🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 62 (from laksa189)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa062.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical, ml_categories_json AS ml_categories_json, ml_types_json AS ml_types_json, ml_intent_types_json AS ml_intent_types_json, meta_language AS meta_language, attrs_author AS attrs_author, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(attrs_publish_time), 0) AS attrs_publish_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(attrs_original_publish_time), 0) AS attrs_original_publish_time, ifNull(attrs_is_republished, 0) AS attrs_is_republished, ifNull(attrs_nr_words, 0) AS attrs_nr_words, ifNull(attrs_boilerpipe_nr_words, 0) AS attrs_boilerpipe_nr_words, ifNull(body_ext_links_number, 0) AS body_ext_links_number, ifNull(body_int_links_number, 0) AS body_int_links_number, ifNull(meta_nofollow, 0) AS meta_nofollow, ifNull(meta_noarchive, 0) AS meta_noarchive, ifNull(props_was_rendered, 0) AS props_was_rendered, ifNull(src_redirect, \'\') AS src_redirect, ifNull(download_time_msec, 0) AS download_time_msec, ifNull(download_ttfb_msec, 0) AS download_ttfb_msec, ifNull(download_size, 0) AS download_size FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs","crawl_time":1776212516,"first_indexed_time":1713956427,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,britannica!www,\/money\/Steve-Jobs s443","src_root_hash":"5455945239613777662","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Steve Jobs | Biography, Education, Apple, & Facts | Britannica Money","meta_descriptions":["Steve Jobs was the cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), and a charismatic pioneer of the..."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Open full sized image\nSteve Jobs holding an iPhone, 2010.\nJustin Sullivan\/Getty Images\nin full:\nSteven Paul Jobs\nTop Questions\nWhy is Steve Jobs significant?\nSteve Jobs was a charismatic pioneer of the\npersonal computer\nera. With\nSteve Wozniak\n, Jobs founded\nApple Inc.\nin 1976 and transformed the company into a world leader in telecommunications. Widely considered a visionary and a genius, he oversaw the launch of such revolutionary products as the iPod and the iPhone.\nWhat was Steve Jobs’s early life like?\nSteve Jobs was born in 1955 and raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California. Though he was interested in engineering, his passions as a youth varied. After dropping out of\nReed College\n, Jobs worked as a video game designer at Atari and later went to India to experience\nBuddhism\n. In 1976 he helped launch\nApple\n.\nWhat caused Steve Jobs’s death?\nIn 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of\npancreatic cancer\n, and the following year he announced that he had undergone surgery to remove a tumor. In 2009 Jobs received a liver transplant. In August 2011 he resigned as CEO of\nApple\n, and two months later, at age 56, he died of complications from pancreatic cancer.\nSteve Jobs\n(born February 24, 1955,\nSan Francisco\n,\nCalifornia\n, U.S.—died October 5, 2011,\nPalo Alto\n, California) was the cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now\nApple Inc.\n), and a charismatic pioneer of the\npersonal computer\nera.\nFounding of Apple\nJobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is now known as\nSilicon Valley\n. Though he was interested in engineering, his passions of youth varied. He dropped out of\nReed College\n, in\nPortland\n,\nOregon\n, took a job at Atari Corporation as a\nvideo game\ndesigner in early 1974, and saved enough money for a pilgrimage to\nIndia\nto experience\nBuddhism\n.\nBack in Silicon Valley in the autumn of 1974, Jobs reconnected with\nStephen Wozniak\n, a former\nhigh school\nfriend who was working for the\nHewlett-Packard Company\n. When Wozniak told Jobs of his progress in designing his own computer logic board, Jobs suggested that they go into business together, which they did after Hewlett-Packard formally turned down Wozniak’s design in 1976. The\nApple I\n, as they called the logic board, was built in the Jobses’ family garage with money they obtained by selling Jobs’s Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak’s programmable calculator.\nBritannica Quiz\nComputers and Technology Quiz\nOpen full sized image\nSteve Jobs (right) and Steve Wozniak holding an Apple I circuit board, c. 1976.\nCourtesy of Apple Computer, Inc.\nJobs was one of the first entrepreneurs to understand that the\npersonal computer\nwould appeal to a broad audience, at least if it did not appear to belong in a\njunior high school\nscience fair. With Jobs’s encouragement, Wozniak designed an improved model, the\nApple II\n, complete with a keyboard, and they arranged to have a sleek, molded plastic case manufactured to enclose the unit.\nThough Jobs had long, unkempt hair and eschewed business garb, he managed to obtain financing, distribution, and publicity for the company, Apple Computer, incorporated in 1977—the same year that the Apple II was completed. The machine was an immediate success, becoming synonymous with the boom in personal computers. In 1981 the company had a record-setting public stock offering, and in 1983 it made the quickest entrance (to that time) into the\nFortune\n500 list of America’s top companies. In 1983 the company recruited\nPepsiCo, Inc.\n, president\nJohn Sculley\nto be its\nchief executive officer\n(CEO) and, implicitly, Jobs’s mentor in the fine points of running a large corporation. Jobs had convinced Sculley to accept the position by challenging him: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?” The line was shrewdly effective, but it also revealed Jobs’s own near-messianic belief in the computer revolution.\nInsanely great\nDuring that same period, Jobs was heading the most important project in the company’s history. In 1979 he led a small group of Apple engineers to a\ntechnology\ndemonstration at the\nXerox Corporation\n’s Palo Alto Research Center (\nPARC\n) to see how the\ngraphical user interface\ncould make computers easier to use and more efficient. Soon afterward, Jobs left the engineering team that was designing\nLisa\n, a business computer, to head a smaller group building a lower-cost computer. Both computers were redesigned to exploit and refine the PARC ideas, but Jobs was explicit in favouring the\nMacintosh\n, or Mac, as the new computer became known. Jobs coddled his engineers and referred to them as artists, but his style was uncompromising; at one point he demanded a redesign of an internal circuit board simply because he considered it unattractive. He would later be renowned for his insistence that the Macintosh be not merely great but “insanely great.” In January 1984 Jobs himself introduced the Macintosh in a brilliantly choreographed demonstration that was the centrepiece of an extraordinary publicity campaign. It would later be pointed to as the archetype of “\nevent marketing.”\nOpen full sized image\nSteve Jobs introducing Apple's Macintosh (Mac), January 24, 1984.\nPaul Sakuma—AP\/Shutterstock.com\nHowever, the first Macs were underpowered and expensive, and they had few\nsoftware\napplications—all of which resulted in disappointing sales. Apple steadily improved the machine, so that it eventually became the company’s lifeblood as well as the model for all subsequent computer interfaces. But Jobs’s apparent failure to correct the problem quickly led to tensions in the company, and in 1985 Sculley convinced Apple’s board of directors to remove the company’s famous cofounder.\nNeXT and Pixar\nJobs quickly started another firm,\nNeXT Inc., designing powerful\nworkstation\ncomputers for the education market. His funding partners included Texan entrepreneur\nRoss Perot\nand Canon Inc., a Japanese electronics company. Although the NeXT computer was notable for its engineering design, it was eclipsed by less costly computers from competitors such as\nSun Microsystems, Inc.\nIn the early 1990s Jobs focused the company on its innovative software system,\nNEXTSTEP.\nMeanwhile, in 1986 Jobs acquired a controlling interest in\nPixar\n, a\ncomputer graphics\nfirm that had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company of Hollywood movie director\nGeorge Lucas\n. Over the following decade Jobs built Pixar into a major animation studio that, among other achievements, produced the first full-length feature film to be completely computer-animated,\nToy Story\n, in 1995. Pixar’s public stock offering that year made Jobs, for the first time, a billionaire. He eventually sold the studio to the\nDisney Company\nin 2006.\nSaving Apple\nIn late 1996 Apple, saddled by huge financial losses and on the verge of collapse, hired a new chief executive,\nsemiconductor\nexecutive\nGilbert Amelio. When Amelio learned that the company, following intense and prolonged research efforts, had failed to develop an acceptable replacement for the Macintosh’s aging\noperating system\n(OS), he chose NEXTSTEP, buying Jobs’s company for more than $400 million—and bringing Jobs back to Apple as a consultant. However, Apple’s board of directors soon became disenchanted with Amelio’s inability to turn the company’s finances around and in June 1997 requested Apple’s prodigal cofounder to lead the company once again. Jobs quickly forged an alliance with Apple’s erstwhile foe, the\nMicrosoft Corporation\n, scrapped Amelio’s Mac-clone agreements, and simplified the company’s product line. He also engineered an award-winning advertising campaign that urged potential customers to “think different” and buy Macintoshes. Just as important is what he did not do: he resisted the temptation to make machines that ran Microsoft’s\nWindows OS\n; nor did he, as some urged, spin off Apple as a software-only company. Jobs believed that Apple, as the only major\npersonal computer\nmaker with its own operating system, was in a unique position to innovate.\nOpen full sized image\nSteve Jobs with an iMac computer, 1998.\nShutterstock.com\nInnovate he did. In 1998, Jobs introduced the\niMac\n, an egg-shaped, one-piece computer that offered high-speed processing at a relatively modest price and initiated a trend of high-fashion computers. (Subsequent models sported five different bright colours.) By the end of the year, the iMac was the nation’s highest-selling personal computer, and Jobs was able to announce consistent profits for the once-moribund company. The following year, he triumphed once more with the stylish iBook, a\nlaptop computer\nbuilt with students in mind, and the G4, a desktop computer sufficiently powerful that (so Apple boasted) it could not be exported under certain circumstances because it qualified as a\nsupercomputer\n. Though Apple did not regain the industry dominance it once had, Steve Jobs had saved his company, and in the process reestablished himself as a master high-technology marketer and visionary.\nReinventing Apple\nIn 2001 Jobs started reinventing Apple for the 21st century. That was the year that Apple introduced\niTunes\n, a\ncomputer program\nfor playing music and for converting music to the compact\nMP3\ndigital format commonly used in computers and other digital devices. Later the same year, Apple began selling the\niPod\n, a portable MP3 player, which quickly became the market leader. In 2003 Apple began selling downloadable copies of major record company songs in MP3 format over the\nInternet\n. By 2006 more than one billion songs and videos had been sold through Apple’s online iTunes Store. In recognition of the growing shift in the company’s business, Jobs officially changed the name of the company to\nApple Inc.\non January 9, 2007.\nOpen full sized image\n1998 photo of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple (Apple Computer), which he co-founded in 1976.\nCourtesy of Apple\nIn 2007 Jobs took the company into the telecommunications business with the introduction of the touch-screen\niPhone\n, a\nmobile telephone\nwith capabilities for playing MP3s and videos and for accessing the Internet. Later that year, Apple introduced the iPod Touch, a portable MP3 and gaming device that included built-in\nWi-Fi\nand an iPhone-like touch screen. Bolstered by the use of the iTunes Store to sell Apple and third-party\nsoftware\n, the iPhone and iPod Touch soon boasted more games than any other portable gaming system. Jobs announced in 2008 that future releases of the iPhone and iPod Touch would offer improved game functionality. In an ironic development, Apple, which had not supported game developers in its early years out of fear of its computers not being taken seriously as business machines, was now staking a claim to a greater role in the gaming business to go along with its move into telecommunications.\nHealth issues\nIn 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of\npancreatic cancer\n. He put off surgery for about nine months while he tried alternative medicine approaches. In August 2004 he informed Apple employees of the diagnosis and that he had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. (At the time, there was speculation in the media that he had a major reconstructive surgery known as the Whipple operation, but the nature of the 2004 surgery was not disclosed.) Following a short recovery, Jobs returned to running Apple.\nOpen full sized image\nSteve Jobs introducing the iPad at an Apple event, San Francisco, 2010.\nJustin Sullivan\/Getty Images News\nThroughout 2008 Jobs lost significant weight, which produced considerable speculation that his\ncancer\nwas back. Perhaps more than those of any other large corporation, Apple’s\nstock market\nshares were tied to the health of its CEO, which led to demands by investors for full disclosure of his health—especially as the first reasons given for his weight loss seemed insufficient to explain his sickly appearance. On January 9, 2009, Jobs released a statement that he was suffering from a hormonal imbalance for which he was being treated and that he would continue his corporate duties. Less than a week later, however, he announced that he was taking an immediate leave of absence through the end of June in order to recover his health. Having removed himself, at least temporarily, from the corporate structure, Jobs resumed his previous stance that his health was a private matter and refused to disclose any more details.\nIn June 2009 the\nWall Street Journal\nreported that Jobs had received a liver\ntransplant\nseveral months earlier. Soon afterward, with Jobs’s consent, the Tennessee hospital where the operation had been performed confirmed that the transplant had occurred and explained why he had been prioritized to receive a donor organ. Jobs resumed work on June 29, 2009, fulfilling his pledge to return before the end of June. In January 2011, however, Jobs took another medical leave of absence. In August he resigned as CEO but became chairman. He died two months later.