Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)
was an American computer entrepreneur and inventor. He was co-founder,
chairman, and chief executive officer of
Apple Inc. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of
Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of
The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. He was credited in
Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer.
In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder
Steve Wozniak,
Mike Markkula,
and others, designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the
Apple II series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of
Xerox PARC's mouse-driven
graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the
Macintosh.
After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985,
Jobs resigned from Apple and founded
NeXT, a
computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. Apple's subsequent 1996 buyout of NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he served as its CEO from 1997 until 2011. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of
Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as
Pixar Animation Studios.
He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1 percent until its acquisition by
The Walt Disney company in 2006.
Consequently Jobs became Disney's largest individual shareholder at 7 percent and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.
His aim to develop products that are both functional and elegant earned him a devoted following.
On August 24, 2011, Jobs announced his resignation from his role as Apple's CEO. In his letter of resignation, Jobs strongly recommended that the Apple executive succession plan be followed and
Tim Cook be named as his successor. Per his request, Jobs was appointed chairman of Apple's board of directors.
On October 5, 2011, Apple announced that Jobs had died. He was 56 years old.
