Most Effective News of ‎2011

Most Effective News of ‎2011

1. Japan Tsunami,

2. Earthquake (Japan, New Zealand, Haiti etc.)

3. Tunisian Revolution,

4. Egyptian Revolution,

5. Death of Osama Bin Laden,

6. Occupy Wall Street Protest,

7. Christians protect Muslims during prayer in Cairo, Egypt ,

8. Libyan Revolution,

9. Death of Muammar Gaddafi (Former Libyan President),

9. Death of Steve Jobs (Founder of Apple),

10. Death of Dennis Ritchie (Father of C Programming Language),

11. Social Media Revolution,

12. Occupy Protest Worldwide

What is your point of view?

by Admin

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100 things you didn’t know about Apple and Steve Jobs

If you’re into interesting facts, few companies have as secretive, cool and intriguing histories as Apple and its leader, Steve Jobs. Anything missing? Leave a comment.

1. Apple didn’t have two founders. It had three. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.
2. Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive share the same middle name: “Paul.”
3. Before working at Apple, Jonathan Ive worked for a company called Tangerine.
4. The original Apple 1 computer sold for $666.66.
5. The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan (the cube) is said to be one of the most photographed landmarks in the world.
6. Nine U.S. states don’t have Apple stores: Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
7. Before co-founding Apple, Steve Jobs worked for Atari.
8. Jonathan Ive has worn the same shirt in every Apple product intro video since 2000.
9. Steve Jobs is a Buddhist.
10. Steve Jobs’ birth father was a Syrian Muslim, Abdulfattah Jandali.
11. Steve Jobs met Steve Wozniak when Jobs was 16 and Wozniak 21.
12. Steve Jobs bought Pixar from George Lucas for $10 million and sold it to Disney for $7.6 billion.
13. Steve Jobs has four children: one son and three daughters.
14. Jonathan Ive has twins.
15. Steve Jobs originally denied he was the father of his first child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs.
16. Steve Jobs sold his apartment in New York City to U2 frontman Bono.
17. In 1998 Steve Jobs let Bill Clinton use his mansion in Woodside, California.
18. Steve Jobs underwent a liver transplant at a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee in 2009.
19. Apple was established on April Fools Day.
20. Apple has more than 35,000 employees worldwide.
21. Apple once disposed of 2,700 unsold Lisas in a Utah landfill. The computer originally sold at $10,000 each.
22. Only 30-50 of the original Apple 1 computers still exist, with originals selling for up to $50,000.
23. Apple’s original logo in 1976 featured Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree.
24. Apple’s current logo was designed by Rob Janoff.
25. First slogan: “Byte into an Apple.”
26. Apple was the first company to introduce the mouse and the trackpad.
27. After being kicked out of Apple, Steve Jobs started an unsuccessful company called NeXT.
28. In 2001, Apple’s stock price was less than $8 per share. In April 2010 the price reached $272.
29. In January 2007, Apple Inc. dropped “Computer” from its corporate name.
30. Apple.com is in the top 50 websites visited worldwide and in the top 30 visited in the United States.
31. Apple wasn’t started in a garage, it was started in a bedroom at 11161 Crist Drive in Los Altos.
32. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak both worked together as summer employees at Hewlett-Packard.
33. The longest-lived Apple computer of all time was the Apple IIe, which was on sale for nearly 11 years.
34. Apple didn’t sell a Windows-compatible iPod until nine months after the iPod was introduced.
35. The time shown on all of the devices in pictures on Apple’s website is the same (9:41 a.m. for iOS devices and 10:50 a.m. for Macs). The time is coordinated with when the pictures will be shown during Steve Jobs’ keynote address.
36. Apple once created a stand-alone game console called the Pippin.
37. The famous 1984 Macintosh ad was directed by Ridley Scott, director of Alien and Gladiator.
38. Apple created the Dogcow in 1983. The sound she makes is “Moof!”
39. Steve Jobs’ largest parody Twitter account is @ceostevejobs.
40. Steve Jobs pays himself an annual salary of $1.
41. Steve Jobs’ annual income from Disney shares is $48 million.
42. Despite being one of the biggest companies in the world, Apple’s current board of directors (at six) is among the smallest in the Fortune 500.
43. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is on Apple’s board of directors.
44. Steve Jobs was a college drop out.
45. Steve Jobs was awarded the National Medal of Technology from Ronald Reagan.
46. Steve Jobs commonly dons a black long-sleeved mock-turtleneck made by St. Croix, Levi’s 501 blue jeans (he owns more than 100), and New Balance 992 sneakers.
