ringing The Opening Bell.

On October 20, 2011, Wozniak delivered a keynote presentation titled "Today’s Science Fiction, Tomorrow’s Science Fact" at IP EXPO, a Computer expo which took place at Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London.

On November 14, 2011, Wozniak was the keynote speaker at "Rutgers Entrepreneurship Day" at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

On May 16, 2012, Wozniak spoke at the "WOZ Live" event at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, Australia.

On October 20, 2012, Wozniak spoke at the "Tijuana Innovadora" event at the Tijuana Cultural Center, in Tijuana, Mexico.

In May, 2013, Wozniak was the featured speaker at the High Point University Commencement ceremony.

On November 13, 2013 Wozniak was the keynote speaker at the Internet Summit in Raleigh, North Carolina.

In 2014 Wozniak became an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

In April 2015, Wozniak along with Marvel Comics creator and former editor Stan Lee jointly announced they were bringing a new multi genre convention to the San Francisco Bay Area in the form of Silicon Valley Comic Con.

On December 10, 2015, Wozniak was a keynote speaker at the Access Bank Conference in Lagos, Nigeria.

On February 2, 2016, Wozniak was a guest lecturer at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida.

In March 2016, Wozniak became High Point University's Innovator in Residence. In this role, Wozniak will have a continued partnership with HPU students and faculty including experiential learning experiences and visits to campus.

On May 6, 2016, Wozniak was a speaker at Leadercast in Atlanta, Georgia.

On June 8, 2016, Wozniak was a speaker at a Salesforce event in San Francisco, California, held at the Warfield theater.

On June 22, 2016, Wozniak was a speaker at Datto Con 2016 in Nashville, TN, held at the Omni Hotel.

Ronald Gerald Wayne (born May 17, 1934) is a retired American electronics industry worker. He co-founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, providing administrative oversight for the new venture. He soon, however, sold his share of the new company for $800 US dollars, and later accepted $1,500 to forfeit any claims against Apple (in total, equivalent to $9,185 in 2015).

Career

Wayne was born in Cleveland, Ohio, United States on May 17, 1934. He trained as a technical draftsman at the School of Industrial Arts in New York. In 1956 he moved to California. Wayne's first business venture was a company selling slot machines. The company failed, with Wayne reflecting in 2014 that, "I discovered very quickly that I had no business being in business. I was far better working in engineering."

Wayne worked with Steve Jobs at Atari before he, Jobs, and Wozniak founded Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. Serving as the venture's "adult supervision", Wayne drew the first Apple logo, wrote the three men's original partnership agreement, and wrote the Apple I manual.

Wayne received a 10% stake in Apple but relinquished his equity for US$800 less than two weeks later, on April 12, 1976. Legally, all members of a partnership are personally responsible for any debts incurred by any partner; unlike Jobs and Wozniak, then 21 and 25, Wayne had personal assets that potential creditors could seize. The failure of a slot machine company that he had started five years earlier also contributed to his decision to exit the partnership.

Later that year, venture capitalist Arthur Rock and Mike Markkula helped develop a business plan and converted the partnership to a corporation. A year after leaving Apple, Wayne received $1,500 for his agreement to forfeit any claims against the new company. In its first year of operations (1976), Apple's sales reached US$174,000. In 1977 sales rose to US$2.7 million, in 1978 to US$7.8 million, and in 1980 to US$117 million. By 1982 Apple had a billion dollars in annual sales. In February 2015, Apple's value exceeded $700 billion, making it the most valuable U.S. company by far. Had Wayne kept his 10% stock until then, it would have been worth billions.

Wayne has stated that he does not regret selling his share of the company as he made the "best decision with the information available to me at the time". Wayne also stated that he felt the Apple enterprise "would be successful, but at the same time there would be significant bumps along the way and I couldn't risk it. I had already had a rather unfortunate business experience before. I was getting too old and those two were whirlwinds. It was like having a tiger by the tail and I couldn't keep up with these guys."

Author

Wayne published a memoir titled, Adventures of an Apple Founder, in July 2011. Plans for initial exclusivity on the Apple iBookstore did not pan out.

Wayne has also written a socio-economic treatise titled Insolence of Office, released on October 1, 2011 which he describes as:

    ...the product of decades of research and observation into the evolution of human governance, and the foundations of the American Constitutional Republic. Through this analysis the reader is introduced to a complete, yet simplified understanding of the architecture of our Constitution, its foundations, principles, and the essential meaning of its structure all in the context of modern living.

Apple was established on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. The Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips), which was less than what is now considered a complete personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66 ($2,772 in 2016 dollars, adjusted for inflation).

Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple. During the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, an average annual growth rate of 533%.

The Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16, 1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its major rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics and open architecture. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II. The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first "killer app" of the business world: VisiCalc, a spreadsheet program. VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II: compatibility with the office. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to Commodore and Tandy.

By the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The company introduced the Apple III in May 1980 in an attempt to compete with IBM and Microsoft in the business and corporate computing market. Jobs and several Apple employees, including Jef Raskin, visited Xerox PARC in December 1979 to see the Xerox Alto. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for the option to buy 100,000 shares (800,000 split-adjusted shares) of Apple at the pre-IPO price of $10 a share.

Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a graphical user interface (GUI), and development of a GUI began for the Apple Lisa. In 1982, however, he was pushed from the Lisa team due to infighting. Jobs took over Jef Raskin's low-cost-computer project, the Macintosh. A race broke out between the Lisa team and the Macintosh team over which product would ship first. Lisa won the race in 1983 and became the first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI, but was a commercial failure due to its high price tag and limited software titles.

On December 12, 1980, Apple went public at $22 per share, generating more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956 and instantly creating more millionaires (about 300) than any company in history.

1984–91: Success with Macintosh

In 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh, the first personal computer to be sold without a programming language at all. Its debut was signified by "1984", a $1.5 million television commercial directed by Ridley Scott that aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. The commercial is now hailed as a watershed event for Apple's success and a "masterpiece".

The Macintosh initially sold well, but follow-up sales were not strong due to its high price and limited range of software titles. The machine's fortunes changed with the introduction of the LaserWriter, the first PostScript laser printer to be sold at a reasonable price, and PageMaker, an early desktop publishing package. It has been suggested that the combination of these three products were responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market. The Macintosh was particularly powerful in the desktop publishing market due to its advanced graphics capabilities, which had necessarily been built in to create the intuitive Macintosh GUI.

In 1985, a power struggle developed between Jobs and CEO John Sculley, who had been hired two years earlier. The Apple board of directors instructed Sculley to "contain" Jobs and limit his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from his leadership role at Apple. Sculley found out that Jobs had been attempting to organize a coup and called a board meeting at which Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties. Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc. the same year.

After Jobs' departure, the Macintosh product line underwent a steady change of focus to higher price points, the so-called "high-right policy" named for the position on a chart of price vs. profits. Jobs had argued the company should produce products aimed at the consumer market and aimed for a $1000 price for the Macintosh, which they were unable to meet. Newer models selling at higher price points offered higher profit margin, and appeared to have no effect on total sales as power users snapped up every increase in power. Although some worried about pricing themselves out of the market, the high-right policy was in full force by the mid-1980s, notably due to Jean-Louis Gassée's mantra of "fifty-five or die", referring to the 55% profit margins of the Macintosh II.

This policy began to backfire in the last years of the decade as new desktop publishing programs appeared on PC clones that offered some or much of the same functionality of the Macintosh but at far lower price points. The company lost its monopoly in this market, and had already estranged many of its original consumer customer base who could no longer afford their high priced products. The Christmas season of 1989 was the first in the company's history that saw declining sales, and led to a 20% drop in Apple's stock price. Gassée's objections were overruled, and he was forced from the company in 1990. Later that year, Apple introduced three lower cost models, the Macintosh Classic, Macintosh LC and Macintosh IIsi, all of which saw significant sales due to pent up demand.

In 1991, Apple introduced the PowerBook, replacing the "luggable" Macintosh Portable with a design that set the current shape for almost all modern laptops. The same year, Apple introduced System 7, a major upgrade to the operating system which added color to the interface and introduced new networking capabilities. It remained the architectural basis for Mac OS until 2001. The success of the PowerBook and other products brought increasing revenue. For some time, Apple was doing incredibly well, introducing fresh new products and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.

Apple believed the Apple II series was too expensive to produce and took away sales from the low-end Macintosh. In 1990, Apple released the Macintosh LC, which featured a single expansion slot for the Apple IIe Card to help migrate Apple II users to the Macintosh platform; the Apple IIe was discontinued in 1993.

1991–97: Decline, restructuring, acquisitions

The success of Apple's lower-cost consumer models, especially the LC, also led to cannibalization of their higher priced machines. To address this, management introduced several new brands, selling largely identical machines at different price points aimed at different markets. These were the high-end Quadra, the mid-range Centris line, and the ill-fated Performa series. This led to significant market confusion, as customers did not understand the difference between models.

