Jump to content

Recommended Posts

</h1>from CNN on-line

<h1>Steve Jobs, Apple founder, dies

By Brandon Griggs, CNN updated 11:12 PM EST, Wed October 5, 2011 110910120835-steve-jobs-san-francisco-06-06-11-story-top.jpg 1px.gif Apple's passionate pitchman STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Jobs had battled cancer for years
  • Jobs founded Apple when he was 21
  • He developed the concept of the personal computer and mouse
  • He oversaw the launch of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad

(CNN) -- Steve Jobs, the visionary in the black turtleneck who co-founded Apple in a Silicon Valley garage, built it into the world's leading tech company and led a mobile-computing revolution with wildly popular devices such as the iPhone, died Wednesday. He was 56.

The hard-driving executive pioneered the concept of the personal computer and of navigating them by clicking onscreen images with a mouse. In more recent years, he introduced the iPod portable music player, the iPhone and the iPad tablet -- all of which changed how we consume content in the digital age.

Fortune: Ten ways Steve Jobs changed the world

His friends and Apple fans on Wednesday night mourned the passing of a tech titan.

"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

See reactions from Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and many others

More than one pundit, praising Jobs' ability to transform entire industries with his inventions, called him a modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci.

"Steve Jobs is one of the great innovators in the history of modern capitalism," New York Times columnist Joe Nocera said in August. "His intuition has been phenomenal over the years."

Jobs' death, while dreaded by Apple's legions of fans, was not unexpected. He had battled cancer for years, took a medical leave from Apple in January and stepped down as chief executive in August because he could "no longer meet (his) duties and expectations."

Born February 24, 1955, and then adopted, Jobs grew up in Cupertino, California -- which would become home to Apple's headquarters -- and showed an early interest in electronics. As a teenager, he phoned William Hewlett, president of Hewlett-Packard, to request parts for a school project. He got them, along with an offer of a summer job at HP.

111004122706-velshi-steve-jobs-college-00000000-story-body.jpgHow Steve Jobs grew up 111006120336-erin-steve-jobs-kahney-00002001-story-body.jpgJobs 'set the agenda' for tech industry Jobs dropped out of Oregon's Reed College after one semester, although he returned to audit a class in calligraphy, which he says influenced Apple's graceful, minimalist aesthetic. He quit one of his first jobs, designing video games for Atari, to backpack across India and take psychedelic drugs. Those experiences, Jobs said later, shaped his creative vision.

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future," he told Stanford University graduates during a commencement speech in 2005. "You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

View a time line of Steve Jobs' work

While at HP, Jobs befriended Steve Wozniak, who impressed him with his skill at assembling electronic components. The two later joined a Silicon Valley computer hobbyists club, and when he was 21, Jobs teamed with Wozniak and two other men to launch Apple Computer Inc.

It's long been Silicon Valley legend: Jobs and Wozniak built their first commercial product, the Apple 1, in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. Jobs sold his Volkswagen van to help finance the venture. The primitive computer, priced at $666.66, had no keyboard or display, and customers had to assemble it themselves.

The following year, Apple unveiled the Apple II computer at the inaugural West Coast Computer Faire. The machine was a hit, and the personal computing revolution was under way.

Jobs was among the first computer engineers to recognize the appeal of the mouse and the graphical interface, which let users operate computers by clicking on images instead of writing text.

111006120237-steve-jobs-waving-goodbye.jpgTimeline: Steve Jobs' career Apple's pioneering Macintosh computer launched in early 1984 with a now-iconic, Orwellian-themed Super Bowl ad. The boxy beige Macintosh sold well, but the demanding Jobs clashed frequently with colleagues, and in 1986, he was ousted from Apple after a power struggle.

Then came a 10-year hiatus during which he founded NeXT Computer, whose pricey, cube-shaped computer workstations never caught on with consumers.

Jobs had more success when he bought Pixar Animation Studios from George Lucas before the company made it big with "Toy Story." Jobs brought the same marketing skill to Pixar that he became known for at Apple. His brief but emotional pitch for "Finding Nemo," for example, was a masterful bit of succinct storytelling.

<a target="_blank" href="http://ireport.cnn.com/topics/683476">Share your memories and images of Steve Jobs

In 1996, Apple bought NeXT, returning Jobs to the then-struggling company he had co-founded. Within a year, he was running Apple again -- older and perhaps wiser but no less of a perfectionist. And in 2001, he took the stage to introduce the original iPod, the little white device that transformed portable music and kick-started Apple's furious comeback.

Thus began one of the most remarkable second acts in the history of business. Over the next decade, Jobs wowed launch-event audiences, and consumers, with one game-changing hit after another: iTunes (2003), the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and the iPad (2010).

Review Jobs' top moments as a showman

Observers marveled at Jobs' skills as a pitchman, his ability to inspire godlike devotion among Apple "fanboys" (and scorn from PC fans) and his "one more thing" surprise announcements. Time after time, he sold people on a product they didn't know they needed until he invented it. And all this on an official annual salary of $1.

