Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

Oct. 6, 2011
Steven Paul Jobs passed away today, Oct. 5. He was co-founder, chairman and former chief executive of Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. He was born in San Francisco on Feb. 24, 1955, just a couple of months before I was. Jobs started Reed College in Portland, Ore. in 1972 but dropped out after six months. He and his friend Steve Wozniak were members of the Homebrew Computer Club. They started Apple in 1976 with the Apple I based on MOS Technology's 6502 and the rest was history.

The Apple I led to the Apple II in 1977. It was more polished than the Apple I and was the first successful mass-market computer. The Apple Macintosh based on the Motorola 68000 was even more revolutionary. The Macintosh eventually migrated to the Power PC and currently to Intel's x86 architecture.

Jobs left Apple in 1985 and founded NeXT, a company Apple eventually acquired in 1996 when Jobs returned. In the meantime, he help acquire the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd in 1986. This was turned into Pixar Animation Studios and it was eventually acquired by The Walt Disney company in 2006.

Steve ran Apple as it introduced a wide range of cutting edge consumer technology products like the iPod, iPhone and the recently released iPad 2 that runs Apple's own A5 dual core processor based on Arm's architecture. Software was always part of Apple's story and Jobs was there with iTunes, the iTunes Store and the Apple App Store.

Steve Jobs was the face of Apple presenting the world with the latest technological marvels. Few have had as much impact on our industry than Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004. He resigned as CEO in August, 2011 being replaced by Tim Cook at Apple. Steve will be missed.

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