Apple also experimented with a number of other unsuccessful consumer targeted products during the 1990s, including digital cameras, portable CD audio players, speakers, video consoles, the eWorld online service, and TV appliances. Enormous resources were also invested in the problem-plagued Newton division based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts. Ultimately, none of these products helped and Apple's market share and stock prices continued to slide.

Throughout this period, Microsoft continued to gain market share with Windows by focusing on delivering software to cheap commodity personal computers, while Apple was delivering a richly engineered but expensive experience. Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response; instead, they sued Microsoft for using a GUI similar to the Apple Lisa in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp.. The lawsuit dragged on for years before it was finally dismissed. At this time, a series of major product flops and missed deadlines sullied Apple's reputation, and Sculley was replaced as CEO by Michael Spindler.

By the early 1990s, Apple was developing alternative platforms to the Macintosh, such as A/UX. The Macintosh platform itself was becoming outdated because it was not built for multitasking and because several important software routines were programmed directly into the hardware. In addition, Apple was facing competition from OS/2 and UNIX vendors such as Sun Microsystems. The Macintosh would need to be replaced by a new platform or reworked to run on more powerful hardware.

In 1994, Apple allied with IBM and Motorola in the AIM alliance with the goal of creating a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform), which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind and thus counter Microsoft. The same year, Apple introduced the Power Macintosh, the first of many Apple computers to use Motorola's PowerPC processor.

In 1996, Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio as CEO. Amelio made numerous changes at Apple, including extensive layoffs and cut costs. After numerous failed attempts to improve Mac OS, first with the Taligent project and later with Copland and Gershwin, Amelio chose to purchase NeXT and its NeXTSTEP operating system and bring Steve Jobs back to Apple.

1997–2007: Return to profitability

The NeXT deal was finalized on February 9, 1997, bringing Jobs back to Apple as an advisor. On July 9, 1997, Amelio was ousted by the board of directors after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses. Jobs acted as the interim CEO and began restructuring the company's product line; it was during this period that he identified the design talent of Jonathan Ive, and the pair worked collaboratively to rebuild Apple's status.

At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Jobs announced that Apple would join Microsoft to release new versions of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh, and that Microsoft had made a $150 million investment in non-voting Apple stock. On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced the Apple Online Store, which was tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing strategy.

On August 15, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the Macintosh 128K: the iMac. The iMac design team was led by Ive, who would later design the iPod and the iPhone. The iMac featured modern technology and a unique design, and sold almost 800,000 units in its first five months.

During this period, Apple completed numerous acquisitions to create a portfolio of digital production software for both professionals and consumers. In 1998, Apple purchased Macromedia's Key Grip software project, signaling an expansion into the digital video editing market. The sale was an outcome of Macromedia's decision to solely focus upon web development software. The product, still unfinished at the time of the sale, was renamed "Final Cut Pro" when it was launched on the retail market in April 1999. The development of Key Grip also led to Apple's release of the consumer video-editing product iMovie in October 1999. Next, Apple successfully acquired the German company Astarte, which had developed DVD authoring technology, as well as Astarte's corresponding products and engineering team in April 2000. Astarte's digital tool DVDirector was subsequently transformed into the professional-oriented DVD Studio Pro software product. Apple then employed the same technology to create iDVD for the consumer market. In 2002, Apple purchased Nothing Real for their advanced digital compositing application Shake, as well as Emagic for the music productivity application Logic. The purchase of Emagic made Apple the first computer manufacturer to own a music software company. The acquisition was followed by the development of Apple's consumer-level GarageBand application. The release of iPhoto in the same year completed the iLife suite.

Mac OS X, based on NeXT's OPENSTEP and BSD Unix, was released on March 24, 2001 after several years of development. Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, Mac OS X aimed to combine the stability, reliability and security of Unix with the ease of use afforded by an overhauled user interface. To aid users in migrating from Mac OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of OS 9 applications within Mac OS X via the Classic Environment.

On May 19, 2001, Apple opened the first official Apple Retail Stores in Virginia and California. On October 23 of the same year, Apple debuted the iPod portable digital audio player. The product, which was first sold on November 10, 2001, was phenomenally successful with over 100 million units sold within six years. In 2003, Apple's iTunes Store was introduced. The service offered online music downloads for $0.99 a song and integration with the iPod. The iTunes store quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over 5 billion downloads by June 19, 2008.

At the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on June 6, 2005, Jobs announced that Apple would begin producing Intel-based Mac computers in 2006. On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006, Apple made the transition to Intel chips for the entire Mac product line—over one year sooner than announced. The Power Mac, iBook and PowerBook brands were retired during the transition; the Mac Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Pro became their respective successors. On April 29, 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was building its own team of engineers to design microchips. Apple also introduced Boot Camp in 2006 to help users install Windows XP or Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X.