\nIn 2022 Jobs was posthumously awarded the\nPresidential Medal of Freedom\n.\nSteven Levy\nThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica\nReferences\nJeffrey S. Young\n,\nSteve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward\n(1988), is a somewhat critical biography of Steve Jobs up to the early days of NeXT.\nWalter Isaacson\n,\nSteve Jobs\n(2011), is an authorized biography.\nSteven Levy\n,\nInsanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything\n(1994), is a brief history of the Macintosh computer and the graphical user interface.\nMichael S. Malone\n,\nInfinite Loop: How the World’s Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane\n(1999), by a veteran Silicon Valley writer, details the corporate history of Apple.","attrs_markdown":"[History & Society](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/History-Society)[Science & Tech](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/Science-Tech)[Biographies](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/Biographies)[Animals & Nature](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/Animals-Nature)[Geography & Travel](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/Geography-Travel)[Arts & Culture](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/Arts-Culture)[ProCon](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/procon)[Games & Quizzes](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/quiz\/browse)[Videos](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/videos)[On This Day](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/on-this-day)[One Good Fact](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/one-good-fact)[Dictionary](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/dictionary)\n\n- [Lifestyles & Social Issues](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Lifestyles-Social-Issues)\n- [Philosophy & Religion](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Philosophy-Religion)\n- [Politics, Law & Government](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Politics-Law-Government)\n- [World History](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/World-History)\n\n- [Health & Medicine](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Health-Medicine)\n- [Science](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Science)\n- [Technology](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Technology)\n\n- [Browse Biographies](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/biographies)\n\n- [Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Birds-Reptiles-Vertebrates)\n- [Environment](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Environment)\n- [Fossils & Geologic Time](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Fossil-Geologic-Time)\n- [Insects & Other Invertebrates](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Bugs-Mollusks-Invertebrates)\n- [Mammals](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Mammals)\n- [Plants](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Plants)\n\n- [Geography & Travel](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Geography-Travel)\n\n- [Entertainment & Pop Culture](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Entertainment-Pop-Culture)\n- [Literature](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Literature)\n- [Sports & Recreation](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Sports-Recreation)\n- [Visual Arts](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/browse\/Visual-Arts)\n\n[Image Galleries](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/gallery\/browse)[Podcasts](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/podcasts)[Summaries](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/summary)[Top Questions](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/question)[Britannica Kids](https:\/\/kids.britannica.com\/)\n\n[![Britannica Money](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/money\/assets\/MoneyLogo-30x236-2x.png)](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money)\n\n[Household Finance](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/browse\/household-finance)\n\n[Investing](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/browse\/investing)\n\n[Trading](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/browse\/Trading)\n\n[Retirement](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/browse\/retirement)\n\n[Companies](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/browse\/Companies)\n\n[Biographies](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/browse\/Biographies)\n\n[Finance & the Economy](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/browse\/history-and-theory)\n\nTable of Contents\n***\n- [Introduction & Quick Facts](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs#ref304313-1)\n- [Founding of Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs#ref280812)\n- [Insanely great](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs#ref280813)\n- [NeXT and Pixar](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs#ref280814)\n- [Saving Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs\/Saving-Apple#ref280815)\n- [Reinventing Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs\/Saving-Apple#ref280816)\n- [Health issues](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs\/Saving-Apple#ref280817)\n- [References](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs\/Saving-Apple#ref304313-references)\n\nRead More\n\n[![A candid photograph of American computer programmer and entrepreneur Bill Gates, smiling, taken in 2011.](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/47\/188747-050-1D34E743\/Bill-Gates-2011.jpg?c=crop&h=40&w=50) Bill Gates](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Bill-Gates)\n\n[![The Apple logo on the glass cube entrance of the Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York City, with skyscrapers reflected above.](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/46\/253846-004-4D1ECECD\/New-York-NY-USA-July-9-2022-Apple-logo-is-seen-at-the-Apple-flagship-store-on-the-5th-Avenue-in-NYC.jpg?c=crop&h=40&w=50) Apple Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc)\n\n[![Ellison, Larry](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/43\/199343-050-5A69C731\/Larry-Ellison-2012.jpg?c=crop&h=40&w=50) Larry Ellison](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Larry-Ellison)\n\nTable Of Contents\n\n[Biographies](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/browse\/Biographies)\n\n[Business Executives](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/browse\/Businesspeople-Executives)\n\n# Steve Jobs\nAmerican businessman\n\nPrint\n\nCite\n\nShare\n\nLinks\n\nAlso known as: Steven Paul Jobs\n\n**Written by**Steven Levy\n\n[Steven Levy](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/author\/Steven-Levy\/4387)\n\nSenior editor, *Newsweek,* New York City. Author of *Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology* and others.\n\n**Fact-checked by**The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica\n\n[The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/author\/The-Editors-of-Encyclopaedia-Britannica\/4419)\n\nEncyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.\n\nArticle History\n\nTable of Contents\n***\n- [Introduction & Quick Facts](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs#ref304313-1)\n- [Founding of Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs#ref280812)\n- [Insanely great](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs#ref280813)\n- [NeXT and Pixar](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs#ref280814)\n- [Saving Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs\/Saving-Apple#ref280815)\n- [Reinventing Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs\/Saving-Apple#ref280816)\n- [Health issues](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs\/Saving-Apple#ref280817)\n- [References](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Steve-Jobs\/Saving-Apple#ref304313-references)\n\nRead More\n\n[![A candid photograph of American computer programmer and entrepreneur Bill Gates, smiling, taken in 2011.](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/47\/188747-050-1D34E743\/Bill-Gates-2011.jpg?c=crop&h=40&w=50) Bill Gates](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Bill-Gates)\n\n[![The Apple logo on the glass cube entrance of the Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York City, with skyscrapers reflected above.](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/46\/253846-004-4D1ECECD\/New-York-NY-USA-July-9-2022-Apple-logo-is-seen-at-the-Apple-flagship-store-on-the-5th-Avenue-in-NYC.jpg?c=crop&h=40&w=50) Apple Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc)\n\n[![Ellison, Larry](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/43\/199343-050-5A69C731\/Larry-Ellison-2012.jpg?c=crop&h=40&w=50) Larry Ellison](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Larry-Ellison)\n\nTable Of Contents\n\n![Steve Jobs](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/04\/171104-050-5B714956\/Steve-Jobs-iPhone-2010.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs holding an iPhone, 2010.\n\nJustin Sullivan\/Getty Images\n\nin full:\n\nSteven Paul Jobs\n\nborn:\n\nFebruary 24, 1955, [San Francisco](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/San-Francisco-California), [California](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/California-state), U.S.\n\ndied:\n\nOctober 5, 2011, [Palo Alto](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Palo-Alto), [California](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/California-state) (aged 56)\n\nFounder:\n\n[Apple Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc)\n\n[NeXT Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/NeXT-Inc)\n\nAwards And Honors:\n\n[Presidential Medal of Freedom (2022)](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom)\n\nTop Questions\n\n### Why is Steve Jobs significant?\nSteve Jobs was a charismatic pioneer of the [personal computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/personal-computer) era. With [Steve Wozniak](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/Stephen-Gary-Wozniak), Jobs founded [Apple Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc) in 1976 and transformed the company into a world leader in telecommunications. Widely considered a visionary and a genius, he oversaw the launch of such revolutionary products as the iPod and the iPhone.\n\n### What was Steve Jobs’s early life like?\nSteve Jobs was born in 1955 and raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California. Though he was interested in engineering, his passions as a youth varied. After dropping out of [Reed College](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Reed-College), Jobs worked as a video game designer at Atari and later went to India to experience [Buddhism](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Buddhism). In 1976 he helped launch [Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc).\n\n### What caused Steve Jobs’s death?\nIn 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of [pancreatic cancer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/pancreatic-cancer), and the following year he announced that he had undergone surgery to remove a tumor. In 2009 Jobs received a liver transplant. In August 2011 he resigned as CEO of [Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc), and two months later, at age 56, he died of complications from pancreatic cancer.\n\n**Steve Jobs** (born February 24, 1955, [San Francisco](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/San-Francisco-California), [California](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/California-state), U.S.—died October 5, 2011, [Palo Alto](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Palo-Alto), California) was the cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now [Apple Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc)), and a charismatic pioneer of the [personal computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/personal-computer) era.\n\n## Founding of Apple\nJobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is now known as [Silicon Valley](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Silicon-Valley-region-California). Though he was interested in engineering, his passions of youth varied. He dropped out of [Reed College](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Reed-College), in [Portland](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Portland-Oregon), [Oregon](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Oregon-state), took a job at Atari Corporation as a [video game](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/electronic-game) designer in early 1974, and saved enough money for a pilgrimage to [India](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/India) to experience [Buddhism](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Buddhism).\n\nBack in Silicon Valley in the autumn of 1974, Jobs reconnected with [Stephen Wozniak](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/Stephen-Gary-Wozniak), a former [high school](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/high-school) friend who was working for the [Hewlett-Packard Company](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Hewlett-Packard-Company). When Wozniak told Jobs of his progress in designing his own computer logic board, Jobs suggested that they go into business together, which they did after Hewlett-Packard formally turned down Wozniak’s design in 1976. The [Apple I](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Apple-I), as they called the logic board, was built in the Jobses’ family garage with money they obtained by selling Jobs’s Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak’s programmable calculator.\n\n[![computer chip. computer. Hand holding computer chip. Central processing unit (CPU). history and society, science and technology, microchip, microprocessor motherboard computer Circuit Board](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/63\/166063-131-0E023062\/computer-chip-processing-unit-history-society-science.jpg)Britannica Quiz Computers and Technology Quiz](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/quiz\/computers-and-technology)\n\n![Apple I](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/02\/24402-050-2C2345B1\/Steven-Jobs-Apple-I-Stephen-Wozniak-circuit-1976.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs (right) and Steve Wozniak holding an Apple I circuit board, c. 1976.\n\nCourtesy of Apple Computer, Inc.