Introduction:

Our lives were changed when a young man had the desire to “have a thousand songs in his pocket,” “a phone that people would love.” (Lasseter) He is a perfect example of determination and faith. Jobs was an insecure, hippie kid that reinvented himself as a technological visionary and changed the world. (Goodell) Jobs was adopted and faced many insecurities due to it. His mother, Joanne Schieble, was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin who got involved with a Syrian student named Ab-dulfattah Jandali. When Schieble found out she was pregnant, her father objected to her marrying Syrian. (Goodell) His mother up and left and moved to San Francisco to have her baby so she could avoid the shame. (Goodell) Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24^th, 1955 and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. (Goodell) They didn’t know that their adopted baby would turn out to turn Apple into the most valued company in the world. He did. Worth an estimated $342 billion, Apple did and still is changing our lives today. (Goodell) At a time when software was the model, he built hardware. (Goodell) At a time when everyone focused on the macro, he focused on the micro and although he didn’t do anything first, he always did it best. (Goodell) As most know, he gave us the ability to do almost anything with the touch of a finger. One of Jobs co-workers, Bono, quotes, “He’s the Bob Dylan of machines. He’s the Elvis of the hardware-software dialectic.” (Goodell) 

Sources: Steve Jobs: Entrepreneur and Inventor, by John Lasseter, The Steve Jobs Nobody Know, by Jeff Goodell 

Childhood: Entry 1

Paul Jobs and his son

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. He was born into insecurity because at birth, his unwed biological parents gave him up for adoption.  His mother was still in school and his father was a Syrian. Instead of bringing embarrassment to the family, they thought it was best to give him up. Throughout his story, he has a rather bitter personality with a short temper. It’s easy to understand that the bitterness all stemmed from his childhood when his parents gave him up. A couple named Paul and Sarah Jobs raised him as an infant in Mountain View. This area became known as Silicon Valley in the early 1950s after the sprouting of a myriad of semi-conductor companies. As a result, young Steve Jobs grew up in a neighborhood of engineers working on electronics and other gizmos in their garages on weekends. This shaped his interest in the field as he grew up.  His parents didn’t have very much money and once when a teacher asked him a question in class, he responded by saying, “Why are we so broke?” He was a temperament kid from the start. He jammed bobby pins into an electric outlet and burned his hand once. He had to have his stomach pumped after he drank ant poison. “He was so difficult as a child,” his mother said. She even said that by the time he was two years old, she and her husband felt like they had made a mistake and wanted to return him.  

Sources: allaboutSteveJobs.com, Encyclopedia Britannica-Steve Jobs

Childhood: Entry 2

Jobs later skipped the fifth grade and went straight to middle school in Crittenden after the move. It was a rough time in Steve’s life because the other students gave him a hard time about his adoption. They often asked him, “didn’t your mother love you?” Because of the rough times he faced, he told his parents he would not be returning to Crittenden at age 11. Paul and Clara apparently understood and moved their family to Los Altos, a town a few miles away that had a better educational program. In this town, everything was different. There were no stuffy traditions and no cultural baggage. You could be whoever and whatever you set out to be. When Steve was 14, he was introduced to an older kid named Steve Wozniak. Steve Wozniak was building a small computer board that he had named the Cream Soda Computer. Wozniak later recalled that it was hard for him to explain to people exactly what kind of design stuff he worked on. But he said Jobs understood and got it immediately. The two boys went on to experiment with different things such as blue boxes, used to mimic the tones used by phone operators and one of the earliest forms of hacking. At that time in his life, Jobs realized he had an interest in technology. Later, the boys sold the blue boxes on the campus at the University of California. They found themeselves at the forefront of an idustry on the verge of an explosion. They eventually gave up the entrepreneurship for fear of getting busted but Jobs later said that without blue boxes, there would be no Apple.

Sources: EBSCOhost: The Steve Jobs Nobody Know: by Jeff Goodell, Encyclopedia Britannica-Steve Jobs

Childhood: Entry 3

When he was 17, he met a girl named Chrisann Brennan who was a year younger than him in Homestead High School. They developed a big, messy, teen romance and began taking LSD together at school and discussing books they read. Brennan explained how much Jobs was affected by his adoption and how much he discussed a book about how mothers and fathers would fail to love their children. She said that using LSD wasn’t just a way for Jobs to live a better life. She said that it was a way for him to deal with the pain of his parents abandoning him. Later the couple moved to a cabin in the mountains but Steve left Chrisann to keep his parents promise to his birth parents of sending him to college. He enrolled at Reed, a private school in Oregon, but dropped out by the end of the first semester. “I couldn’t see the value in it,” said Jobs. “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.” He chose to end his college career and just hope for the best. He didn’t leave Reed campus immediately though. He hung around and audited a class in calligraphy.