47. In 2008, Bloomberg accidentally published a 2,500 word obituary of Steve Jobs in its news service, leaving blank spaces for his age and cause of death.
48. Steve Jobs traveled to India looking for enlightenment in 1974.
49. Steve Jobs is dyslexic.
50. Steve Jobs said he let snakes loose in his third grade classroom and “exploded bombs.”
51. While Steve Jobs worked at Atari, he was moved to the night shift because he had poor personal hygiene and smelled bad.
52. Steve Jobs and his wife are strict vegans.
53. Apples are Steve Jobs’ favorite food.
54. Steve jobs convinced the president of PepsiCo to work for Apple.
55. During the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Steve Jobs used the phone to call Starbucks and order 4,000 lattes to go.
56. Steve Jobs has big feet, at size 14.
57. Steve Jobs often parks in Handicap spaces at Apple headquarters.
58. Steve Jobs’ sister, Mona Simpson, is a novelist.
59. Apple is now a $50 billion company.
60. Apple sells 91 percent of $1,000+ PCs.
61. Apple’s idea for the graphical user interface actually came from Xerox.
62. John Hodgman, the  PC in the “I’m a Mac” commercials, uses a Mac.
63. Apple has been in the retail store business since 2001.
64. Apple has had six CEOs: Michael Scott, A.C. “Mike” Markkula, John Sculley, Michael Spindler, Gil Amelio and Steve Jobs.
65. Philip W. Schiller, senior vice president of marketing, began but didn’t complete a Ph.D. in English.
66. Steve Jobs was portrayed by Noah Wyle in the film “Pirates of Silicon Valley.”
67. Macs last an average of six years. PCs last an average of four years.
68. The average PC owner spends 50 hours a year troubleshooting. The average Mac owner spends 5 hours a year.
69. Teachers and students using Macs are found to be 44% more productive.
70. When it was first released Steve Jobs gave every Apple employee a free iPhone.
71. Apple began work on a touch-screen tablet before work began on the iPhone. The iPad wasn’t released until three years after the iPhone, however.
72. The iPod’s codename was “Dulcimer.”
73. Gonzo, Jedi, Malibu, Peter Pan, Rosebud, and Yikes! have all been codenames for Macs.
74. The signatures of the Macintosh hardware team were originally engraved inside the computer’s case.
75. Steve Jobs originally considered “Macintosh” to be a code name and wanted to rename the project.
76. Time Magazine considered naming Steve Jobs “Man of the Year” in 1982, even sending a reporter for interviews multiple times, but instead, the magazine named “the computer” the machine of the year.
77. Susan Kare once created a computer icon of Steve Jobs while she worked on the Macintosh team.
78. Anya Major, a discus thrower, threw the sledgehammer at the screen in the famous 1984 commercial.
79. The 1984 ad was originally proposed to be used as a print advertisement in the Wall Street Journal to promote the Apple II.
80. Apple’s Board of Directors hated the 1984 commercial when they saw it but decided to take the risk anyway.
81. The very first image shown on the Macintosh was of Disney character Scrooge McDuck.
82. In 2010 Apple’s market cap exceeded Microsoft for the first time since 1989.
83. Apple’s online store began on November 10, 1997.
84. The first Apple retail stores opened in Virginia and California.
85. Apple’s Cupertino campus has six buildings that total 850,000 square feet and was built in 1993.
86. Steve Job’s birthday is February 24, 1955.
87. When he was growing up, Steve Jobs lived on 45th Avenue in San Francisco.
88. In his childhood Steve Jobs swallowed a bottle of ant poison and had to go to the ER.
89. While in high school Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak made and sold Blue Boxes to get free calls from public telephone systems.
90. In 1972, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak took $3 an hour jobs dressed as “Alice in Wonderland” characters at the Westgate Mall in San Jose.
91. At the first Apple Halloween costume party, Steve Jobs dressed up as Jesus Christ.
92. When the first IBM PC debuted, Apple took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal with the words “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.”
93. In 1982 Steve Jobs made Bill Gates and Microsoft promise never to work on any business software that would use a mouse unless it was for Apple.
94. Steve Jobs dated singer Joan Baez.
95. Steve Jobs once stared as President Roosevelt in a war-themed 1984 ad parody called 1944, where Macs start a war with IBM computers.
96. Paul Rand, the creator of the IBM logo, was hired to create the brand identity and logo for NeXT.
97. Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell were married ay the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park on March 18.
98. Jonathan Ive’s first piece of work at Apple was the 20th Anniversary Mac.
99. Steve Jobs once sold the King of Spain a NeXT computer at a party, even before it was released.
100. Steve Jobs once tried to get NASA to let him ride the space shuttle.

