Quick Facts about Steve Jobs: Brief Biography and Work at Apple

The world, and the followers of Apple’s company philosophy, will always remember its co-founder Steve Jobs, who, during his lifetime has used his visionary spirit, eccentric approach to inventing and the iconic "Stay hungry, stay foolish" motto to change the history of the IT world.



We have put together a list of interesting facts from Steve’s life and professional achievements.


Steve Jobs: 7 Interesting Facts about Life and Best Achievements

#1. Was Steve Jobs a good programmer?

Atari was there company, were Steve Jobs managed to get his first IT gig. The task was to create a digital game. Although Jobs envisioned the iconic Breakout game, it was Steve Wozniak, who turned into reality and had done all the programming on the game. They worked for four days in a row to finish the game.

But it was many years later, when Steve Wozniak admitted that Jobs had never done any coding but he was knowledgeable enough to follow most of the required steps in creating both software and hardware. Moreover, Wozniak says that Jobs lied about the money he received for the work at Atari and shared the smaller portion of the sum with him.

#2. The team behind Macintosh

The first Apple Macintosh computer was treated by Jobs as a work of art. It was being developed as a first mass production computer with a graphical interface, so, like any other artwork, Steve asked the team to put a signature on their creation. A metal copy of the piece of paper, which contained the signatures, was engraved inside every produced machine of Apple Macintosh.

#3. Apple co-founders

It’s a well known fact that Apple Computers was founded in an inconspicuous garage by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976. At the age of 21, Steve Jobs founded Apple, having interested $1300 in its creation (the money came from a sale of his father's Volkswagen minibus, as well as professional scientific Hewlett-Packard calculator, which actually belonged to Wozniak). Two years later, a Jobs’s school friend Chrisann Brennan gave birth to Steve's first child Lisa. The same year the first Lisa computer was released by Apple.

But what many people don’t know is that there was the third co-founder - Ronald Wayne. But Ronald decided to leave the company 2 weeks into the project and cached in his shares for $800. IF he decided to stick with Apple, his shares would cost billions today.

#4. Higher education and calligraphy

He was not ashamed of being a college dropout: his academic achievements were not significant either (GPA record was 2.65) but during his college years he has found fascination with calligraphy and other art classes.

The fascination with calligraphy was sometimes compared by Steve to an obsession. And such obsession is believed to have strongly influenced many changed that were made to the interface of Apple products.

#5. Specific approach to design

The philosophy of producing computers and gadgets of Apple was based on Steve’s understanding that there cannot be a distinct division between design of software, hardware and the look of the device. Steve once said that the design it's not how the device looks but how it works. Despite the fact that Jobs led a rather ascetic lifestyle, he was known to like and buy expensive things (especially, cars).

The love for the luxurious has been carried over to his management practices at Apple and other companies he had worked with. Jobs once said that his plan was to mane Macintosh the "Porsche" of personal computers.

#6. The story of Pixar

Steve Jobs was the person, who brought Pixar back to life. The company was bought for $5 million and revived with a successful release of the first part of Toy Story.

#7. Fashion preferences

Nowadays Steve Jobs seemed as a man with distinctly formed minimalist fashion preferences: even during the presentations of best Apple product, his look was standard and consisted of a black turtleneck (which was later replicated and produced by St. Croix), Levi’s jeans and New Balance sneakers.

Although not many people remember it, the achieve photos show that during his early years at Apple and his involvement with NeXT, Jobs wore top of the line suits from Brioni.

But his office dress code always remained casual, even more than that, as he would usually come to the office, wearing flip-flops and a T-shirt. His oversimplified approach to choosing wardrobe Jobs explained simply - "I can spend my time in the morning on something more valuable than choosing what to wear.

Other quick facts about the most popular Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.:

- Steve Jobs never passed an opportunity to show his rebellious side – he used to park his Mercedes in parking spots for the disabled and was noticed to drive his Mercedes SL55 AMG without license plates on his car many times.

- Unlike other IT companies and philanthropists like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs didn’t support charitable projects in Apple company. The last charity program was paused in the late 1990's and was not ever resumed by Jobs.

- A blind following and faith in alternative medicine have taken a lot of Steve’s valuable time and have probably cost Jobs his life.

- During his employment at Atari, Steve was asked to work the night shifts due the lack of personal hygiene.

- Steve Jobs felt guilty for using a loophole in the law and getting a donor organ without waiting in the queue. That is why he helped promoting the bill in California, which helped to connect with a bigger number of potential donors.

- During their college years, Wozniak and Jobs used to sell forbidden technology, which allowed people to make free long distance calls.

- Jobs once offered to donate a computer to every school or educational establishment in America but the government turned it down. At that time such offer was treated as a marketing move.

- The shares, which Steve Jobs had at Disney, were once worth twice as much as the shares in Apple.

- During his lifetime, Steve has documented over 300 patents.


Image credits:

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