\n\nJobs was one of the first entrepreneurs to understand that the [personal computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/personal-computer) would appeal to a broad audience, at least if it did not appear to belong in a [junior high school](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/junior-high-school) science fair. With Jobs’s encouragement, Wozniak designed an improved model, the [Apple II](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Apple-II), complete with a keyboard, and they arranged to have a sleek, molded plastic case manufactured to enclose the unit.\n\nThough Jobs had long, unkempt hair and eschewed business garb, he managed to obtain financing, distribution, and publicity for the company, Apple Computer, incorporated in 1977—the same year that the Apple II was completed. The machine was an immediate success, becoming synonymous with the boom in personal computers. In 1981 the company had a record-setting public stock offering, and in 1983 it made the quickest entrance (to that time) into the *Fortune* 500 list of America’s top companies. In 1983 the company recruited [PepsiCo, Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/PepsiCo-Inc), president [John Sculley](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/John-Sculley) to be its [chief executive officer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/chief-executive-officer) (CEO) and, implicitly, Jobs’s mentor in the fine points of running a large corporation. Jobs had convinced Sculley to accept the position by challenging him: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?” The line was shrewdly effective, but it also revealed Jobs’s own near-messianic belief in the computer revolution.\n\n## Insanely great\nDuring that same period, Jobs was heading the most important project in the company’s history. In 1979 he led a small group of Apple engineers to a [technology](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/technology) demonstration at the [Xerox Corporation](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Xerox-Corporation)’s Palo Alto Research Center ([PARC](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/PARC-company)) to see how the [graphical user interface](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/graphical-user-interface) could make computers easier to use and more efficient. Soon afterward, Jobs left the engineering team that was designing [Lisa](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Lisa), a business computer, to head a smaller group building a lower-cost computer. Both computers were redesigned to exploit and refine the PARC ideas, but Jobs was explicit in favouring the [Macintosh](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Macintosh), or Mac, as the new computer became known. Jobs coddled his engineers and referred to them as artists, but his style was uncompromising; at one point he demanded a redesign of an internal circuit board simply because he considered it unattractive. He would later be renowned for his insistence that the Macintosh be not merely great but “insanely great.” In January 1984 Jobs himself introduced the Macintosh in a brilliantly choreographed demonstration that was the centrepiece of an extraordinary publicity campaign. It would later be pointed to as the archetype of “event marketing.”\n\n![Steve Jobs](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/21\/223021-050-E9485319\/Steve-Jobs-1984-original-Macintosh-personal-computer.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs introducing Apple's Macintosh (Mac), January 24, 1984.\n\nPaul Sakuma—AP\/Shutterstock.com\n\nHowever, the first Macs were underpowered and expensive, and they had few [software](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/software) applications—all of which resulted in disappointing sales. Apple steadily improved the machine, so that it eventually became the company’s lifeblood as well as the model for all subsequent computer interfaces. But Jobs’s apparent failure to correct the problem quickly led to tensions in the company, and in 1985 Sculley convinced Apple’s board of directors to remove the company’s famous cofounder.\n\n## NeXT and Pixar\nJobs quickly started another firm, NeXT Inc., designing powerful [workstation](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/workstation) computers for the education market. His funding partners included Texan entrepreneur [Ross Perot](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Ross-Perot) and Canon Inc., a Japanese electronics company. Although the NeXT computer was notable for its engineering design, it was eclipsed by less costly computers from competitors such as [Sun Microsystems, Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Sun-Microsystems-Inc) In the early 1990s Jobs focused the company on its innovative software system, NEXTSTEP.\n\nMeanwhile, in 1986 Jobs acquired a controlling interest in [Pixar](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Pixar-Animation-Studios), a [computer graphics](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/computer-graphics) firm that had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company of Hollywood movie director [George Lucas](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/George-Lucas). Over the following decade Jobs built Pixar into a major animation studio that, among other achievements, produced the first full-length feature film to be completely computer-animated, *Toy Story*, in 1995. Pixar’s public stock offering that year made Jobs, for the first time, a billionaire. He eventually sold the studio to the [Disney Company](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Disney-Company) in 2006.\n\n## Saving Apple\nIn late 1996 Apple, saddled by huge financial losses and on the verge of collapse, hired a new chief executive, [semiconductor](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/semiconductor) executive Gilbert Amelio. When Amelio learned that the company, following intense and prolonged research efforts, had failed to develop an acceptable replacement for the Macintosh’s aging [operating system](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/operating-system) (OS), he chose NEXTSTEP, buying Jobs’s company for more than \\$400 million—and bringing Jobs back to Apple as a consultant. However, Apple’s board of directors soon became disenchanted with Amelio’s inability to turn the company’s finances around and in June 1997 requested Apple’s prodigal cofounder to lead the company once again. Jobs quickly forged an alliance with Apple’s erstwhile foe, the [Microsoft Corporation](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Microsoft-Corporation), scrapped Amelio’s Mac-clone agreements, and simplified the company’s product line. He also engineered an award-winning advertising campaign that urged potential customers to “think different” and buy Macintoshes. Just as important is what he did not do: he resisted the temptation to make machines that ran Microsoft’s [Windows OS](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Microsoft-Windows); nor did he, as some urged, spin off Apple as a software-only company. Jobs believed that Apple, as the only major [personal computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/personal-computer) maker with its own operating system, was in a unique position to innovate.\n\n![Steve Jobs with an iMac](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/45\/154745-050-C60B6150\/Steve-Jobs-computer-iMac-1998.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs with an iMac computer, 1998.\n\nShutterstock.com\n\nInnovate he did. In 1998, Jobs introduced the [iMac](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/iMac), an egg-shaped, one-piece computer that offered high-speed processing at a relatively modest price and initiated a trend of high-fashion computers. (Subsequent models sported five different bright colours.) By the end of the year, the iMac was the nation’s highest-selling personal computer, and Jobs was able to announce consistent profits for the once-moribund company. The following year, he triumphed once more with the stylish iBook, a [laptop computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/laptop-computer) built with students in mind, and the G4, a desktop computer sufficiently powerful that (so Apple boasted) it could not be exported under certain circumstances because it qualified as a [supercomputer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/supercomputer). Though Apple did not regain the industry dominance it once had, Steve Jobs had saved his company, and in the process reestablished himself as a master high-technology marketer and visionary.\n\n## Reinventing Apple\nIn 2001 Jobs started reinventing Apple for the 21st century. That was the year that Apple introduced [iTunes](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/iTunes), a [computer program](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/computer-program) for playing music and for converting music to the compact [MP3](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/MP3) digital format commonly used in computers and other digital devices. Later the same year, Apple began selling the [iPod](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/iPod), a portable MP3 player, which quickly became the market leader. In 2003 Apple began selling downloadable copies of major record company songs in MP3 format over the [Internet](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Internet). By 2006 more than one billion songs and videos had been sold through Apple’s online iTunes Store. In recognition of the growing shift in the company’s business, Jobs officially changed the name of the company to [Apple Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc) on January 9, 2007.\n\n![Steve Jobs](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/64\/121664-004-73C27A0C\/Steve-Jobs.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\n1998 photo of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple (Apple Computer), which he co-founded in 1976.\n\nCourtesy of Apple\n\nIn 2007 Jobs took the company into the telecommunications business with the introduction of the touch-screen [iPhone](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/iPhone), a [mobile telephone](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/mobile-telephone) with capabilities for playing MP3s and videos and for accessing the Internet. Later that year, Apple introduced the iPod Touch, a portable MP3 and gaming device that included built-in [Wi-Fi](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Wi-Fi) and an iPhone-like touch screen. Bolstered by the use of the iTunes Store to sell Apple and third-party [software](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/software), the iPhone and iPod Touch soon boasted more games than any other portable gaming system. Jobs announced in 2008 that future releases of the iPhone and iPod Touch would offer improved game functionality. In an ironic development, Apple, which had not supported game developers in its early years out of fear of its computers not being taken seriously as business machines, was now staking a claim to a greater role in the gaming business to go along with its move into telecommunications.\n\n## Health issues\nIn 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of [pancreatic cancer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/pancreatic-cancer). He put off surgery for about nine months while he tried alternative medicine approaches. In August 2004 he informed Apple employees of the diagnosis and that he had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. (At the time, there was speculation in the media that he had a major reconstructive surgery known as the Whipple operation, but the nature of the 2004 surgery was not disclosed.) Following a short recovery, Jobs returned to running Apple.\n\n![Steve Jobs with an iPad](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/59\/222659-050-F3ACF7E7\/Steve-Jobs-2010.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs introducing the iPad at an Apple event, San Francisco, 2010.\n\nJustin Sullivan\/Getty Images News\n\nThroughout 2008 Jobs lost significant weight, which produced considerable speculation that his [cancer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/cancer-disease) was back. Perhaps more than those of any other large corporation, Apple’s [stock market](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/stock-exchange-finance) shares were tied to the health of its CEO, which led to demands by investors for full disclosure of his health—especially as the first reasons given for his weight loss seemed insufficient to explain his sickly appearance. On January 9, 2009, Jobs released a statement that he was suffering from a hormonal imbalance for which he was being treated and that he would continue his corporate duties. Less than a week later, however, he announced that he was taking an immediate leave of absence through the end of June in order to recover his health. Having removed himself, at least temporarily, from the corporate structure, Jobs resumed his previous stance that his health was a private matter and refused to disclose any more details.\n\nIn June 2009 the *Wall Street Journal* reported that Jobs had received a liver [transplant](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/transplant-surgery) several months earlier. Soon afterward, with Jobs’s consent, the Tennessee hospital where the operation had been performed confirmed that the transplant had occurred and explained why he had been prioritized to receive a donor organ. Jobs resumed work on June 29, 2009, fulfilling his pledge to return before the end of June. In January 2011, however, Jobs took another medical leave of absence. In August he resigned as CEO but became chairman. He died two months later.\n\nIn 2022 Jobs was posthumously awarded the [Presidential Medal of Freedom](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom).\n\n[Steven Levy](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/author\/Steven-Levy\/4387)[The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/author\/The-Editors-of-Encyclopaedia-Britannica\/4419)\n\n## References\nJeffrey S. Young, *Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward* (1988), is a somewhat critical biography of Steve Jobs up to the early days of NeXT. Walter Isaacson, *Steve Jobs* (2011), is an authorized biography.\n\nSteven Levy, *Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything* (1994), is a brief history of the Macintosh computer and the graphical user interface. Michael S. Malone, *Infinite Loop: How the World’s Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane* (1999), by a veteran Silicon Valley writer, details the corporate history of Apple.