Apple's success during this period was evident in its stock price. Between early 2003 and 2006, the price of Apple's stock increased more than tenfold, from around $6 per share (split-adjusted) to over $80. In January 2006, Apple's market cap surpassed that of Dell. Nine years prior, Dell's CEO Michael Dell had said that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." Although Apple's market share in computers had grown, it remained far behind competitors using Microsoft Windows, accounting for about 8% of desktops and laptops in the US.

Since 2001, Apple's design team has progressively abandoned the use of translucent colored plastics first used in the iMac G3. This design change began with the titanium-made PowerBook and was followed by the iBook's white polycarbonate structure and the flat-panel iMac.

.

2007–11: Success with mobile devices

During his keynote speech at the Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced that Apple Computer, Inc. would thereafter be known as "Apple Inc.", because the company had shifted its emphasis from computers to consumer electronics. This event also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV. The following day, Apple shares hit $97.80, an all-time high at that point. In May, Apple's share price passed the $100 mark. Apple would achieve widespread success with its iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad products, which introduced innovations in mobile phones, portable music players and personal computers respectively. Furthermore, by early 2007, 800,000 Final Cut Pro users were registered.

In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the iTunes Store without digital rights management (DRM), thereby allowing tracks to be played on third-party players, if record labels would agree to drop the technology. On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in the iTunes Store, effective in May 2007. Other record labels eventually followed suit and Apple published a press release in January 2009 to announce the corresponding changes to the iTunes Store.

In July 2008, Apple launched the App Store to sell third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and registered an average daily revenue of $1 million, with Jobs speculating in August 2008 that the App Store could become a billion-dollar business for Apple. By October 2008, Apple was the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone.

On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that 2009 would be the last year the corporation would attend the Macworld Expo, after more than 20 years of attendance, and that senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Philip Schiller would deliver the 2009 keynote address in lieu of the expected Jobs. The official press release explained that Apple was "scaling back" on trade shows in general, including Macworld Tokyo and the Apple Expo in Paris, France, primarily because the enormous successes of the Apple Retail Stores and website had rendered trade shows a minor promotional channel.

On January 14, 2009, an internal memo from Jobs announced that he would be taking a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple until the end of June 2009 and would spend the time focusing on his health. In the email, Jobs stated that "the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well", and explained that the break would allow the company "to focus on delivering extraordinary products". Despite Jobs's absence, Apple recorded its best non-holiday quarter (Q1 FY 2009) during the recession with revenue of $8.16 billion and profit of $1.21 billion.

2011–Present: Post-Steve Jobs era

On October 5, 2011, Apple announced that Steve Jobs had died, marking the end of an era for Apple. The first major product announcement by Apple following Jobs's passing occurred on January 19, 2012, when Apple's Phil Schiller introduced iBooks Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York City. Jobs had stated in his biography that he wanted to reinvent the textbook industry and education.

From 2011 to 2012, Apple released the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, which featured improved cameras, an "intelligent software assistant" named Siri, and cloud-sourced data with iCloud; the third and fourth generation iPads, which featured Retina displays; and the iPad Mini, which featured a 7.9-inch screen in contrast to the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. These launches were successful, with the iPhone 5 (released September 21, 2012) becoming Apple's biggest iPhone launch with over 2 million pre-orders and sales of 3 million iPads in three days following the launch of the iPad Mini and fourth generation iPad (released November 3, 2012). Apple also released a third-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display and new iMac and Mac Mini computers.

On October 29, 2011, Apple purchased C3 Technologies, a mapping company, for $240 million, making it the third mapping company that Apple has purchased. On January 10, 2012, Apple paid $500 million to acquire Anobit, an Israeli hardware company that developed and supplied a proprietary memory signal processing technology that improved the performance of the flash-memory used in iPhones and iPads. On July 24, 2012, during a conference call with investors, Tim Cook said that he loved India, but that Apple was going to expect larger opportunities outside of India. Cook cited the 30% sourcing requirement from India as the reason.

On August 20, 2012, Apple's rising stock rose the company's value to a world-record $624 billion. This beat the non-inflation-adjusted record for market capitalization set by Microsoft in 1999. On August 24, 2012, a US jury ruled that Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion (£665m) in damages in an intellectual property lawsuit. Samsung appealed the damages award, which the Court reduced by $450 million. The Court further granted Samsung's request for a new trial. On November 10, 2012, Apple confirmed a global settlement that would dismiss all lawsuits between Apple and HTC up to that date, in favor of a ten-year license agreement for current and future patents between the two companies. It is predicted that Apple will make $280 million a year from this deal with HTC.