Source: Internet

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Steve Jobs & Occupy Wall Street

At the passing of Steve Jobs this week, it occurred to me he had some important words for Occupy Wall Street. The VO is Steve Jobs for an Apple Think Different ad that ran, but his original VO never aired. It was replaced by actor Richard Dreyfus. There is so much discussion online about both Jobs passing and OWS, I thought marrying the two might bring about an interesting discussion.


Source: YouTube

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Apple fans reach for Jobs' devices to mourn him

He was a conjurer, a modern magician who reached into tomorrow and came up with things that changed millions of lives. And as people gathered at Apple Stores from Sydney 

to San Francisco to mourn Steve Jobs, the feeling was more than grief for an executive or even an inventor. It was something closer to awe for a wizard.

On Thursday, the admirers who turned his technological marvels into everyday tools used them as instruments of grief. People held up pictures of candles on their iPads, 

Apple computer fans hold their iPhones and iPads displaying candle graphics during a candle light vigil to pay tribute to Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO, at an Apple Store in the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011. Apple announced Jobs' death without giving a specific cause. He died on Wednesdayat the age of 56. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

booted up their MacBook Pros to watch old Jobs presentations on YouTube, used their iPhones to sift through remembrances on Twitter.

They grieved his loss through devices that before his time, or without his vision, would have been considered beyond humanity's reach.

Ten years ago, the only people who carried their music around were tech geeks, music obsessives and those willing to tote a clunky CD player. Presto — the iPod, and 

everyone wanted one. And then another and another.

Five years ago, cellphones had hinges, and the displays looked more like the age of Atari than the age of the Internet. Texting, for the most part, was a matter of 

cryptography, tapping out strings of numbers to make words. Presto — the iPhone, and everyone wanted one of those, too.

Two years ago, the economy had just tanked, and it was hard enough for companies to persuade people to buy the things they needed. Getting people to buy a product they 

didn't need was out of the question. Most people already had a desktop computer, or a laptop, or a smartphone. And yet, presto — the iPad.

Nothing up his sleeve. Though Jobs, ever the showman, once reached into the tiny fifth pocket of his trademark blue jeans at an Apple event and fished out an iPod Nano, 

just to emphasize how small the gadget was. They always were. Ever smaller, ever sleeker, ever cooler.

Anne Sweeney, the president of Disney and ABC, remembered when Jobs flew from Cupertino, Calif., to Burbank to persuade her to license ABC shows to be shown on the tiny 

screen of his newest invention, the video iPod. He wowed them by playing an episode of ABC's own hit show, "Lost."

Sweeney was so bowled over she forgot to ask where he got a copy of the program.

"I thought, 'He's Steve Jobs. He can do anything,'" she remembered.

One day after his death, two days after Apple introduced the latest incarnation of a touch-screen phone that touched pop culture, sadness and admiration poured out — not 

for a rock star, not for a religious figure, but for an American corporate executive.

"He was a genius," Rosario Hidalgo said outside an Apple Store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan while her daughter, 21-month-old Carlotta, used an iPhone to play an 

app that teaches children to match animal sounds to animal pictures.

For people who have grown up in a world where iPod headphones are as ubiquitous as wristwatches were to a previous generation, Jobs was remembered as their Elvis Presley 

or John Lennon. Perhaps even their Thomas Edison.

"It's like the end of the innovators," said Scott Robbins, 34, who described himself as an Apple fan of 20 years and who rushed to an Apple Store in San Francisco when 

he heard the news.