\n\n[![Britannica Money Logo](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/money\/assets\/Money-475x60-footer-2x.png?h=47&w=390)](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money)\n\n[About Us](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/about)[Privacy Policy](https:\/\/corporate.britannica.com\/privacy-policy-2)[Terms & Conditions](https:\/\/corporate.britannica.com\/termsofuse.html)\n\n© 2026 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.","attrs_readable_markdown":"![Steve Jobs](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/04\/171104-050-5B714956\/Steve-Jobs-iPhone-2010.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs holding an iPhone, 2010.\n\nJustin Sullivan\/Getty Images\n\nin full:\n\nSteven Paul Jobs\n\nTop Questions\n\n### Why is Steve Jobs significant?\nSteve Jobs was a charismatic pioneer of the [personal computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/personal-computer) era. With [Steve Wozniak](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/Stephen-Gary-Wozniak), Jobs founded [Apple Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc) in 1976 and transformed the company into a world leader in telecommunications. Widely considered a visionary and a genius, he oversaw the launch of such revolutionary products as the iPod and the iPhone.\n\n### What was Steve Jobs’s early life like?\nSteve Jobs was born in 1955 and raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California. Though he was interested in engineering, his passions as a youth varied. After dropping out of [Reed College](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Reed-College), Jobs worked as a video game designer at Atari and later went to India to experience [Buddhism](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Buddhism). In 1976 he helped launch [Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc).\n\n### What caused Steve Jobs’s death?\nIn 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of [pancreatic cancer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/pancreatic-cancer), and the following year he announced that he had undergone surgery to remove a tumor. In 2009 Jobs received a liver transplant. In August 2011 he resigned as CEO of [Apple](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc), and two months later, at age 56, he died of complications from pancreatic cancer.\n\n**Steve Jobs** (born February 24, 1955, [San Francisco](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/San-Francisco-California), [California](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/California-state), U.S.—died October 5, 2011, [Palo Alto](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Palo-Alto), California) was the cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now [Apple Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc)), and a charismatic pioneer of the [personal computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/personal-computer) era.\n\n## Founding of Apple\nJobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is now known as [Silicon Valley](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Silicon-Valley-region-California). Though he was interested in engineering, his passions of youth varied. He dropped out of [Reed College](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Reed-College), in [Portland](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Portland-Oregon), [Oregon](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/Oregon-state), took a job at Atari Corporation as a [video game](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/electronic-game) designer in early 1974, and saved enough money for a pilgrimage to [India](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/place\/India) to experience [Buddhism](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Buddhism).\n\nBack in Silicon Valley in the autumn of 1974, Jobs reconnected with [Stephen Wozniak](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/Stephen-Gary-Wozniak), a former [high school](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/high-school) friend who was working for the [Hewlett-Packard Company](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Hewlett-Packard-Company). When Wozniak told Jobs of his progress in designing his own computer logic board, Jobs suggested that they go into business together, which they did after Hewlett-Packard formally turned down Wozniak’s design in 1976. The [Apple I](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Apple-I), as they called the logic board, was built in the Jobses’ family garage with money they obtained by selling Jobs’s Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak’s programmable calculator.\n\n[![computer chip. computer. Hand holding computer chip. Central processing unit (CPU). history and society, science and technology, microchip, microprocessor motherboard computer Circuit Board](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/63\/166063-131-0E023062\/computer-chip-processing-unit-history-society-science.jpg)Britannica Quiz Computers and Technology Quiz](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/quiz\/computers-and-technology)\n\n![Apple I](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/02\/24402-050-2C2345B1\/Steven-Jobs-Apple-I-Stephen-Wozniak-circuit-1976.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs (right) and Steve Wozniak holding an Apple I circuit board, c. 1976.\n\nCourtesy of Apple Computer, Inc.\n\nJobs was one of the first entrepreneurs to understand that the [personal computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/personal-computer) would appeal to a broad audience, at least if it did not appear to belong in a [junior high school](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/junior-high-school) science fair. With Jobs’s encouragement, Wozniak designed an improved model, the [Apple II](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Apple-II), complete with a keyboard, and they arranged to have a sleek, molded plastic case manufactured to enclose the unit.\n\nThough Jobs had long, unkempt hair and eschewed business garb, he managed to obtain financing, distribution, and publicity for the company, Apple Computer, incorporated in 1977—the same year that the Apple II was completed. The machine was an immediate success, becoming synonymous with the boom in personal computers. In 1981 the company had a record-setting public stock offering, and in 1983 it made the quickest entrance (to that time) into the *Fortune* 500 list of America’s top companies. In 1983 the company recruited [PepsiCo, Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/PepsiCo-Inc), president [John Sculley](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/John-Sculley) to be its [chief executive officer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/chief-executive-officer) (CEO) and, implicitly, Jobs’s mentor in the fine points of running a large corporation. Jobs had convinced Sculley to accept the position by challenging him: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?” The line was shrewdly effective, but it also revealed Jobs’s own near-messianic belief in the computer revolution.\n\n## Insanely great\nDuring that same period, Jobs was heading the most important project in the company’s history. In 1979 he led a small group of Apple engineers to a [technology](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/technology) demonstration at the [Xerox Corporation](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Xerox-Corporation)’s Palo Alto Research Center ([PARC](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/PARC-company)) to see how the [graphical user interface](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/graphical-user-interface) could make computers easier to use and more efficient. Soon afterward, Jobs left the engineering team that was designing [Lisa](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Lisa), a business computer, to head a smaller group building a lower-cost computer. Both computers were redesigned to exploit and refine the PARC ideas, but Jobs was explicit in favouring the [Macintosh](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Macintosh), or Mac, as the new computer became known. Jobs coddled his engineers and referred to them as artists, but his style was uncompromising; at one point he demanded a redesign of an internal circuit board simply because he considered it unattractive. He would later be renowned for his insistence that the Macintosh be not merely great but “insanely great.” In January 1984 Jobs himself introduced the Macintosh in a brilliantly choreographed demonstration that was the centrepiece of an extraordinary publicity campaign. It would later be pointed to as the archetype of “event marketing.”\n\n![Steve Jobs](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/21\/223021-050-E9485319\/Steve-Jobs-1984-original-Macintosh-personal-computer.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs introducing Apple's Macintosh (Mac), January 24, 1984.\n\nPaul Sakuma—AP\/Shutterstock.com\n\nHowever, the first Macs were underpowered and expensive, and they had few [software](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/software) applications—all of which resulted in disappointing sales. Apple steadily improved the machine, so that it eventually became the company’s lifeblood as well as the model for all subsequent computer interfaces. But Jobs’s apparent failure to correct the problem quickly led to tensions in the company, and in 1985 Sculley convinced Apple’s board of directors to remove the company’s famous cofounder.\n\n## NeXT and Pixar\nJobs quickly started another firm, NeXT Inc., designing powerful [workstation](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/workstation) computers for the education market. His funding partners included Texan entrepreneur [Ross Perot](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Ross-Perot) and Canon Inc., a Japanese electronics company. Although the NeXT computer was notable for its engineering design, it was eclipsed by less costly computers from competitors such as [Sun Microsystems, Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Sun-Microsystems-Inc) In the early 1990s Jobs focused the company on its innovative software system, NEXTSTEP.\n\nMeanwhile, in 1986 Jobs acquired a controlling interest in [Pixar](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Pixar-Animation-Studios), a [computer graphics](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/computer-graphics) firm that had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company of Hollywood movie director [George Lucas](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/George-Lucas). Over the following decade Jobs built Pixar into a major animation studio that, among other achievements, produced the first full-length feature film to be completely computer-animated, *Toy Story*, in 1995. Pixar’s public stock offering that year made Jobs, for the first time, a billionaire. He eventually sold the studio to the [Disney Company](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Disney-Company) in 2006.\n\n## Saving Apple\nIn late 1996 Apple, saddled by huge financial losses and on the verge of collapse, hired a new chief executive, [semiconductor](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/semiconductor) executive Gilbert Amelio. When Amelio learned that the company, following intense and prolonged research efforts, had failed to develop an acceptable replacement for the Macintosh’s aging [operating system](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/operating-system) (OS), he chose NEXTSTEP, buying Jobs’s company for more than \\$400 million—and bringing Jobs back to Apple as a consultant. However, Apple’s board of directors soon became disenchanted with Amelio’s inability to turn the company’s finances around and in June 1997 requested Apple’s prodigal cofounder to lead the company once again. Jobs quickly forged an alliance with Apple’s erstwhile foe, the [Microsoft Corporation](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Microsoft-Corporation), scrapped Amelio’s Mac-clone agreements, and simplified the company’s product line. He also engineered an award-winning advertising campaign that urged potential customers to “think different” and buy Macintoshes. Just as important is what he did not do: he resisted the temptation to make machines that ran Microsoft’s [Windows OS](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Microsoft-Windows); nor did he, as some urged, spin off Apple as a software-only company. Jobs believed that Apple, as the only major [personal computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/personal-computer) maker with its own operating system, was in a unique position to innovate.\n\n![Steve Jobs with an iMac](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/45\/154745-050-C60B6150\/Steve-Jobs-computer-iMac-1998.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs with an iMac computer, 1998.\n\nShutterstock.com\n\nInnovate he did. In 1998, Jobs introduced the [iMac](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/iMac), an egg-shaped, one-piece computer that offered high-speed processing at a relatively modest price and initiated a trend of high-fashion computers. (Subsequent models sported five different bright colours.) By the end of the year, the iMac was the nation’s highest-selling personal computer, and Jobs was able to announce consistent profits for the once-moribund company. The following year, he triumphed once more with the stylish iBook, a [laptop computer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/laptop-computer) built with students in mind, and the G4, a desktop computer sufficiently powerful that (so Apple boasted) it could not be exported under certain circumstances because it qualified as a [supercomputer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/supercomputer). Though Apple did not regain the industry dominance it once had, Steve Jobs had saved his company, and in the process reestablished himself as a master high-technology marketer and visionary.\n\n## Reinventing Apple\nIn 2001 Jobs started reinventing Apple for the 21st century. That was the year that Apple introduced [iTunes](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/iTunes), a [computer program](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/computer-program) for playing music and for converting music to the compact [MP3](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/MP3) digital format commonly used in computers and other digital devices. Later the same year, Apple began selling the [iPod](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/iPod), a portable MP3 player, which quickly became the market leader. In 2003 Apple began selling downloadable copies of major record company songs in MP3 format over the [Internet](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Internet). By 2006 more than one billion songs and videos had been sold through Apple’s online iTunes Store. In recognition of the growing shift in the company’s business, Jobs officially changed the name of the company to [Apple Inc.](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/Apple-Inc) on January 9, 2007.