Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios, died last night with his family at the age of 56 of his cancer, leaving behind his wife Laurene and four children. He had recently stepped down from the position of Apple CEO. Together with other computer pioneers like Bill Gates, Jobs laid the foundations for today's information society.
"Steve's brilliance, dedication and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," said Apple's board members in an initial statement. The relatives of Jobs stated in a separate statement that he “died peacefully with his family”. It was known that there would be a great deal of sympathy for the grief of the extremely successful manager, but asked that the family's privacy be respected during the mourning phase.
Apple initially gave no reason for Steve Jobs' death. However, he had been struggling with severe pancreatic cancer for years and received a liver transplant, among other things. Jobs' career spanned more than three decades. He was one of the driving forces behind the development of Silicon Valley into the center of the technology industry. In August he left his position as Apple CEO to Tim Cook after several previous sick leave.
Steve was born on February 24, 1955 and grew up as an adopted child in a family in Palo Alto, California. After he left college without a degree, at the age of only 21 he founded Apple Computer Inc. in 1976 with Steve Wozniak. The company initially resided in the Jobs family's garage. In 1977 Steve Wozniak and Jobs introduced the Apple II, a PC that was affordable and suitable for the mass market. The device became one of the first commercially successful personal computers, so the IPO of Apple Jobs turned into a multimillionaire in one fell swoop. After separating from Apple, in which Jobs founded the Pixar film studio, known for its animation strips, among other things, he returned to the helm of the company, which was struggling due to various factors.
In the course of the following years Apple became known for its attractively designed and intuitively operated products that made the pure performance of technology in the digital world accessible to a broad masses. Especially in the last few years of his life, Jobs as head of Apple caused a fundamental change in the PC, electronics and media industries with the introduction of products such as iPod, iPhone and iPad. Through the marketing and sale of Apple products with the help of elaborate advertising campaigns, a large number of own stores and the introductions of new devices, operating systems and applications staged as special events, the company under Jobs' leadership became an icon of pop culture.
Jobs's serious illness became apparent in mid-2008 when significant weight loss was evident. He took a six month hiatus in 2009 during which he received a liver transplant. In January 2011, he resigned from his position as Apple CEO, but without a public justification, before resigning in August.
Juan Cole has an obituary Written to Steve Jobs, because I do not want to withhold from you, because you will definitely not get to read something like this in the mainstream media:
Jobs was the biological son of Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali (a Syrian Muslim then graduate student in political science from Homs, who is now in revolt against the Baathist regime).
That is, like Barack Obama, Jobs was the son of a Muslim.
Simpson young and unmarried, gave Jobs up for adoption, but she and Jandali later wed and gave Jobs a half-sister. He never appears to have met his father a political scientist who later went into the casino business, but he did get to know his half-biological sister Mona. That is, Jobs's childhood was wrought up with a) Muslim immigration to the United States and b) the sexual revolution, both phenomena of the 1950s that accelerated in subsequent decades. Of course, these two parts of his heritage had only an indirect impact on him.
His adoptive parents were Paul Jobs and Clara Hagopian Jobs (his adoptive mother would therefore be of Armenian heritage.)
Jobs dropped out of college, gathered Coca-Cola bottles to turn them in for money, got free meals from the Krishna Consciousness Society (“Hare Krishnas”), and later made a trip to India, where he converted to Buddhism.
I'd be interested to know how that happened. There is very little Buddhism in India. Tibetan Buddhists have centers in places like Varanasi (Banares) in North India, because these monks are political or cultural exiles from Communist China. The Dalits or 'untouchables' of western Indian have had a conversion movement to Buddhism. Jobs is said to have gone with a college buddy to see a Hindu guru devoted to the monkey-god, Hanuman. I really wonder whether the Buddhism was not encountered in the US rather than in India, though the trip to India may have influenced his decision.
In the same period, he was doing psychedelic drugs like LSD, which he later said were very important to his creative vision.
The world has lost one of its greatest visionaries. The biggest tribute to Steve's success is probably the fact that many heard of his demise on a device he invented ...