Apple announced Jobs' death Wednesday night and remembered him as a "visionary and creative genius." The company announced no cause of death, but Jobs had been diagnosed 

with a rare pancreatic cancer seven years ago and had a liver transplant in 2009. He was 56. The company did not release any details about Jobs' funeral; a spokesman 

said there would be no public services.

On Thursday, the Apple website, which usually features slick presentations of multicolored iPods and ever-thinner MacBook laptop computers, simply displayed a black-

and-white photo of Jobs, thumb and finger to his beard as if in contemplation.

Around the world, tributes sprang up of the highest and lowest technology.

In the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo, people held up iPhones and iPads, their screens facing outward and displaying sharply defined, touchable graphics of flickering 

candles.

At an Apple Store in Hong Kong, old and new means of grief came together: People scribbled "RIP" and "We miss Steve" and longer notes of condolence on Post-It notes, and 

stuck them to an iPad display.

And at the 24-hour Apple Store in midtown Manhattan, the remembrances were more traditional. Passersby left flowers and candles, actual ones. Even there, people snapped 

pictures of the memorial with their iPhones.

"I was so saddened. For me it was like Michael Jackson or Princess Diana — that magnitude," Stephen Jarjoura said at the Apple Store in Sydney. His said Jobs left a 

legacy to rival Edison and Albert Einstein.

Philippe Meunier, a senior partner of a Canadian ad agency who was visiting New York from Montreal, reflected on how weird it was to receive the news of Jobs' death on 

the phone he invented.

Even in Syria, seven months into an uprising, people paused to take pride in Jobs, whose father was born in Homs, the third-largest city.

"This shows that this country can produce geniuses, if only we had freedoms instead of a suffocating dictatorship," said Sara, a 23-year-old Syrian student who refused 

to give her full name for fear of Syrian government reprisal.

Apple has sold 129 million iPhones and 29 million iPads. And in the decade since it revolutionized the music industry by offering "1,000 songs in your pocket," it has 

sold 300 million iPods, or roughly enough to outfit every person in the United States.

Famously devoted to Apple products — and often mocked, it must be said, by people who are not — even the acolytes of Jobs paused to reflect on how deeply his creations 

were enmeshed in their lives. Seamlessly, of course.

"I'm Apple everything," said Alison Brie, who plays Annie Edison on the NBC comedy show "Community." ''It's changed the way we listen to music and watch TV, connect to 

fans. Twitter on my phone is — it's huge."

In New York, a family visiting from Norway waited for the 9 a.m. opening of an Apple Store. Jorund Skurdal said his family owned about 15 Apple gadgets, including "a 

couple iPads, iPods, an iMac, an iBook, and some other things."

Five-year-old son Carsten already had his own MacBook, and 3-year-old Sanna was an iPod fan. Carsten had just bought a new app yesterday — Life of George, an interactive 

Lego game.

"He was one of a kind," Skurdal, who lives in Oslo, said of Jobs. "He was able to take these boring computer items and make them accessible, usable and very sexy." His 

main interest now, he said, "is that the company survives, and thrives. I think it will."

Jobs' death came a day after Tim Cook, who took over as Apple CEO when Jobs stepped down in August, presided over the launch of the iPhone 4S. It was the first time in 

years Apple had launched a major product without Jobs to advertise it in his trademark jeans and black mock turtleneck.

Apple stock, which traded at about $5 a share when Jobs assumed the CEO job for the second time in 1997, passed $400 earlier this year. Investors have worried for years 

about what would happen to the company without him.

Because so many products that were graced by the Jobs touch are still in the sales pipeline, it will take years to measure the impact of his death. On Thursday, the 

stock fluctuated, but only by a couple of percentage points. It closed down 88 cents at $377.37.

In a measure of his impact on personal technology, Jobs was venerated by his fiercest competitors in the hours after his death.

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, a company that Apple once treated as Goliath to its David and then blew past in market value, said it was "an insanely great 

honor" to have known Jobs. A statement of grief came from Sony, whose Walkman and Discman were buried by the iPod.

Google added a link to the Apple site on its famously minimalist search page. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, thanked him for changing the world.