\n\n![Steve Jobs](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/64\/121664-004-73C27A0C\/Steve-Jobs.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\n1998 photo of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple (Apple Computer), which he co-founded in 1976.\n\nCourtesy of Apple\n\nIn 2007 Jobs took the company into the telecommunications business with the introduction of the touch-screen [iPhone](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/iPhone), a [mobile telephone](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/mobile-telephone) with capabilities for playing MP3s and videos and for accessing the Internet. Later that year, Apple introduced the iPod Touch, a portable MP3 and gaming device that included built-in [Wi-Fi](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/Wi-Fi) and an iPhone-like touch screen. Bolstered by the use of the iTunes Store to sell Apple and third-party [software](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/technology\/software), the iPhone and iPod Touch soon boasted more games than any other portable gaming system. Jobs announced in 2008 that future releases of the iPhone and iPod Touch would offer improved game functionality. In an ironic development, Apple, which had not supported game developers in its early years out of fear of its computers not being taken seriously as business machines, was now staking a claim to a greater role in the gaming business to go along with its move into telecommunications.\n\n## Health issues\nIn 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of [pancreatic cancer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/pancreatic-cancer). He put off surgery for about nine months while he tried alternative medicine approaches. In August 2004 he informed Apple employees of the diagnosis and that he had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. (At the time, there was speculation in the media that he had a major reconstructive surgery known as the Whipple operation, but the nature of the 2004 surgery was not disclosed.) Following a short recovery, Jobs returned to running Apple.\n\n![Steve Jobs with an iPad](https:\/\/cdn.britannica.com\/59\/222659-050-F3ACF7E7\/Steve-Jobs-2010.jpg?w=385)\n\nOpen full sized image\n\nSteve Jobs introducing the iPad at an Apple event, San Francisco, 2010.\n\nJustin Sullivan\/Getty Images News\n\nThroughout 2008 Jobs lost significant weight, which produced considerable speculation that his [cancer](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/cancer-disease) was back. Perhaps more than those of any other large corporation, Apple’s [stock market](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/stock-exchange-finance) shares were tied to the health of its CEO, which led to demands by investors for full disclosure of his health—especially as the first reasons given for his weight loss seemed insufficient to explain his sickly appearance. On January 9, 2009, Jobs released a statement that he was suffering from a hormonal imbalance for which he was being treated and that he would continue his corporate duties. Less than a week later, however, he announced that he was taking an immediate leave of absence through the end of June in order to recover his health. Having removed himself, at least temporarily, from the corporate structure, Jobs resumed his previous stance that his health was a private matter and refused to disclose any more details.\n\nIn June 2009 the *Wall Street Journal* reported that Jobs had received a liver [transplant](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/transplant-surgery) several months earlier. Soon afterward, with Jobs’s consent, the Tennessee hospital where the operation had been performed confirmed that the transplant had occurred and explained why he had been prioritized to receive a donor organ. Jobs resumed work on June 29, 2009, fulfilling his pledge to return before the end of June. In January 2011, however, Jobs took another medical leave of absence. In August he resigned as CEO but became chairman. He died two months later.\n\nIn 2022 Jobs was posthumously awarded the [Presidential Medal of Freedom](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom).\n\n[Steven Levy](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/author\/Steven-Levy\/4387)[The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica](https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/money\/author\/The-Editors-of-Encyclopaedia-Britannica\/4419)\n\n## References\nJeffrey S. Young, *Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward* (1988), is a somewhat critical biography of Steve Jobs up to the early days of NeXT. Walter Isaacson, *Steve Jobs* (2011), is an authorized biography.\n\nSteven Levy, *Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything* (1994), is a brief history of the Macintosh computer and the graphical user interface. Michael S. 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Open full sized image Steve Jobs holding an iPhone, 2010. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images in full: Steven Paul Jobs Top Questions Why is Steve Jobs significant? Steve Jobs was a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer era. With Steve Wozniak , Jobs founded Apple Inc. in 1976 and transformed the company into a world leader in telecommunications. Widely considered a visionary and a genius, he oversaw the launch of such revolutionary products as the iPod and the iPhone. What was Steve Jobs’s early life like? Steve Jobs was born in 1955 and raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California. Though he was interested in engineering, his passions as a youth varied. After dropping out of Reed College , Jobs worked as a video game designer at Atari and later went to India to experience Buddhism . In 1976 he helped launch Apple . What caused Steve Jobs’s death? In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer , and the following year he announced that he had undergone surgery to remove a tumor. In 2009 Jobs received a liver transplant. In August 2011 he resigned as CEO of Apple , and two months later, at age 56, he died of complications from pancreatic cancer. Steve Jobs (born February 24, 1955, San Francisco , California , U.S.—died October 5, 2011, Palo Alto , California) was the cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc. ), and a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer era. Founding of Apple Jobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is now known as Silicon Valley . Though he was interested in engineering, his passions of youth varied. He dropped out of Reed College , in Portland , Oregon , took a job at Atari Corporation as a video game designer in early 1974, and saved enough money for a pilgrimage to India to experience Buddhism . Back in Silicon Valley in the autumn of 1974, Jobs reconnected with Stephen Wozniak , a former high school friend who was working for the Hewlett-Packard Company . When Wozniak told Jobs of his progress in designing his own computer logic board, Jobs suggested that they go into business together, which they did after Hewlett-Packard formally turned down Wozniak’s design in 1976. The Apple I , as they called the logic board, was built in the Jobses’ family garage with money they obtained by selling Jobs’s Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak’s programmable calculator. Britannica Quiz Computers and Technology Quiz Open full sized image Steve Jobs (right) and Steve Wozniak holding an Apple I circuit board, c. 1976. Courtesy of Apple Computer, Inc. Jobs was one of the first entrepreneurs to understand that the personal computer would appeal to a broad audience, at least if it did not appear to belong in a junior high school science fair. With Jobs’s encouragement, Wozniak designed an improved model, the Apple II , complete with a keyboard, and they arranged to have a sleek, molded plastic case manufactured to enclose the unit. Though Jobs had long, unkempt hair and eschewed business garb, he managed to obtain financing, distribution, and publicity for the company, Apple Computer, incorporated in 1977—the same year that the Apple II was completed. The machine was an immediate success, becoming synonymous with the boom in personal computers. In 1981 the company had a record-setting public stock offering, and in 1983 it made the quickest entrance (to that time) into the Fortune 500 list of America’s top companies. In 1983 the company recruited PepsiCo, Inc. , president John Sculley to be its chief executive officer (CEO) and, implicitly, Jobs’s mentor in the fine points of running a large corporation. Jobs had convinced Sculley to accept the position by challenging him: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?” The line was shrewdly effective, but it also revealed Jobs’s own near-messianic belief in the computer revolution. Insanely great During that same period, Jobs was heading the most important project in the company’s history. In 1979 he led a small group of Apple engineers to a technology demonstration at the Xerox Corporation ’s Palo Alto Research Center ( PARC ) to see how the graphical user interface could make computers easier to use and more efficient. Soon afterward, Jobs left the engineering team that was designing Lisa , a business computer, to head a smaller group building a lower-cost computer. Both computers were redesigned to exploit and refine the PARC ideas, but Jobs was explicit in favouring the Macintosh , or Mac, as the new computer became known. Jobs coddled his engineers and referred to them as artists, but his style was uncompromising; at one point he demanded a redesign of an internal circuit board simply because he considered it unattractive. He would later be renowned for his insistence that the Macintosh be not merely great but “insanely great.” In January 1984 Jobs himself introduced the Macintosh in a brilliantly choreographed demonstration that was the centrepiece of an extraordinary publicity campaign. It would later be pointed to as the archetype of “ event marketing.” Open full sized image Steve Jobs introducing Apple's Macintosh (Mac), January 24, 1984. Paul Sakuma—AP/Shutterstock.com However, the first Macs were underpowered and expensive, and they had few software applications—all of which resulted in disappointing sales. Apple steadily improved the machine, so that it eventually became the company’s lifeblood as well as the model for all subsequent computer interfaces. But Jobs’s apparent failure to correct the problem quickly led to tensions in the company, and in 1985 Sculley convinced Apple’s board of directors to remove the company’s famous cofounder. NeXT and Pixar Jobs quickly started another firm, NeXT Inc., designing powerful workstation computers for the education market. His funding partners included Texan entrepreneur Ross Perot and Canon Inc., a Japanese electronics company. Although the NeXT computer was notable for its engineering design, it was eclipsed by less costly computers from competitors such as Sun Microsystems, Inc. In the early 1990s Jobs focused the company on its innovative software system, NEXTSTEP. Meanwhile, in 1986 Jobs acquired a controlling interest in Pixar , a computer graphics firm that had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company of Hollywood movie director George Lucas . Over the following decade Jobs built Pixar into a major animation studio that, among other achievements, produced the first full-length feature film to be completely computer-animated, Toy Story , in 1995. Pixar’s public stock offering that year made Jobs, for the first time, a billionaire. He eventually sold the studio to the Disney Company in 2006. Saving Apple In late 1996 Apple, saddled by huge financial losses and on the verge of collapse, hired a new chief executive, semiconductor executive Gilbert Amelio. When Amelio learned that the company, following intense and prolonged research efforts, had failed to develop an acceptable replacement for the Macintosh’s aging operating system (OS), he chose NEXTSTEP, buying Jobs’s company for more than $400 million—and bringing Jobs back to Apple as a consultant. However, Apple’s board of directors soon became disenchanted with Amelio’s inability to turn the company’s finances around and in June 1997 requested Apple’s prodigal cofounder to lead the company once again. Jobs quickly forged an alliance with Apple’s erstwhile foe, the Microsoft Corporation , scrapped Amelio’s Mac-clone agreements, and simplified the company’s product line. He also engineered an award-winning advertising campaign that urged potential customers to “think different” and buy Macintoshes. Just as important is what he did not do: he resisted the temptation to make machines that ran Microsoft’s Windows OS ; nor did he, as some urged, spin off Apple as a software-only company. Jobs believed that Apple, as the only major personal computer maker with its own operating system, was in a unique position to innovate. Open full sized image Steve Jobs with an iMac computer, 1998. Shutterstock.com Innovate he did. In 1998, Jobs introduced the iMac , an egg-shaped, one-piece computer that offered high-speed processing at a relatively modest price and initiated a trend of high-fashion computers. (Subsequent models sported five different bright colours.) By the end of the year, the iMac was the nation’s highest-selling personal computer, and Jobs was able to announce consistent profits for the once-moribund company. The following year, he triumphed once more with the stylish iBook, a laptop computer built with students in mind, and the G4, a desktop computer sufficiently powerful that (so Apple boasted) it could not be exported under certain circumstances because it qualified as a supercomputer . Though Apple did not regain the industry dominance it once had, Steve Jobs had saved his company, and in the process reestablished himself as a master high-technology marketer and visionary. Reinventing Apple In 2001 Jobs started reinventing Apple for the 21st century. That was the year that Apple introduced iTunes , a computer program for playing music and for converting music to the compact MP3 digital format commonly used in computers and other digital devices. Later the same year, Apple began selling the iPod , a portable MP3 player, which quickly became the market leader. In 2003 Apple began selling downloadable copies of major record company songs in MP3 format over the Internet . By 2006 more than one billion songs and videos had been sold through Apple’s online iTunes Store. In recognition of the growing shift in the company’s business, Jobs officially changed the name of the company to Apple Inc. on January 9, 2007. Open full sized image 1998 photo of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple (Apple Computer), which he co-founded in 1976. Courtesy of Apple In 2007 Jobs took the company into the telecommunications business with the introduction of the touch-screen iPhone , a mobile telephone with capabilities for playing MP3s and videos and for accessing the Internet. Later that year, Apple introduced the iPod Touch, a portable MP3 and gaming device that included built-in Wi-Fi and an iPhone-like touch screen. Bolstered by the use of the iTunes Store to sell Apple and third-party software , the iPhone and iPod Touch soon boasted more games than any other portable gaming system. Jobs announced in 2008 that future releases of the iPhone and iPod Touch would offer improved game functionality. In an ironic development, Apple, which had not supported game developers in its early years out of fear of its computers not being taken seriously as business machines, was now staking a claim to a greater role in the gaming business to go along with its move into telecommunications. Health issues In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer . He put off surgery for about nine months while he tried alternative medicine approaches. In August 2004 he informed Apple employees of the diagnosis and that he had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. (At the time, there was speculation in the media that he had a major reconstructive surgery known as the Whipple operation, but the nature of the 2004 surgery was not disclosed.) Following a short recovery, Jobs returned to running Apple. Open full sized image Steve Jobs introducing the iPad at an Apple event, San Francisco, 2010. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News Throughout 2008 Jobs lost significant weight, which produced considerable speculation that his cancer was back. Perhaps more than those of any other large corporation, Apple’s stock market shares were tied to the health of its CEO, which led to demands by investors for full disclosure of his health—especially as the first reasons given for his weight loss seemed insufficient to explain his sickly appearance. On January 9, 2009, Jobs released a statement that he was suffering from a hormonal imbalance for which he was being treated and that he would continue his corporate duties. Less than a week later, however, he announced that he was taking an immediate leave of absence through the end of June in order to recover his health. Having removed himself, at least temporarily, from the corporate structure, Jobs resumed his previous stance that his health was a private matter and refused to disclose any more details. In June 2009 the Wall Street Journal reported that Jobs had received a liver transplant several months earlier. Soon afterward, with Jobs’s consent, the Tennessee hospital where the operation had been performed confirmed that the transplant had occurred and explained why he had been prioritized to receive a donor organ. Jobs resumed work on June 29, 2009, fulfilling his pledge to return before the end of June. In January 2011, however, Jobs took another medical leave of absence. In August he resigned as CEO but became chairman. He died two months later. In 2022 Jobs was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom . Steven Levy The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica References Jeffrey S. Young , Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward (1988), is a somewhat critical biography of Steve Jobs up to the early days of NeXT. Walter Isaacson , Steve Jobs (2011), is an authorized biography. Steven Levy , Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (1994), is a brief history of the Macintosh computer and the graphical user interface. Michael S. Malone , Infinite Loop: How the World’s Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane (1999), by a veteran Silicon Valley writer, details the corporate history of Apple.

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Author of *Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology* and others. **Fact-checked by**The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica [The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/money/author/The-Editors-of-Encyclopaedia-Britannica/4419) Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Article History Table of Contents *** - [Introduction & Quick Facts](https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs#ref304313-1) - [Founding of Apple](https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs#ref280812) - [Insanely great](https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs#ref280813) - [NeXT and Pixar](https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs#ref280814) - [Saving Apple](https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs/Saving-Apple#ref280815) - [Reinventing Apple](https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs/Saving-Apple#ref280816) - [Health issues](https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs/Saving-Apple#ref280817) - [References](https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs/Saving-Apple#ref304313-references) Read More [![A candid photograph of American computer programmer and entrepreneur Bill Gates, smiling, taken in 2011.](https://cdn.britannica.com/47/188747-050-1D34E743/Bill-Gates-2011.jpg?c=crop&h=40&w=50) Bill Gates](https://www.britannica.com/money/Bill-Gates) [![The Apple logo on the glass cube entrance of the Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York City, with skyscrapers reflected above.](https://cdn.britannica.com/46/253846-004-4D1ECECD/New-York-NY-USA-July-9-2022-Apple-logo-is-seen-at-the-Apple-flagship-store-on-the-5th-Avenue-in-NYC.jpg?c=crop&h=40&w=50) Apple Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc) [![Ellison, Larry](https://cdn.britannica.com/43/199343-050-5A69C731/Larry-Ellison-2012.jpg?c=crop&h=40&w=50) Larry Ellison](https://www.britannica.com/money/Larry-Ellison) Table Of Contents ![Steve Jobs](https://cdn.britannica.com/04/171104-050-5B714956/Steve-Jobs-iPhone-2010.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs holding an iPhone, 2010. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images in full: Steven Paul Jobs born: February 24, 1955, [San Francisco](https://www.britannica.com/place/San-Francisco-California), [California](https://www.britannica.com/place/California-state), U.S. died: October 5, 2011, [Palo Alto](https://www.britannica.com/place/Palo-Alto), [California](https://www.britannica.com/place/California-state) (aged 56) Founder: [Apple Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc) [NeXT Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/topic/NeXT-Inc) Awards And Honors: [Presidential Medal of Freedom (2022)](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom) Top Questions ### Why is Steve Jobs significant? Steve Jobs was a charismatic pioneer of the [personal computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer) era. With [Steve Wozniak](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stephen-Gary-Wozniak), Jobs founded [Apple Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc) in 1976 and transformed the company into a world leader in telecommunications. Widely considered a visionary and a genius, he oversaw the launch of such revolutionary products as the iPod and the iPhone. ### What was Steve Jobs’s early life like? Steve Jobs was born in 1955 and raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California. Though he was interested in engineering, his passions as a youth varied. After dropping out of [Reed College](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Reed-College), Jobs worked as a video game designer at Atari and later went to India to experience [Buddhism](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism). In 1976 he helped launch [Apple](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc). ### What caused Steve Jobs’s death? In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of [pancreatic cancer](https://www.britannica.com/science/pancreatic-cancer), and the following year he announced that he had undergone surgery to remove a tumor. In 2009 Jobs received a liver transplant. In August 2011 he resigned as CEO of [Apple](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc), and two months later, at age 56, he died of complications from pancreatic cancer. **Steve Jobs** (born February 24, 1955, [San Francisco](https://www.britannica.com/place/San-Francisco-California), [California](https://www.britannica.com/place/California-state), U.S.—died October 5, 2011, [Palo Alto](https://www.britannica.com/place/Palo-Alto), California) was the cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now [Apple Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc)), and a charismatic pioneer of the [personal computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer) era. ## Founding of Apple Jobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is now known as [Silicon Valley](https://www.britannica.com/place/Silicon-Valley-region-California). Though he was interested in engineering, his passions of youth varied. He dropped out of [Reed College](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Reed-College), in [Portland](https://www.britannica.com/place/Portland-Oregon), [Oregon](https://www.britannica.com/place/Oregon-state), took a job at Atari Corporation as a [video game](https://www.britannica.com/topic/electronic-game) designer in early 1974, and saved enough money for a pilgrimage to [India](https://www.britannica.com/place/India) to experience [Buddhism](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism). Back in Silicon Valley in the autumn of 1974, Jobs reconnected with [Stephen Wozniak](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stephen-Gary-Wozniak), a former [high school](https://www.britannica.com/topic/high-school) friend who was working for the [Hewlett-Packard Company](https://www.britannica.com/money/Hewlett-Packard-Company). When Wozniak told Jobs of his progress in designing his own computer logic board, Jobs suggested that they go into business together, which they did after Hewlett-Packard formally turned down Wozniak’s design in 1976. The [Apple I](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Apple-I), as they called the logic board, was built in the Jobses’ family garage with money they obtained by selling Jobs’s Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak’s programmable calculator. [![computer chip. computer. Hand holding computer chip. Central processing unit (CPU). history and society, science and technology, microchip, microprocessor motherboard computer Circuit Board](https://cdn.britannica.com/63/166063-131-0E023062/computer-chip-processing-unit-history-society-science.jpg)Britannica Quiz Computers and Technology Quiz](https://www.britannica.com/quiz/computers-and-technology) ![Apple I](https://cdn.britannica.com/02/24402-050-2C2345B1/Steven-Jobs-Apple-I-Stephen-Wozniak-circuit-1976.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs (right) and Steve Wozniak holding an Apple I circuit board, c. 1976. Courtesy of Apple Computer, Inc. Jobs was one of the first entrepreneurs to understand that the [personal computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer) would appeal to a broad audience, at least if it did not appear to belong in a [junior high school](https://www.britannica.com/topic/junior-high-school) science fair. With Jobs’s encouragement, Wozniak designed an improved model, the [Apple II](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Apple-II), complete with a keyboard, and they arranged to have a sleek, molded plastic case manufactured to enclose the unit. Though Jobs had long, unkempt hair and eschewed business garb, he managed to obtain financing, distribution, and publicity for the company, Apple Computer, incorporated in 1977—the same year that the Apple II was completed. The machine was an immediate success, becoming synonymous with the boom in personal computers. In 1981 the company had a record-setting public stock offering, and in 1983 it made the quickest entrance (to that time) into the *Fortune* 500 list of America’s top companies. In 1983 the company recruited [PepsiCo, Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/PepsiCo-Inc), president [John Sculley](https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Sculley) to be its [chief executive officer](https://www.britannica.com/money/chief-executive-officer) (CEO) and, implicitly, Jobs’s mentor in the fine points of running a large corporation. Jobs had convinced Sculley to accept the position by challenging him: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?” The line was shrewdly effective, but it also revealed Jobs’s own near-messianic belief in the computer revolution. ## Insanely great During that same period, Jobs was heading the most important project in the company’s history. In 1979 he led a small group of Apple engineers to a [technology](https://www.britannica.com/technology/technology) demonstration at the [Xerox Corporation](https://www.britannica.com/money/Xerox-Corporation)’s Palo Alto Research Center ([PARC](https://www.britannica.com/topic/PARC-company)) to see how the [graphical user interface](https://www.britannica.com/technology/graphical-user-interface) could make computers easier to use and more efficient. Soon afterward, Jobs left the engineering team that was designing [Lisa](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Lisa), a business computer, to head a smaller group building a lower-cost computer. Both computers were redesigned to exploit and refine the PARC ideas, but Jobs was explicit in favouring the [Macintosh](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Macintosh), or Mac, as the new computer became known. Jobs coddled his engineers and referred to them as artists, but his style was uncompromising; at one point he demanded a redesign of an internal circuit board simply because he considered it unattractive. He would later be renowned for his insistence that the Macintosh be not merely great but “insanely great.” In January 1984 Jobs himself introduced the Macintosh in a brilliantly choreographed demonstration that was the centrepiece of an extraordinary publicity campaign. It would later be pointed to as the archetype of “event marketing.” ![Steve Jobs](https://cdn.britannica.com/21/223021-050-E9485319/Steve-Jobs-1984-original-Macintosh-personal-computer.