Steve+Jobs+-+a+tribute



Steve Jobs died last week at the age of 56. He was arguably one of the most influential figures ever in the world of technology and entertainment. His vision and the products he developed changed the world we live in. In the 1980s he introduced the first desk-top computer, the Apple II, in the 1990s he produced the first computer-animated movie, Toy Story, and in the last twenty years he totally revolutionized the world of music and communications. Itunes and the ipod completely transformed the way people bought and listened to music. The iphone took the telephone industry into a new dimension. The ipad is doing the same with the computer industry. As one fan put it, “ he took the ugly world of technology and made it beautiful”.

Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955 and was given up for adoption by his biological parents. He became interested in electronics at an early age and at high school he teamed up with Steve Wozniak. In their first money-making venture, they built a “blue box” that allowed people to make free – and illegal – international phone calls. A few years later they built – and sold - the first Apple computers in the Jobs family garage. The first of many ground-breaking innovations.

Neither Steve’s education or his career followed a traditional path. He signed up for College but dropped out after a term. But rather than going off to look for a job, he stuck around, sleeping on friends’ floors and “dropping in” to classes and courses that interested him for another eighteen months. And the man who would become the public face of Apple was fired from the company he himself had founded in 1985. Jobs eventually went back to Apple in 1996 and the rest is, as they say, history.