Steve Jobs Is Dead

Steve Jobs has died at the age of 56.  The news of his death was released by Apple in a short statement.

"We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.

Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that
enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.

His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts."

The co-founder of Apple announced in 2004 that he had pancreatic cancer. He later underwent a liver transplant.


Earlier this year he started a third medical leave of absence from the company and later resigned as CEO, although he was appointed Chairman.
  

Forbes reports: Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955, to Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, and adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. The couple would later move with their son to Cupertino, California.

Jobs didn’t take the traditional route to riches. After a semester at Oregon’s Reed College, Jobs dropped out and returned to California, where he and another college dropout, Steve Wozniak, built the first Apple computer in his family’s Los Altos, California garage in 1976.

The pair’s next computer would be the company’s first hit. In 1980, Apple sold shares to the public. At the age of 25, Jobs was a millionaire. It wasn’t until four years later, however, that Jobs would unveil the product he would become best known for, the Macintosh computer, the first mass market computer to make use of a graphical user interface and a mouse.

Clashes with Apple’s management team led to Jobs ouster in 1985. Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 when it acquired NeXT, the workstation company Jobs founded in 1985.

“They were in pretty dismal straights, they didn’t have cash, they had wasted a lot of money on products like Newton, they had gone through a few different chief executives, they were largely in disarray,” Van Baker, a research vice president at tech tracker Gartner says.

Jobs went on to transform Apple in a drama that began with a desperate deal with arch-rival Microsoft in 1997 for a $150 million investment and ended with Apple assuming the mantle of the world’s most valuable technology company. Along the way Jobs introduced the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and fresh iterations of the Macintosh computer he first introduced in 1984. ”It’s just astounding,” Baker says.

Through it all, Jobs evolved, too, from mercurial outsider into a turtleneck clad icon who seemed as interested in molding Apple — and its product pipeline — as pitching its next product. It was a process that was spurred by Jobs diagnosis with pancreatic cancer in 2004 and a series of medical leaves that paralleled a dramatic — and very public — drop in the Apple pitchman’s weight that nearly overshadowed the new products rolled out during his public appearances.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking,”Jobs said at a commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary,”

Over the next six years, Jobs wouldn’t waste a moment. Jobs would introduce the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, a pair of product that have redefine company built around Macintosh computers Jobs had shaped and reshaped over the years. Apple is now the world’s most valuable company.

Through it all, however, Jobs health appeared to wane. Jobs, of course, has been out on medical leave since January, promising only to “return as soon as I can.” (See “The Medical Mismeasure Of Steve Jobs“) The medical leave was Jobs’ third since 2004.

While Jobs surprised the company’s fans by introducing the company’s new iPad, March 2, and a new suite of online services dubbed ‘iCloud,’ at Apple’s annual developer’s conference June 6, he never made the return to active duty many had hoped for.

On August 24, he resigned as Chief Executive, handing over his duties to longtime Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, while assuming the role of Chairman of Apple’s board of directors.

Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, and four children.