To the extent that there is an online version of the old-time public square, it was overrun Thursday by remembrances of Jobs.

On Twitter, where the most popular "trending" topics change by the hour, "ThankYouSteve" and "iSad" were still high on the list a day after his death.

On Facebook, people posted revisions of the Apple logo, a stylized apple with a detached leaf and a half-moon bite taken out. One added a frown and tears to the apple. 

Another replaced the bite with a silhouette of Jobs himself.

Heads of state around the world added their thoughts. President Barack Obama said Jobs exemplified American ingenuity. Mexico's President Felipe Calderon bemoaned the 

loss of "one of the most visionary minds of our times." India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was "deeply saddened."

Source: 
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Thank You Steve

Created by Twitter’s ‘Information design nerd’, Miguel Rios, this poster includes all the public #thankyousteve Tweets sent over about 4.5 hours on the evening of Oct 5, 2011. The Tweets are ordered by number of Retweets, from the top left – view high res here. Arnold Schwarnznegger’s tweet was the most retweeted.

Similarly, an Argentina based creative agency, Vulsai, has built a live tribute to Jobs called To The Crazy One based on a similar idea. It’s a little buggy but looks beautiful. (Thanks @kuatofkuat)

If you haven’t had the chance, don’t miss our round up of the most notable photos, videos, quotes and tweets about Steve Jobs from the last 24 hours.

Source: The Next Web

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Steve Jobs told us what we needed before we knew

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Steve Jobs saw the future and led the world to it. He moved technology from garages to pockets, took entertainment from discs to bytes and turned gadgets into extensions of the people who use them.

Jobs, who founded and ran Apple, told us what we needed before we wanted it.

"To some people, this is like Elvis Presley or John Lennon. It's a change in our times. It's the end of an era," said Scott Robbins, 34, a barber and an Apple fan. "It's like the end of the innovators."

Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause. He died peacefully on Wednesday, according to a statement from family members who were present. He was 56.

FILE - In this Jan. 15, 2008, file photo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds up the new MacBook Air after giving the keynote address at the Apple MacWorld Conference in San Francisco. Apple on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011 said Jobs has died. He was 56. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

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

President Barack Obama said in a statement that Jobs "exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity."

"Steve was among the greatest of American innovators — brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world and talented enough to do it," he said.

Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January — his third since his health problems began — and resigned in August. Jobs became Apple's chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.

Outside Apple's Cupertino headquarters, three flags — an American flag, a California state flag and an Apple flag — were flying at half-staff late Wednesday.

"Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor." Cook wrote in an email to Apple's employees. "Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."

The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest iPhone, a device that got a lukewarm reception. Perhaps, there would have been more excitement had Jobs been well enough to show it off with his trademark theatrics.

Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Almost all that wealth has been created since Jobs' return.

Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health.

He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries.

For transformation of American industry, he has few rivals. He has long been linked to his personal computer-age contemporary, Bill Gates, and has drawn comparisons to other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.'s largest shareholder, a by-product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006.

Perhaps most influentially, Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered "1,000 songs in your pocket." Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch.

In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple's App Store, where developers could sell iPhone "apps" which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one.

By 2011, Apple had become the second-largest company of any kind in the United States by market value. In August, it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company.

Under Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand didn't exist, he leveraged a cult-like following to create it.

When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda — "one more thing" — before introducing its latest ambitious idea.

In later years, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues about his health. Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a very rare form of pancreatic cancer — an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He underwent surgery and said he had been cured. In 2009, following weight loss he initially attributed to a hormonal imbalance, he abruptly took a six-month leave. During that time, he received a liver transplant that became public two months after it was performed.

He went on another medical leave in January 2011, this time for an unspecified duration. He never went back and resigned as CEO in August, though he stayed on as chairman. Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, he didn't reference his illness in his resignation letter.

Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist.

Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, California, a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school.

Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972 but dropped out after six months.

"All of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it," he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. "I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out."

When he returned to California in 1974, Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club — a group of computer hobbyists — with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older.

Wozniak's homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple Computer Inc. in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. According to Wozniak, Jobs suggested the name after visiting an "apple orchard" that Wozniak said was actually a commune.

Their first creation was the Apple I — essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor.

The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25.