He also built a reputation as a hard-driving, mercurial and sometimes difficult boss who oversaw almost every detail of Apple's products and rejected prototypes that didn't meet his exacting standards.

By the late 2000s, his once-renegade tech company, the David to Microsoft's Goliath, was entrenched at the uppermost tier of American business. Apple now operates more than 300 retail stores in 11 countries. The company has sold more than 275 million iPods, 100 million iPhones and 25 million iPads worldwide.

Jobs' climb to the top was complete in summer 2011, when Apple listed more cash reserves than the U.S. Treasury and even briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the world's most valuable company.

CNNMoney.com: Apple stock under Jobs

But Jobs' health problems sometimes cast a shadow over his company's success. In 2004, he announced to his employees that he was being treated for pancreatic cancer. He lost weight and appeared unusually gaunt at keynote speeches to Apple developers, spurring concerns about his health and fluctuations in the company's stock price. One wire service accidentally published Jobs' obituary.

Jobs had a secret liver transplant in 2009 in Tennessee during a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple. He took another medical leave in January this year. Perhaps mindful of his legacy, he cooperated on his first authorized biography, scheduled to be published by Simon & Schuster in November.

Jobs is survived by his wife of 20 years, Laurene, and four children, including one from a prior relationship.

He always spoke with immense pride about what he and his engineers accomplished at Apple.

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do," he told the Stanford grads in 2005.

"If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on."

CNN's Augie Martin contributed to this report.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sick of hearing about it already though, it's not like Bill Gates died or anything :tongue: (as a PC, I couldn't help that one, sorry).

Kinda like when Anna Nicole Smith died (obviously, Jobs was a bit more of a commodity to the world), but EVERYONE for weeks had to ask everyone else if they heard about it. For instance:

Chernobyl: "Packa Newports ina box, shorts" (I talk funnier than I type irl, so sue me)

7-11 Clerk: "Yeah sure *grabs cigs*. HEY...you hear Anna Nicole Smith died?!?!"

Chernobyl: "I don't even fuckin' KNOW YOU, gimme mah smokes! And yeah, I've only heard it from EVERY OTHER STORE CLERK who I also never met before."

It's gonna be a long week...

I will say that 98.7 did have a clever way of honoring him today, by playing all of their songs off of an iPod :laugh:. Thought it was endearing, if I were him, I'd be pleased by that.

Edited by Chernobyl
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If Einstein, or Thomas Edison, or Tesla had died during our time, would you have mourned any less? Would you be sick of the news in one day? I think not. Steve Jobs was on their level. If you don't get that, you haven't really paid attention. Like most geniuses and truly gifted creative people, he was a flawed human being, sometimes terribly so. But he also got what life was about, and he lived it uncompromisingly his way, and in the end, he changed the world and brought products and ideas to the masses that they never knew they needed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If Einstein, or Thomas Edison, or Tesla had died during our time, would you have mourned any less? Would you be sick of the news in one day? I think not. Steve Jobs was on their level. If you don't get that, you haven't really paid attention. Like most geniuses and truly gifted creative people, he was a flawed human being, sometimes terribly so. But he also got what life was about, and he lived it uncompromisingly his way, and in the end, he changed the world and brought products and ideas to the masses that they never knew they needed.

I would hold him to that esteem for the most part yes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK guys start flaming, but he should have died a wile ago. Only pure stupidity allows an organ (A) transplant when they are terminally ill from cancer in organ (B).

His pancreatic cancer was a rare curable kind. Very few really know because he's very private, so your statement that he had cancer (active) is a guess at best. He did turn around and spend money and advocate to change California law to make it easier for people to donate organs. That seems like a fair trade in my book.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

His pancreatic cancer was a rare curable kind. Very few really know because he's very private, so your statement that he had cancer (active) is a guess at best. He did turn around and spend money and advocate to change California law to make it easier for people to donate organs. That seems like a fair trade in my book.

You aren't classified as cured until they can not find any trace for 5 years. So, diagnosed 4 years ago, transplant 2 years ago, 1 year left to be cured IF all traces where eliminated the day after diagnosis. No transplant should have been given.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

From THE ONION

CUPERTINO, CA—Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Computers and the only American in the country who had any clue what the fuck he was doing, died Wednesday at the age of 56. "We haven't just lost a great innovator, leader, and businessman, we've literally lost the only person in this country who actually had his shit together and knew what the hell was going on," a statement from President Barack Obama read in part, adding that Jobs will be remembered both for the life-changing products he created and for the fact that he was able to sit down, think clearly, and execute his ideas—attributes he shared with no other U.S. citizen. "This is a dark time for our country, because the reality is none of the 300 million or so Americans who remain can actually get anything done or make things happen. Those days are over." Obama added that if anyone could fill the void left by Jobs it would probably be himself, but said that at this point he honestly doesn't have the slightest notion what he's doing anymore.

Edited by phee
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Forum Statistics

    38.8k
    Total Topics
    819.6k
    Total Posts
  • Who's Online   0 Members, 0 Anonymous, 23 Guests (See full list)

    • There are no registered users currently online
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.