Today is the birthday of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, and iconic Silicon Valley billionaire.
Steve was born in 1955. His biological parents were unmarried, and one week after his birth, Steve was put up for adoption. He was raised by Paul and Clara Jobs in Mountain View California...during a time when the Santa Clara Valley was mostly known for the sweet smell of its apricot orchards. Jobs went to Homestead High School in Cupertino, CA...and attended after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Co. in Palo Alto. Soon, he was hired at HP as a summer employee, where he met and worked with Stephen Wozniak. After graduating from high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, OR...yet dropped out after a semester.
In 1974, Jobs returned to California, and began attending meetings of the "Homebrew Computer Club" with Steve Wozniak. He took a job as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of "Pong" and other popular video games. During this time, it was discovered that a slightly modified toy whistle included in every box of Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal was able to reproduce the supervision tone used by AT&T long distance telephone system. Jobs and Wozniak went into business briefly in 1974 building "blue boxes" which allowed free long distance calls.
In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer to manufacture a home computer Wozniak had originally developed for his own use. Over the next several decades, the fortunes of Jobs and Apple went from boom...to bust...to boom. With the development of the Macintosh computer, the iMac, and the iPod...Jobs fulfilled an early goal, "I want to make a dent in the universe."
In 1986, he formed the computer animation company, Pixar...which was recently acquired by the Walt Disney Company for $7.4 billion in stock, a deal expected to close this summer. The transaction makes Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder and will give him a seat on the company's board of directors.
In a 2005 commencement address at Stanford, Jobs said:
"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. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."
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