During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Jobs again spotted mass potential in a niche invention: a computer that allowed people to control computers with the click of a mouse, not typed commands. He returned to Apple and ordered his engineering team to copy what he had seen.

It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people's concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products. Under Jobs, Apple didn't invent computers, digital music players or smartphones — it reinvented them for people who didn't want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working.

"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas," Jobs said in an interview for the 1996 PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds."

The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier Lisa — the same name as his daughter — launched to a cool reception in 1983. The less-expensive Macintosh, named for an employee's favorite apple, exploded onto the scene in 1984.

The Mac was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referenced George Orwell's "1984" and captured Apple's iconoclastic style. In the ad, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother-like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track uniform burst into the hall and launched a hammer into the screen, which exploded, stunning the drones, as a narrator announced the arrival of the Mac.

There were early stumbles at Apple. Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial spike, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programs had been written for it.

With Apple's stock price sinking, conflicts between Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Jobs out of his day-to-day role leading the Macintosh team. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months.

"What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating," Jobs said in his Stanford speech. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

He got into two other companies: Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer-animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million.

Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then in 1995 came "Toy Story," the first computer-animated full-length feature. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar's next two films, "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2." Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock in a deal that got him a seat on Disney's board and 138 million shares of stock that accounted for most of his fortune. Forbes magazine estimated Jobs was worth $7 billion in a survey last month.

With Next, Jobs came up with a cube-shaped computer. He was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details, insisting on design perfection even for the machine's guts. The machine cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000, and he never managed to spark much demand for it.

Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software — a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers.

By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows.

Larry Ellison, Jobs' close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the CEO of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year.

He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company's focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to "Think different."

Apple's first new product under his direction, the brightly colored, plastic iMac, launched in 1998 and sold about 2 million in its first year. Apple returned to profitability that year. Jobs dropped the "interim" from his title in 2000.

He changed his style, too, said Tim Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for Creative Strategies.

"In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak," he said. In his second stint, "he clearly was much more mellow and more mature."

In the decade that followed, Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products.

Apple's popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget.

The arrival of the iTunes music store in 2003 gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet-savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.

Jobs' command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone's launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad's debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance.

The decade was not without its glitches. In the mid-2000s, Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock options backdating, a practice that artificially raised the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC.

Jobs' personal ethos — a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy — was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology — a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals.

For technology lovers, buying Apple products has meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating — even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno-geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own.

Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as "deeply moody and maddeningly erratic." In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978.

Few seemed immune to Jobs' charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything — even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off.

"He always has an aura around his persona," said Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. "When you talk to him, you know you're really talking to a brilliant mind."

But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.

Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman.

In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford's graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near-repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then-girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Jobs relented.

Jobs started looking for his biological family in his teens, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997. He found his biological sister when he was 27. They became friends, and through her Jobs met his biological mother. Few details of those relationships have been made public.

But the extent of Apple secrecy didn't become clear until Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with — and "cured" of — a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. The company had sat on the news of his diagnosis for nine months while Jobs tried trumping the disease with a special diet, Fortune magazine reported in 2008.

In the years after his cancer was revealed, rumors about Jobs' health would spark runs on Apple stock as investors worried the company, with no clear succession plan, would fall apart without him. Apple did little to ease those concerns. It kept the state of Jobs' health a secret for as long as it could, then disclosed vague details when, in early 2009, it became clear he was again ill.

Jobs took a half-year medical leave of absence starting in January 2009, during which he had a liver transplant. Apple did not disclose the procedure at the time; two months later, The Wall Street Journal reported the fact and a doctor at the transplant hospital confirmed it.

In January 2011, Jobs announced another medical leave, his third, with no set duration. He returned to the spotlight briefly in March to personally unveil a second-generation iPad and again in June, when he showed off Apple's iCloud music synching service. At both events, he looked frail in his signature jeans and mock turtleneck.

Less than three months later, Jobs resigned as CEO. In a letter addressed to Apple's board and the "Apple community" Jobs said he "always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come."

In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Jobs delivered Stanford University's commencement speech.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said. "Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

Jobs is survived by his biological mother; his sister Mona Simpson; Lisa Brennan-Jobs, his daughter with Brennan; wife Laurene, and their three children, Erin, Reed and Eve.


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