Info On Steve Jobs

Born: February 1955; full name is Steven Paul Jobs; grew up in Mountain View and Los Altos, Calif., an area later became known as Silicon Valley

Parents: Adopted from infancy by Paul and Clara Jobs; father a machinist for a company that manufactured lasers; mother an accountant; both deceased

Sibling: Biological, younger sister Mona Simpson, whom he tracked down; they now have a close relationship

High school: Graduated from Homestead High School, Los Altos, Calif. in 1972

College: Attended Reed College in Portland, Ore.; dropped out of baccalaureate program after one semester

Wife: Laurene Powell; they met at Stanford University he was speaking at a class; they married in 1991; both are vegetarians.

Children: Daughter Lisa born when Jobs was 23 (Jobs didn't marry her mother); Lisa lived with Jobs as a teen; he has three children with wife Laurene

Residence: English style red-brick home in Palo Alto, Calif.; built in 1930s; valued between $3 million to $5 million; sparsely decorated

Appearance: Slender; wears jeans, usually with a black turtleneck and running shoes

What's he like: People say he is a high-strung workaholic, motivates others with his enthusiasm, has a "reality distortion field," passionate about technology, a micromanager, arrogant and intolerant; can exude a Zen-like calm

Heroes: Dave Packard, Bob Noyce, late co-founder of Intel, and Andy Grove and singer Bob Dylan

Friends: Jerry Brown, former governor of California; Lawrence J. Ellison, billionaire software entrepreneur and chairman of Oracle; sister, novelist Mona Simpson

Worth: More than $900 million

Honors: National Technology Medal from President Reagan in 1985, before founding NeXT; Jefferson Award for Public Service in 1987; Entrepreneur of the Decade by Inc. magazine in 1989

Brushes with fame: Dated Joan Baez in his 20s; Ella Fitzgerald sang at his 30th birthday party; entertained President Clinton at his home in Palo Alto, Calif.

Apple stock: Now owns only a symbolic one share; he's paid $1 a year from Apple so that he can be on the health plan

E-mails: Receives about 300 per day

First Apple sales: After receiving an order for 25 Apple I computers, Jobs and Wozniak raised needed capital by selling Jobs' Volkswagen van and Wozniak's Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator

Phenomenal growth: Sales of Apple II computer in the late 1970s totaled $139 million after three years, growing by 700 percent

Time Line

1970s
1974: Video game designer for Atari; worked there several months; used savings to travel to India; returned to California and spent a brief time on a communal farm

1975: Attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, Calif., attended by friend and engineering genius, Stephen Wozniak; they joined forces and built a marketable table-top computer in Jobs' parents' garage; co-founded Apple Computer Inc.

1976: Introduced Apple I computer for $666; first single-board computer with onboard Read Only Memory (ROM) that told the machine how to load programs from an external source and had a video interface

1977: Introduced Apple II; first mass-marketed personal computer; had a plastic case and included color graphics; Jobs encouraged programmers to create applications for the Apple II; this resulted in 16,000 programs from games to farm budgets; former Intel marketing manager Mike Markkula became Apple chairman and secured venture capital of $600,000

1979: Development of a computer named Lisa, which would redefine personal computing; Jobs removed as project manager; he began working on the Macintosh personal computer

1980s
1980: Initial public offering of Apple; market value of company rose to $1.2 billion; Apple III introduced with eight applications, including text and graphics; initial problems forced a recall; once fixed, it became popular with professional customers; situation created a management shakeup; Markkula became president, Jobs became chairman

1981: Stephen Wozniak took leave of absence after being injured in a private plane crash; IBM sold its first personal computer, four years after Apple II; Apple's sales continued to rise

1983: Public debut of Lisa, a powerful, more intuitive computer controlled by hand-held mouse; designed for computer illiterate; smaller, less expensive version called Macintosh also introduced; Jobs recruited former PepsiCo President John Sculley as new Apple president and CEO

1985: Jobs essentially ousted from Apple in a boardroom coup after a power struggle with Sculley; resigned with $150 million but personally hurt; formed NeXT Software to develop computer hardware and software; Microsoft sold its first Windows 1.0 operating system

1986: Bought Pixar computer animation studios from George Lucas for less than $10 million

1989: NeXT produced a powerful but expensive computer, which was rejected by the marketplace; Pixar won an Academy Award for computer-animated film "Tin Toy"

1990s
1993: Still unprofitable NeXT ended hardware division to focus on software for programmers and building Internet sites; Sculley resigned as CEO of Apple

1995: Walt Disney Pictures released Pixar's first feature film, "Toy Story," first animated feature created entirely on computer; was highest domestic grossing film that year

1996: Jobs contacted Apple; Apple acquired NeXT; Jobs returned as non-salaried adviser to chairman Gilbert F. Amelio

1997: Apple's revenues dropped significantly; Jobs negotiated deal with longtime competitor Bill Gates of Microsoft; Apple made deal to include Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser on Macintosh operating system; Microsoft agreed to invest $150 million of non-voting Apple stock and to develop Mac versions of popular Microsoft Office software; Amelio ousted by Apple board; Jobs offered CEO and chairman position, and he agreed to serve on an interim basis

1998: Apple Computer rebounded with three profitable quarters in a row

Quotes

"I was lucky to get into computers when it was a very young and idealistic industry. There weren't many degrees offered in computer science, so people in computers were brilliant people from mathematics, physics, music, zoology, whatever. They loved it, and no one was really in it for the money."
(Fortune)

"The personal computer was created by the hardware revolution of the 1970s. The next change will come from a software revolution."
(Current Biography)

"The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians who also happened to be excellent computer scientists."
(The New York Times)

"We started out to get a computer in the hands of everyday people, and we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams." (Time)

"I'm not a hostile-takeover kind of guy."
(The New York Times)

"I am at a stage where I don't have to do things just to get by. But then I've always been that way, because I've never really cared about money that much."
(Fortune)