If Steven Paul Jobs hadn’t sadly died at just 56 in 2011 due to a rare version of pancreatic cancer, he would’ve turned 69 today. Happy birthday, Steve Jobs! Time to commemorate him and all he did! He dropped out of college at 21 in 1976 (he was born in 1955) to make a new computer company called Apple in his garage (named after the apples at an apple farm called All One Farm which he had recently retreated to) with his friend (also named Steve!) Steve Wozniak, starting with the Apple I. More early fame came with the Apple II (showcased at a computer festival in Silicon Valley), and a few years later came the first ever sold computer with a graphical interface, the (not Macintosh!) Lisa. That was a disaster, but the Macintosh (famously advertised at Super Bowl 1984 two days before its release) a few years later wasn’t, commercializing graphical computing and creating a whole new era of technology. A year later, though, Steve Jobs was ousted, however, due to disagreements in the company, and formed his own company NeXT (which didn’t have a lot of success). Due to his absence, Apple’s innovation idealistic died, and 10 years later the company’s sales imploded due to the acquisition of companies that only brought sales downward, with Steve Jobs returning when bankruptcy was less than 3 months away. Millions of 5-fruit iMacs later (sprinkled with a good serving of “Think Different” ads) and Apple was on top, with Jony Ive helping Steve produce innovative products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad (with the ‘a’ instead of the ‘o’!). Starting in 2005, though, he started having pancreatic cancer, and six years later he died, having resigned from CEO to recover at home two weeks earlier. Overall, he was the genius who brought Apple from a garage firm to an absolute giant in the tech world, inventing many of the products that guided whole tech categories.
Because of all this (plus the fact that Steve Jobs is Tim Cook’s predecessor), Tim Cook absolutely has to commemorate him, and he did in a Twitter post that said “Thinking of my friend Steve on his birthday — the lives he touched, the vision he shared, and the profound impact he had on our world. ‘We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?’”. So, happy would-be birthday, Steve, and thank you so much for how you impacted technology as a whole!
By Leo
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