Sources: EBSCOhost: The Steve Jobs Nobody Know, allaboutSteveJobs.com

Childhood: Reflection

The childhood of Steve Jobs really surprised me when I searched it in depth. It’s remarkable to read about someone that had it so rough and dropped out of college but later went on to change the world and become one of the world’s greatest technological visionaries. I can’t say that I can relate to his childhood or think of anyone I’ve known that can relate to it but it truly did inspire me. It really makes me consider the type of life I want to have when I’m older and encourages me to be whatever I want to be. I don’t think Jobs was necessarily trying to take the easy way out by dropping out of college but rather realizing that college wasn’t for him and knowing he could succeed anyway. I’m not saying that dropping out is the way to go but he really is a perfect example of faith and determination. I would imagine that his decision to drop out made his road a lot harder. Without an education, life isn’t easy and I am sure that made his career a battle. While reading and researching his childhood, I did have a lot of questions. I didn’t understand how a social outcast with absolutely no confidence would make it. Then later on, Jeff Goodell explained how Steve knew exactly what he wanted and was going to get it. He told his friend that someday he would be a millionaire and from then on I started to realize what a little bit of determination could do.

Apple: Entry 1

The company’s name, Apple, comes from an apple farm in Oregon that Jobs visited. The world never would have guessed that two boys building a homemade computer in a garage would be the start of a billion dollar business. Wozniak was apparently the brains and Jobs was the back bone. Jobs encouraged Wozniak to finish his projects and found parts needed for the job at rock-bottom prices. Jobs knew he wanted to build a business and was somewhat desperate. He didn’t have money and he needed it. “By building affordable, personal computers and putting one on every desk, in every hand, I’m giving people power. They don’t have to go through the high priests of mainframe-they can access information themselves. They can steal fire from the mountain. And this is going to inspire far more change than any nonprofit,” said Steve. His attitude was right and Apple took off. By the time he was 24, he was worth $10 million and a year later, he was worth even more: more than $100 million. According to friends, Jobs changed as Apple advanced. He apparently started treating people around him badly and his temper grew shorter. He had Brennan in his life and the two were living together. Just as Apple began to become a huge success, Brennan became pregnant and Steve pushed her completely out of his life. He didn’t even provide her with any financial help. He was offended when Brennan mentioned giving the baby up for adoption or having an abortion and he pressured her friends to talk to her and persuade her not to.

Sources: The Steve Jobs Nobody Know, by Jeff Goodell, Steve Jobs: by Walter Isaacson

Apple: Entry 2

When Apple continued to grow, it became clear that Steve was incapable of controlling the company. Instead of having the instincts of an adult, he had those of an adolescent. He continued to work, though. After seeing a prototype of a mouse and desktop icons during a visit to Xerox PARC, a research center in Palo Alto, Jobs walked away convinced that all computers would one day operate on such a model. He couldn’t get top management at Apple to get on the same page as him so he simply hijacked a team working on another project and they worked in a hidden building. The team worked hard but Jobs wasn’t exactly appreciative. Sometimes the group would work on something all night just to come in the next day and hear Steve tell them it sucked. He became well known for his ability to humiliate others. However, he had a goal in mind and he wouldn’t stop until he reached it. He wanted a Macintosh built and he wanted it to be the coolest machine possible. The Mac was launched in 1984 and the world saw Jobs as the showman. The computer was a huge success and sold more than a million units, transforming the computer industry. Steve increasingly became unable to control the company he had created though. He recruited the CEO of Pepsi, John Sculley, to lend a hand but he had a problem sharing power with him. The nasty edge to his controlling personality wasn’t necessary and it hindered him more than it helped him. However, at times it was a good thing. Polite leaders who take care to avoid hurting others are generally not as effective at forcing change. Many of the people he drove the hardest and abused most will confess that in the end, he did get them to do things they never thought possible. (Steve Jobs: by Walter Isaacson) But, Sculley was apparently the more experienced executive and the two men clashed constantly. Jobs had power issues.  Apple was forced to choose between a rebel hot head and an experienced adult and Jobs was tossed overboard when he was 30.

Sources: The Steve Jobs Nobody Know, by Jeff Goodell, Steve Jobs: by Walter Isaacson

http://gizmodo.com/5867409/a-very-rare-video-of-steve-jobs-telling-the-history-of-apple