Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs
Net Worth
$7 B As of September 2011
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At a Glance
Age: 56
Source: Apple, Pixar, self-made
Residence: Palo Alto, CA
Country of Citizenship: United States
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Education: Drop Out, Reed College
Marital Status: Married
Children: 4
Forbes Lists
#39 Forbes 400
#110 Forbes Billionaires
#34 in United States
#17 Powerful People

Profile

Apple cofounder Steve Jobs finally succumbed to cancer at the age of 56 on October 5th, leaving behind a legacy that changed the computer, music, film and wireless industries. His once written-off tech company in August briefly topped ExxonMobil as the most valuable U.S. corporation. In that month he resigned as CEO. The Reed College dropout founded Apple in his garage. Jobs created the Macintosh in 1976 and was fired 9 years later after a power struggle with Chief Exec John Sculley. He returned to Apple in 1996. At the time of his death most of his wealth still came from Disney, due to Disney’s purchase of Pixar in 2006; as the largest individual shareholder, he owned about $4.47 billion of Disney stock. […] more
Latest News
How Steve Jobs Changed The Auto Industry

Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn’t just change the computer and entertainment industries. He also had a huge influence on automobiles. People now see their cars as an extension of their living rooms. Here’s an […] more>>

Joann Muller, Forbes Staff
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DIS

View the full DIS chart at Wikinvest
Largest public holding
Numbers
Net Worth Over Time
$7 B 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

7,8.3,6.1,5.5,5.1,3.4,5.7,5.4,5.7,5.7
Political Contributions
0.1,0.1,0.1
Total $0

Recent Contributions
DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE
$26,700
2007-2010, Federal Elections Comission
Historical Ranking

2011 Rank
39
 
 
 
 

97,80,90,85,98

The facts

Full name: Steven Paul Jobs
Birthdate: 24 February 1955
Birth location: San Francisco, California
Social background: lower middle-class. Father was fixing cars for a living.
Education: high-school certificate. Dropped out of Reed College after one semester.
Occupations: chairman & CEO at Apple Inc. + Director at The Walt Disney Company
Net worth: $5.5 billion according to Forbes’ 2010 ranking — 136th richest man on Earth
Annual salary: $1
Family
Biological parents: Joanne Simpson and possibly Abdulfattah Jandali, political sciences professor from Syria
Adoptive parents: Paul and Clara Jobs, both deceased
Siblings: adoptive sister: Patti Jobs (born 1958), biological sister: Mona Simpson (born 1957)
Spouse: Laurene Powell (born 1964), married in 1991
Children: Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), with unmarried girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan. Reed (born 1991), Erin Siena (born 1995) and Eve (born 1998) with wife Laurene.
Personal tastes & opinion
Political orientation: Democrat. Steve funds the Democratic Party (using his wife’s name) for each Presidential election, and he entertained the Clintons several times at his home in Palo Alto. Steve himself thought of running for the office of governor of California after he left Apple in 1985 — but gave up in the end. He knew Gov. Jerry Brown from his days at the Los Altos Zen Center in the 1970s.
Spirituality: Steve studied Zen Buddhism in his youth. He often said that he thought of becoming a monk up in a monastery in Japan instead of starting Apple, but his guru Kobun Chino convinced him otherwise. That same Zen master was a spiritual adviser at NeXT and married Steve and Laurene in Yosemite in 1991.
A lot of critics of Steve’s tough management style point out: “Imagine what he’d be like if he hadn’t studied buddhism…” This is one of Steve’s many paradoxes: how could a real Buddhist make a living out of selling gadgets to the masses?
Favorite places: We know from Steve himself and the story of his life that he loves Yosemite, in which he demanded to be married, as well as Europe in general and Paris in particular. He said to French journalists that one of his biggest pride was to see an Apple billboard next to the Louvre.
Yet his favorite place on earth is probably his home, Silicon Valley. He reportedly delights in driving on the scenic I-280, and spending hours hiking on the hills surrounding Stanford campus in Palo Alto.
Favorite music: Steve’s favorite musician is definitely Bob Dylan, whose tunes he played throughout his youth with his guitar at home. He would discuss their lyrics with his friends, such as Bill Fernandez or Woz. Some people believe he dated Joan Baez mostly because she was Dylan’s ex.
Steve also loves The Beatles and Grateful Dead, all part of the rock scene of the 1960s (thus before he came of age). He describes himself as an audiophile: after he became rich, one of the only pieces of furniture he bought was a $100,000 stereo system. It is still true today.
Favorite art: we can’t say for sure but we know that Steve loves photography. For a long time his home was only decorated with large black-and-white photographs of cultural icons such as Einstein, or the California landscape, mostly by Ansel Adams. He also had Japanese prints.
More can be read in Steve at home.
LifestyleBack to top
Bachelor days
Before his marriage, Steve Jobs was a real workaholic. He would spend far more time at work than home, where he would only show up for a quick dinner in the kitchen and a short night. While he was living in his Woodside mansion in the 1990s, dinner was prepared by a young couple of Berkeley alumni who lived in the huge, empty house.
Family life