A previously confidential email written by Jobs a year before his death, was presented during the proceedings of the Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. lawsuits and became publicly available in early April 2014. With a subject line that reads "Top 100 – A," the email was sent only to the company's 100 most senior employees and outlines Jobs's vision of Apple Inc.'s future under 10 subheadings. Notably, Jobs declares a "Holy War with Google" for 2011 and schedules a "new campus" for 2015.

In March 2013, Apple filed a patent for an augmented reality (AR) system that can identify objects in a live video stream and present information corresponding to these objects through a computer-generated information layer overlaid on top of the real-world image. Later in 2013, Apple acquired Embark Inc., a small Silicon Valley-based mapping company that builds free transit apps to help smartphone users navigate public transportation in U.S. cities, and PrimeSense, an Israeli 3D sensing company based in Tel Aviv. In December 2013, Apple Inc. purchased social analytics firm Topsy. Topsy is one of a small number of firms with real-time access to the messages that appear on Twitter and can "do real-time analysis of the trends and discussions happening on Twitter". The company also made several high profile hiring decisions in 2013. On July 2, 2013, Apple recruited Paul Deneve, Belgian President and CEO of Yves Saint Laurent as a vice president reporting directly to Tim Cook. A mid-October 2013 announcement revealed that Burberry executive Angela Ahrendts will commence as a senior vice president at Apple in mid-2014. Ahrendts oversaw Burberry's digital strategy for almost eight years and, during her tenure, sales increased to about US$3.2 billion and shares gained more than threefold.

At the Worldwide Developer's Conference on June 10, 2013, Apple announced the seventh iOS operating system alongside OS X Mavericks, the tenth version of Mac OS X, and a new Internet radio service called iTunes Radio. iTunes Radio, iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks were released fall 2013. On December 6, 2013, Apple Inc. launched iBeacon across its 254 U.S. retail stores. Using Bluetooth wireless technology, iBeacon senses the user's exact location within the Apple store and sends the user messages about products, events and other information, tailored to the user's location.

Alongside Google vice-president Vint Cerf and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Cook attended a closed-door summit held by President Obama on August 8, 2013, in regard to government surveillance and the Internet in the wake of the Edward Snowden NSA incident. On February 4, 2014, Cook met with Abdullah Gül, the President of Turkey, in Ankara to discuss the company's involvement in the Fatih project. Cook also confirmed that Turkey's first Apple Retail Store would be opened in Istanbul in April 2014.

An anonymous Apple employee revealed to the Bloomberg media publication that the opening of a Tokyo, Japan, store was planned for 2014. A Japanese analyst has stated, "For Apple, the Japanese market is appealing in terms of quantity and price. There is room to expand tablet sales and a possibility the Japanese market expands if Apple’s mobile carrier partners increase." As of June 13, 2014, Apple operated three stores in Tokyo. On October 1, 2013, Apple India executives unveiled a plan to expand further into the Indian market, following Cook's acknowledgment of the country in July 2013 when sales results showed that iPhone sales in India grew 400% during the second quarter of 2013.

Apple Inc. reported that the company sold 51 million iPhones in the Q1 of 2014 (an all-time quarterly record), compared to 47.8 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 26 million iPads during the quarter, also an all-time quarterly record, compared to 22.9 million in the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.8 million Macs, compared to 4.1 million in the year-ago quarter. On May 28, 2014, Apple confirmed its intent to acquire Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's audio company Beats Electronics—producer of the Beats by Dr. Dre line of headphones and speaker products, and operator of the music streaming service Beats Music—for $3 billion, and to sell their products through Apple's retail outlets and resellers. Iovine felt that Beats had always "belonged" with Apple, as the company modeled itself after Apple's "unmatched ability to marry culture and technology." In August 2014, an Apple representative confirmed to the media that Anand Lal Shimpi, editor and publisher of the AnandTech website, had been recruited by Apple without elaborating on Lal Shimpi's role.

In 2016, it was revealed that Apple would be making its first original scripted series, a six-episode drama about the life of Dr. Dre. Music Video director Paul Hunter will direct the series.

On May 12, 2016, Apple Inc., invested $1 billion USD in Didi Chuxing, a Chinese competitor to Uber.

On June 6, 2016, Forbes released their list of companies ranked on revenue generation. In the trailing fiscal year, Apple appeared on the list as the top tech company. It ranked third, overall, with $233 billion in revenue. This represents a movement upward of two spots from the previous year's list.