Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56.
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)was an American computer entrepreneur and inventor. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc.Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer.
In the late 1970s, Jobs — along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula and others — designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Macintosh.After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. Apple's subsequent 1996 buyout of NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he served as its CEO from 1997 until 2011.
In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios. He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1 percent until its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company in 2006.Consequently Jobs became Disney's largest individual shareholder at 7 percent and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.On August 24, 2011, Jobs announced his resignation from his role as Apple's CEO.
On October 5, 2011, Jobs died in California at age 56.
Due to his youth, great wealth, and charisma, after Apple's founding Jobs became a symbol of his company and industry. When Time named the computer as the 1982 "Machine of the Year", it published a long profile of him as "the most famous maestro of the micro".In 2011 Jobs was voted Best Business Entrepreneur On Earth. Jobs was prominently featured in four productions about the history of the personal computing industry:
Triumph of the Nerds – a 1996 three-part documentary for PBS, about the rise of the home computer/personal computer.
Nerds 2.0.1 – a 1998 three-part documentary for PBS, (and sequel to Triumph of the Nerds) which chronicles the development of the Internet.
Pirates of Silicon Valley – a 1999 docudrama which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft. He was portrayed by Noah Wyle.
The Machine that Changed the World (1992) – Part 3 of this 5 part documentary, called The Paperback Computer, prominently featured Jobs and his role in the early days of Apple.
After his resignation as Apple's CEO, Jobs was characterized as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of his time.