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs introducing Apple's Macintosh (Mac), January 24, 1984. Paul Sakuma—AP/Shutterstock.com However, the first Macs were underpowered and expensive, and they had few [software](https://www.britannica.com/technology/software) applications—all of which resulted in disappointing sales. Apple steadily improved the machine, so that it eventually became the company’s lifeblood as well as the model for all subsequent computer interfaces. But Jobs’s apparent failure to correct the problem quickly led to tensions in the company, and in 1985 Sculley convinced Apple’s board of directors to remove the company’s famous cofounder. ## NeXT and Pixar Jobs quickly started another firm, NeXT Inc., designing powerful [workstation](https://www.britannica.com/technology/workstation) computers for the education market. His funding partners included Texan entrepreneur [Ross Perot](https://www.britannica.com/money/Ross-Perot) and Canon Inc., a Japanese electronics company. Although the NeXT computer was notable for its engineering design, it was eclipsed by less costly computers from competitors such as [Sun Microsystems, Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Sun-Microsystems-Inc) In the early 1990s Jobs focused the company on its innovative software system, NEXTSTEP. Meanwhile, in 1986 Jobs acquired a controlling interest in [Pixar](https://www.britannica.com/money/Pixar-Animation-Studios), a [computer graphics](https://www.britannica.com/topic/computer-graphics) firm that had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company of Hollywood movie director [George Lucas](https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Lucas). Over the following decade Jobs built Pixar into a major animation studio that, among other achievements, produced the first full-length feature film to be completely computer-animated, *Toy Story*, in 1995. Pixar’s public stock offering that year made Jobs, for the first time, a billionaire. He eventually sold the studio to the [Disney Company](https://www.britannica.com/money/Disney-Company) in 2006. ## Saving Apple In late 1996 Apple, saddled by huge financial losses and on the verge of collapse, hired a new chief executive, [semiconductor](https://www.britannica.com/science/semiconductor) executive Gilbert Amelio. When Amelio learned that the company, following intense and prolonged research efforts, had failed to develop an acceptable replacement for the Macintosh’s aging [operating system](https://www.britannica.com/technology/operating-system) (OS), he chose NEXTSTEP, buying Jobs’s company for more than \$400 million—and bringing Jobs back to Apple as a consultant. However, Apple’s board of directors soon became disenchanted with Amelio’s inability to turn the company’s finances around and in June 1997 requested Apple’s prodigal cofounder to lead the company once again. Jobs quickly forged an alliance with Apple’s erstwhile foe, the [Microsoft Corporation](https://www.britannica.com/money/Microsoft-Corporation), scrapped Amelio’s Mac-clone agreements, and simplified the company’s product line. He also engineered an award-winning advertising campaign that urged potential customers to “think different” and buy Macintoshes. Just as important is what he did not do: he resisted the temptation to make machines that ran Microsoft’s [Windows OS](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Microsoft-Windows); nor did he, as some urged, spin off Apple as a software-only company. Jobs believed that Apple, as the only major [personal computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer) maker with its own operating system, was in a unique position to innovate. ![Steve Jobs with an iMac](https://cdn.britannica.com/45/154745-050-C60B6150/Steve-Jobs-computer-iMac-1998.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs with an iMac computer, 1998. Shutterstock.com Innovate he did. In 1998, Jobs introduced the [iMac](https://www.britannica.com/technology/iMac), an egg-shaped, one-piece computer that offered high-speed processing at a relatively modest price and initiated a trend of high-fashion computers. (Subsequent models sported five different bright colours.) By the end of the year, the iMac was the nation’s highest-selling personal computer, and Jobs was able to announce consistent profits for the once-moribund company. The following year, he triumphed once more with the stylish iBook, a [laptop computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/laptop-computer) built with students in mind, and the G4, a desktop computer sufficiently powerful that (so Apple boasted) it could not be exported under certain circumstances because it qualified as a [supercomputer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/supercomputer). Though Apple did not regain the industry dominance it once had, Steve Jobs had saved his company, and in the process reestablished himself as a master high-technology marketer and visionary. ## Reinventing Apple In 2001 Jobs started reinventing Apple for the 21st century. That was the year that Apple introduced [iTunes](https://www.britannica.com/technology/iTunes), a [computer program](https://www.britannica.com/technology/computer-program) for playing music and for converting music to the compact [MP3](https://www.britannica.com/technology/MP3) digital format commonly used in computers and other digital devices. Later the same year, Apple began selling the [iPod](https://www.britannica.com/technology/iPod), a portable MP3 player, which quickly became the market leader. In 2003 Apple began selling downloadable copies of major record company songs in MP3 format over the [Internet](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Internet). By 2006 more than one billion songs and videos had been sold through Apple’s online iTunes Store. In recognition of the growing shift in the company’s business, Jobs officially changed the name of the company to [Apple Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc) on January 9, 2007. ![Steve Jobs](https://cdn.britannica.com/64/121664-004-73C27A0C/Steve-Jobs.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image 1998 photo of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple (Apple Computer), which he co-founded in 1976. Courtesy of Apple In 2007 Jobs took the company into the telecommunications business with the introduction of the touch-screen [iPhone](https://www.britannica.com/technology/iPhone), a [mobile telephone](https://www.britannica.com/technology/mobile-telephone) with capabilities for playing MP3s and videos and for accessing the Internet. Later that year, Apple introduced the iPod Touch, a portable MP3 and gaming device that included built-in [Wi-Fi](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Wi-Fi) and an iPhone-like touch screen. Bolstered by the use of the iTunes Store to sell Apple and third-party [software](https://www.britannica.com/technology/software), the iPhone and iPod Touch soon boasted more games than any other portable gaming system. Jobs announced in 2008 that future releases of the iPhone and iPod Touch would offer improved game functionality. In an ironic development, Apple, which had not supported game developers in its early years out of fear of its computers not being taken seriously as business machines, was now staking a claim to a greater role in the gaming business to go along with its move into telecommunications. ## Health issues In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of [pancreatic cancer](https://www.britannica.com/science/pancreatic-cancer). He put off surgery for about nine months while he tried alternative medicine approaches. In August 2004 he informed Apple employees of the diagnosis and that he had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. (At the time, there was speculation in the media that he had a major reconstructive surgery known as the Whipple operation, but the nature of the 2004 surgery was not disclosed.) Following a short recovery, Jobs returned to running Apple. ![Steve Jobs with an iPad](https://cdn.britannica.com/59/222659-050-F3ACF7E7/Steve-Jobs-2010.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs introducing the iPad at an Apple event, San Francisco, 2010. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News Throughout 2008 Jobs lost significant weight, which produced considerable speculation that his [cancer](https://www.britannica.com/science/cancer-disease) was back. Perhaps more than those of any other large corporation, Apple’s [stock market](https://www.britannica.com/money/stock-exchange-finance) shares were tied to the health of its CEO, which led to demands by investors for full disclosure of his health—especially as the first reasons given for his weight loss seemed insufficient to explain his sickly appearance. On January 9, 2009, Jobs released a statement that he was suffering from a hormonal imbalance for which he was being treated and that he would continue his corporate duties. Less than a week later, however, he announced that he was taking an immediate leave of absence through the end of June in order to recover his health. Having removed himself, at least temporarily, from the corporate structure, Jobs resumed his previous stance that his health was a private matter and refused to disclose any more details. In June 2009 the *Wall Street Journal* reported that Jobs had received a liver [transplant](https://www.britannica.com/science/transplant-surgery) several months earlier. Soon afterward, with Jobs’s consent, the Tennessee hospital where the operation had been performed confirmed that the transplant had occurred and explained why he had been prioritized to receive a donor organ. Jobs resumed work on June 29, 2009, fulfilling his pledge to return before the end of June. In January 2011, however, Jobs took another medical leave of absence. In August he resigned as CEO but became chairman. He died two months later. In 2022 Jobs was posthumously awarded the [Presidential Medal of Freedom](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom). [Steven Levy](https://www.britannica.com/money/author/Steven-Levy/4387)[The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/money/author/The-Editors-of-Encyclopaedia-Britannica/4419) ## References Jeffrey S. Young, *Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward* (1988), is a somewhat critical biography of Steve Jobs up to the early days of NeXT. Walter Isaacson, *Steve Jobs* (2011), is an authorized biography. Steven Levy, *Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything* (1994), is a brief history of the Macintosh computer and the graphical user interface. Michael S. Malone, *Infinite Loop: How the World’s Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane* (1999), by a veteran Silicon Valley writer, details the corporate history of Apple. [![Britannica Money Logo](https://cdn.britannica.com/money/assets/Money-475x60-footer-2x.png?h=47&w=390)](https://www.britannica.com/money) [About Us](https://www.britannica.com/money/about)[Privacy Policy](https://corporate.britannica.com/privacy-policy-2)[Terms & Conditions](https://corporate.britannica.com/termsofuse.html) © 2026 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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![Steve Jobs](https://cdn.britannica.com/04/171104-050-5B714956/Steve-Jobs-iPhone-2010.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs holding an iPhone, 2010. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images in full: Steven Paul Jobs Top Questions ### Why is Steve Jobs significant? Steve Jobs was a charismatic pioneer of the [personal computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer) era. With [Steve Wozniak](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stephen-Gary-Wozniak), Jobs founded [Apple Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc) in 1976 and transformed the company into a world leader in telecommunications. Widely considered a visionary and a genius, he oversaw the launch of such revolutionary products as the iPod and the iPhone. ### What was Steve Jobs’s early life like? Steve Jobs was born in 1955 and raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California. Though he was interested in engineering, his passions as a youth varied. After dropping out of [Reed College](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Reed-College), Jobs worked as a video game designer at Atari and later went to India to experience [Buddhism](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism). In 1976 he helped launch [Apple](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc). ### What caused Steve Jobs’s death? In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of [pancreatic cancer](https://www.britannica.com/science/pancreatic-cancer), and the following year he announced that he had undergone surgery to remove a tumor. In 2009 Jobs received a liver transplant. In August 2011 he resigned as CEO of [Apple](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc), and two months later, at age 56, he died of complications from pancreatic cancer. **Steve Jobs** (born February 24, 1955, [San Francisco](https://www.britannica.com/place/San-Francisco-California), [California](https://www.britannica.com/place/California-state), U.S.—died October 5, 2011, [Palo Alto](https://www.britannica.com/place/Palo-Alto), California) was the cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now [Apple Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc)), and a charismatic pioneer of the [personal computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer) era. ## Founding of Apple Jobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is now known as [Silicon Valley](https://www.britannica.com/place/Silicon-Valley-region-California). Though he was interested in engineering, his passions of youth varied. He dropped out of [Reed College](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Reed-College), in [Portland](https://www.britannica.com/place/Portland-Oregon), [Oregon](https://www.britannica.com/place/Oregon-state), took a job at Atari Corporation as a [video game](https://www.britannica.com/topic/electronic-game) designer in early 1974, and saved enough money for a pilgrimage to [India](https://www.britannica.com/place/India) to experience [Buddhism](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism). Back in Silicon Valley in the autumn of 1974, Jobs reconnected with [Stephen Wozniak](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stephen-Gary-Wozniak), a former [high school](https://www.britannica.com/topic/high-school) friend who was working for the [Hewlett-Packard Company](https://www.britannica.com/money/Hewlett-Packard-Company). When Wozniak told Jobs of his progress in designing his own computer logic board, Jobs suggested that they go into business together, which they did after Hewlett-Packard formally turned down Wozniak’s design in 1976. The [Apple I](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Apple-I), as they called the logic board, was built in the Jobses’ family garage with money they obtained by selling Jobs’s Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak’s programmable calculator. [![computer chip. computer. Hand holding computer chip. Central processing unit (CPU). history and society, science and technology, microchip, microprocessor motherboard computer Circuit Board](https://cdn.britannica.com/63/166063-131-0E023062/computer-chip-processing-unit-history-society-science.jpg)Britannica Quiz Computers and Technology Quiz](https://www.britannica.com/quiz/computers-and-technology) ![Apple I](https://cdn.britannica.com/02/24402-050-2C2345B1/Steven-Jobs-Apple-I-Stephen-Wozniak-circuit-1976.