All of this changed after he married Laurene in 1990. Humbled by NeXT’s failure, he spent increasingly more time with his newborn son Reed, followed by daughters Erin and Eve. His then-teenage daughter Lisa also joined the family. Pretty much everyone agrees Steve was transformed by his newfound role of caring father. He looks a lot after his kids and their education; for example, he goes to parents meetings, forbids them to watch TV, and makes sure they eat healthy food. He often talked about how he tried to balance his busy life with the duties of pater familias.
In 2005, he said in an interview: “That was one of the things that came out most clearly from this whole experience [with cancer]. I realized that I love my life. I really do. I’ve got the greatest family in the world, and I’ve got my work. And that’s pretty much all I do. I don’t socialize much or go to conferences. I love my family, and I love running Apple, and I love Pixar. And I get to do that. I’m very lucky.” That’s how he envisions his life.
Food habits

Ever since his teenage years, Steve has been a militant vegan. The root of it all can be traced back to when he was 19 in Reed College, and started exploring strange diets that he pretended would allow him to eliminate all mucus and therefore the need to shower. At one point he was a “fruitarian” i.e. he ate only fruits. He also started an habit he kept a very long time: that of fasting. He was convinced digestion was burning too much of his energy, the energy he needed at work when he stayed up several nights in a row.
Nevertheless, Steve is still a strict vegan to this day, like his wife Laurene. He is known for lecturing his guests about eating meat, and he makes no concession to himself, apart from eating fish (sushi especially). One of his favorite meals is known to be raw carrot, without any kind of dressing. For example a journalist invited at his home described the meal he was served: “We dine as the Jobses always do: both are strict vegans, eating no meat products. Dinner is pasta with raw tomatoes, fresh raw corn from the garden, steamed cauliflower and a salad of raw shredded carrots. While the adults eat, their six-year-old son picks lemon verbena and other herbs in the garden for the after-dinner tea.” He buys his organic vegetables from the Palo Alto Whole Foods Market, where he is often seen walking barefoot. Other of his favorite local restaurants include the Palo Alto caterer Il Fornaio (whom he hired to run Apple’s cafeteria), where he likes to eat pasta, the Fraiche yoghurt café, various restaurants and cafés on Stanford campus, and Sushi Ran in Sausalito.
Clothing habits
“I don’t give a shit what I look like,” Steve once confided to friends. This is why he is always seen in his Levi’s blue jeans and black mock turtleneck, even for public occasions. Indeed, he dresses this way pretty much all the time, although sometimes he is seen wearing shorts and sandals. It is a bold change from his dashing days at Apple and NeXT, where he would wear the most expensive Brioni suits.
He is not burdened by the paradox of being a multi-billionaire and wearing blue jeans with holes in them. In fact, always dressing the same makes perfect sense to him; he often declared the rationale was “to save him some time in the morning, not having to decide what to wear.”
Home & means of locomotionBack to top
Houses
Steve’s most famous home is probably his Woodside mansion, which he bought in 1984 and in which he lived throughout the 1990s. The house was famous for its grandiose dimensions (it was the party house of a copper magnate) and, especially, for its total lack of furniture.
This is one aspect of Steve’s personality that hasn’t changed in decades: he is such a perfectionist that he can never decide on what to buy, thus ends up buying nothing. As a bachelor he only had a mattress, huge Ansel Adams prints, and a super-expensive stereo system as pieces of furtniture. He did not sleep on a bed for years — even though he was a multi-millionaire. At Woodside the kitchen was the only room that was fully furnished. He did have a Bosendorfer grand piano and a BMW motorcycle in his living room however, testaments of his love of German engineering.

A glimpse at Steve’s home in Palo Alto.
Steve’s current house in Palo Alto is still decorated with austerity, although Laurene has tempered that quite a bit. Here’s how a Time journalist described it: “The Steve Jobs who is currently running two sophisticated companies lives in a turn-of-the- century English-style country house in Palo Alto with his wife Laurene […]. The house is run with a distinct 1960s flavor. Laurene has planted a garden of wildflowers, herbs and vegetables all around. The rooms are sparsely decorated, the only extravagances being Ansel Adams photographs.” Some things never change…
Cars
Steve’s father Paul was a machinist who fixed cars to make extra money. His son certainly has inherited his Californian love of cars.
Although Steve enjoys quite a humble lifestyle, compared to the megalomaniac habits of people of this kind of wealth (cough-Larry Ellison-cough), he always delighted in driving fast, powerful cars. For decades he has driven German cars, Porsches first, then Mercedes. These cars inspired him for designing his computers, as he reportedly asked for the Macintosh design to be “like a Porsche”, and wanted the NeXT Cube to be “the black Porsche of computers” (computer artist Susan Kare viewed it more as the“Death Star of computers”).