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs (right) and Steve Wozniak holding an Apple I circuit board, c. 1976. Courtesy of Apple Computer, Inc. Jobs was one of the first entrepreneurs to understand that the [personal computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer) would appeal to a broad audience, at least if it did not appear to belong in a [junior high school](https://www.britannica.com/topic/junior-high-school) science fair. With Jobs’s encouragement, Wozniak designed an improved model, the [Apple II](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Apple-II), complete with a keyboard, and they arranged to have a sleek, molded plastic case manufactured to enclose the unit. Though Jobs had long, unkempt hair and eschewed business garb, he managed to obtain financing, distribution, and publicity for the company, Apple Computer, incorporated in 1977—the same year that the Apple II was completed. The machine was an immediate success, becoming synonymous with the boom in personal computers. In 1981 the company had a record-setting public stock offering, and in 1983 it made the quickest entrance (to that time) into the *Fortune* 500 list of America’s top companies. In 1983 the company recruited [PepsiCo, Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/PepsiCo-Inc), president [John Sculley](https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Sculley) to be its [chief executive officer](https://www.britannica.com/money/chief-executive-officer) (CEO) and, implicitly, Jobs’s mentor in the fine points of running a large corporation. Jobs had convinced Sculley to accept the position by challenging him: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?” The line was shrewdly effective, but it also revealed Jobs’s own near-messianic belief in the computer revolution. ## Insanely great During that same period, Jobs was heading the most important project in the company’s history. In 1979 he led a small group of Apple engineers to a [technology](https://www.britannica.com/technology/technology) demonstration at the [Xerox Corporation](https://www.britannica.com/money/Xerox-Corporation)’s Palo Alto Research Center ([PARC](https://www.britannica.com/topic/PARC-company)) to see how the [graphical user interface](https://www.britannica.com/technology/graphical-user-interface) could make computers easier to use and more efficient. Soon afterward, Jobs left the engineering team that was designing [Lisa](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Lisa), a business computer, to head a smaller group building a lower-cost computer. Both computers were redesigned to exploit and refine the PARC ideas, but Jobs was explicit in favouring the [Macintosh](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Macintosh), or Mac, as the new computer became known. Jobs coddled his engineers and referred to them as artists, but his style was uncompromising; at one point he demanded a redesign of an internal circuit board simply because he considered it unattractive. He would later be renowned for his insistence that the Macintosh be not merely great but “insanely great.” In January 1984 Jobs himself introduced the Macintosh in a brilliantly choreographed demonstration that was the centrepiece of an extraordinary publicity campaign. It would later be pointed to as the archetype of “event marketing.” ![Steve Jobs](https://cdn.britannica.com/21/223021-050-E9485319/Steve-Jobs-1984-original-Macintosh-personal-computer.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs introducing Apple's Macintosh (Mac), January 24, 1984. Paul Sakuma—AP/Shutterstock.com However, the first Macs were underpowered and expensive, and they had few [software](https://www.britannica.com/technology/software) applications—all of which resulted in disappointing sales. Apple steadily improved the machine, so that it eventually became the company’s lifeblood as well as the model for all subsequent computer interfaces. But Jobs’s apparent failure to correct the problem quickly led to tensions in the company, and in 1985 Sculley convinced Apple’s board of directors to remove the company’s famous cofounder. ## NeXT and Pixar Jobs quickly started another firm, NeXT Inc., designing powerful [workstation](https://www.britannica.com/technology/workstation) computers for the education market. His funding partners included Texan entrepreneur [Ross Perot](https://www.britannica.com/money/Ross-Perot) and Canon Inc., a Japanese electronics company. Although the NeXT computer was notable for its engineering design, it was eclipsed by less costly computers from competitors such as [Sun Microsystems, Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Sun-Microsystems-Inc) In the early 1990s Jobs focused the company on its innovative software system, NEXTSTEP. Meanwhile, in 1986 Jobs acquired a controlling interest in [Pixar](https://www.britannica.com/money/Pixar-Animation-Studios), a [computer graphics](https://www.britannica.com/topic/computer-graphics) firm that had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company of Hollywood movie director [George Lucas](https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Lucas). Over the following decade Jobs built Pixar into a major animation studio that, among other achievements, produced the first full-length feature film to be completely computer-animated, *Toy Story*, in 1995. Pixar’s public stock offering that year made Jobs, for the first time, a billionaire. He eventually sold the studio to the [Disney Company](https://www.britannica.com/money/Disney-Company) in 2006. ## Saving Apple In late 1996 Apple, saddled by huge financial losses and on the verge of collapse, hired a new chief executive, [semiconductor](https://www.britannica.com/science/semiconductor) executive Gilbert Amelio. When Amelio learned that the company, following intense and prolonged research efforts, had failed to develop an acceptable replacement for the Macintosh’s aging [operating system](https://www.britannica.com/technology/operating-system) (OS), he chose NEXTSTEP, buying Jobs’s company for more than \$400 million—and bringing Jobs back to Apple as a consultant. However, Apple’s board of directors soon became disenchanted with Amelio’s inability to turn the company’s finances around and in June 1997 requested Apple’s prodigal cofounder to lead the company once again. Jobs quickly forged an alliance with Apple’s erstwhile foe, the [Microsoft Corporation](https://www.britannica.com/money/Microsoft-Corporation), scrapped Amelio’s Mac-clone agreements, and simplified the company’s product line. He also engineered an award-winning advertising campaign that urged potential customers to “think different” and buy Macintoshes. Just as important is what he did not do: he resisted the temptation to make machines that ran Microsoft’s [Windows OS](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Microsoft-Windows); nor did he, as some urged, spin off Apple as a software-only company. Jobs believed that Apple, as the only major [personal computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer) maker with its own operating system, was in a unique position to innovate. ![Steve Jobs with an iMac](https://cdn.britannica.com/45/154745-050-C60B6150/Steve-Jobs-computer-iMac-1998.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs with an iMac computer, 1998. Shutterstock.com Innovate he did. In 1998, Jobs introduced the [iMac](https://www.britannica.com/technology/iMac), an egg-shaped, one-piece computer that offered high-speed processing at a relatively modest price and initiated a trend of high-fashion computers. (Subsequent models sported five different bright colours.) By the end of the year, the iMac was the nation’s highest-selling personal computer, and Jobs was able to announce consistent profits for the once-moribund company. The following year, he triumphed once more with the stylish iBook, a [laptop computer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/laptop-computer) built with students in mind, and the G4, a desktop computer sufficiently powerful that (so Apple boasted) it could not be exported under certain circumstances because it qualified as a [supercomputer](https://www.britannica.com/technology/supercomputer). Though Apple did not regain the industry dominance it once had, Steve Jobs had saved his company, and in the process reestablished himself as a master high-technology marketer and visionary. ## Reinventing Apple In 2001 Jobs started reinventing Apple for the 21st century. That was the year that Apple introduced [iTunes](https://www.britannica.com/technology/iTunes), a [computer program](https://www.britannica.com/technology/computer-program) for playing music and for converting music to the compact [MP3](https://www.britannica.com/technology/MP3) digital format commonly used in computers and other digital devices. Later the same year, Apple began selling the [iPod](https://www.britannica.com/technology/iPod), a portable MP3 player, which quickly became the market leader. In 2003 Apple began selling downloadable copies of major record company songs in MP3 format over the [Internet](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Internet). By 2006 more than one billion songs and videos had been sold through Apple’s online iTunes Store. In recognition of the growing shift in the company’s business, Jobs officially changed the name of the company to [Apple Inc.](https://www.britannica.com/money/Apple-Inc) on January 9, 2007. ![Steve Jobs](https://cdn.britannica.com/64/121664-004-73C27A0C/Steve-Jobs.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image 1998 photo of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple (Apple Computer), which he co-founded in 1976. Courtesy of Apple In 2007 Jobs took the company into the telecommunications business with the introduction of the touch-screen [iPhone](https://www.britannica.com/technology/iPhone), a [mobile telephone](https://www.britannica.com/technology/mobile-telephone) with capabilities for playing MP3s and videos and for accessing the Internet. Later that year, Apple introduced the iPod Touch, a portable MP3 and gaming device that included built-in [Wi-Fi](https://www.britannica.com/technology/Wi-Fi) and an iPhone-like touch screen. Bolstered by the use of the iTunes Store to sell Apple and third-party [software](https://www.britannica.com/technology/software), the iPhone and iPod Touch soon boasted more games than any other portable gaming system. Jobs announced in 2008 that future releases of the iPhone and iPod Touch would offer improved game functionality. In an ironic development, Apple, which had not supported game developers in its early years out of fear of its computers not being taken seriously as business machines, was now staking a claim to a greater role in the gaming business to go along with its move into telecommunications. ## Health issues In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of [pancreatic cancer](https://www.britannica.com/science/pancreatic-cancer). He put off surgery for about nine months while he tried alternative medicine approaches. In August 2004 he informed Apple employees of the diagnosis and that he had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. (At the time, there was speculation in the media that he had a major reconstructive surgery known as the Whipple operation, but the nature of the 2004 surgery was not disclosed.) Following a short recovery, Jobs returned to running Apple. ![Steve Jobs with an iPad](https://cdn.britannica.com/59/222659-050-F3ACF7E7/Steve-Jobs-2010.jpg?w=385) Open full sized image Steve Jobs introducing the iPad at an Apple event, San Francisco, 2010. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News Throughout 2008 Jobs lost significant weight, which produced considerable speculation that his [cancer](https://www.britannica.com/science/cancer-disease) was back. Perhaps more than those of any other large corporation, Apple’s [stock market](https://www.britannica.com/money/stock-exchange-finance) shares were tied to the health of its CEO, which led to demands by investors for full disclosure of his health—especially as the first reasons given for his weight loss seemed insufficient to explain his sickly appearance. On January 9, 2009, Jobs released a statement that he was suffering from a hormonal imbalance for which he was being treated and that he would continue his corporate duties. Less than a week later, however, he announced that he was taking an immediate leave of absence through the end of June in order to recover his health. Having removed himself, at least temporarily, from the corporate structure, Jobs resumed his previous stance that his health was a private matter and refused to disclose any more details. In June 2009 the *Wall Street Journal* reported that Jobs had received a liver [transplant](https://www.britannica.com/science/transplant-surgery) several months earlier. Soon afterward, with Jobs’s consent, the Tennessee hospital where the operation had been performed confirmed that the transplant had occurred and explained why he had been prioritized to receive a donor organ. Jobs resumed work on June 29, 2009, fulfilling his pledge to return before the end of June. In January 2011, however, Jobs took another medical leave of absence. In August he resigned as CEO but became chairman. He died two months later. In 2022 Jobs was posthumously awarded the [Presidential Medal of Freedom](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom). [Steven Levy](https://www.britannica.com/money/author/Steven-Levy/4387)[The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/money/author/The-Editors-of-Encyclopaedia-Britannica/4419) ## References Jeffrey S. Young, *Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward* (1988), is a somewhat critical biography of Steve Jobs up to the early days of NeXT. Walter Isaacson, *Steve Jobs* (2011), is an authorized biography. Steven Levy, *Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything* (1994), is a brief history of the Macintosh computer and the graphical user interface. Michael S. Malone, *Infinite Loop: How the World’s Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane* (1999), by a veteran Silicon Valley writer, details the corporate history of Apple.

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