It is pretty easy to recognize Steve’s car on Apple’s parking lot:
It’s a Mercedes, and Steve loves German engineering
It’s parked on an handicapped spot
It has no licence plate
The parking on a handicapped spot is no news, as exemplified by this Andy Hertzfeld anecdote.
Plane
Private jet

History
Steve’s private jet was offered to him by the Apple board when he officially became the company’s CEO, in January 2000. It is a Gulfstream V Jet, worth over $40 million (total cost for Apple: $88 million). The 2009 SEC investigation revealed that “He brought up the idea: ‘What I really need is a plane where I can take my family to Hawaii on vacation, go to the East Coast.’ and the board agreed”. Larry Ellison supposedly declared, “With what he’s done, we ought to give him five airplanes!”
The company agreed to reimburse him the operating expenses of the plane when he used it for Apple business. The numbers are $202,000 in 2006, $776,000 in 2007, $871,000 in 2008, $4,000 in 2009 and $248,000 in 2010.
NAME: Steve Jobs
OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur, Computer Programmer, Inventor
BIRTH DATE: February 24, 1955
DEATH DATE: October 05, 2011
EDUCATION: Reed College
ynopsis
Steve Jobs was born February 24, 1955, to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for adoption. Smart but directionless, Jobs experimented with different pursuits before starting Apple Computers with Stephen Wozniak in the Jobs’ family garage. Apple’s revolutionary products, which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now seen as dictating the evolution of modern technology.
Early Life
Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, to Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave their unnamed son up for adoption. His father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a Syrian political science professor and his mother, Joanne Simpson, worked as a speech therapist. Shortly after Steve was placed for adoption, his biological parents married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that he was able to uncover information on his biological parents.
As an infant, Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant and Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist. The family lived in Mountain View within California’s Silicone Valley. As a boy, Jobs and his father would work on electronics in the family garage. Paul would show his son how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby which instilled confidence, tenacity, and mechanical prowess in young Jobs.
While Jobs has always been an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. In elementary school he was a prankster whose fourth grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school—a proposal his parents declined.
After he did enroll in high school, Jobs spent his free time at Hewlett-Packard. It was there that he befriended computer club guru Steve Wozniak. Wozniak was a brilliant computer engineer, and the two developed great respect for one another.
Apple Computers
After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking direction, he dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes. Jobs later recounted how one course in calligraphy developed his love of typography.
In 1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. Several months later he left Atari to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling the continent and experimenting with psychedelic drugs. In 1976, when Jobs was just 21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computers. The duo started in the Jobs family garage, and funded their entrepreneurial venture after Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his beloved scientific calculator.
Jobs and Wozniak are credited with revolutionizing the computer industry by democratizing the technology and making the machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive, and accessible to everyday consumers. The two conceived a series of user-friendly personal computers that they initially marketed for $666.66 each. Their first model, the Apple I, earned them $774,000. Three years after the release of their second model, the Apple II, sales increased 700 percent to $139 million dollars. In 1980, Apple Computer became a publically traded company with a market value of $1.2 billion on the very first day of trading. Jobs looked to marketing expert John Scully of Pepsi-Cola to help fill the role of Apple’s President.
Departure from Apple
However, the next several products from Apple suffered significant design flaws resulting in recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly surpassed Apple sales, and Apple had to compete with an IBM/PC dominated business world. In 1984 Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the computer as a piece of a counter culture lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative. But despite positive sales and performance superior to IBM’s PCs, the Macintosh was still not IBM compatible. Scully believed Jobs was hurting Apple, and executives began to phase him out.
In 1985, Jobs resigned as Apple’s CEO to begin a new hardware and software company called NeXT, Inc. The following year Jobs purchased an animation company from George Lucas, which later became Pixar Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar’s potential, Jobs initially invested $50 million of his own money into the company. Pixar Studios went on to produce wildly popular animation films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Pixar’s films have netted $4 billion. The studio merged with Walt Disney in 2006, making Steve Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder.
Reinventing Apple
Despite Pixar’s success, NeXT, Inc. floundered in its attempts to sell its specialized operating system to mainstream America. Apple eventually bought the company in 1997 for $429 million. That same year, Jobs returned to his post as Apple’s CEO.
Much like Steve Jobs instigated Apple’s success in the 1970s, he is credited with revitalizing the company in the 1990s. With a new management team, altered stock options, and a self-imposed annual salary of $1 a year, Jobs put Apple back on track. His ingenious products such as the iMac, effective branding campaigns, and stylish designs caught the attention of consumers once again.
Pancreatic Cancer
In 2003, Jobs discovered he had a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare but operable form of pancreatic cancer. Instead of immediately opting for surgery, Jobs chose to alter his pescovegetarian diet while weighing Eastern treatment options. For nine months Jobs postponed surgery, making Apple’s board of directors nervous. Executives feared that shareholders would pull their stocks if word got out that their CEO was ill. But in the end, Job’s confidentiality took precedence over shareholder disclosure. In 2004, he had a successful surgery to remove the pancreatic tumor. True to form, in subsequent years Jobs disclosed little about his health.
Recent Innovations
Apple introduced such revolutionary products as the Macbook Air, iPod, and iPhone, all of which have dictated the evolution of modern technology. Almost immediately after Apple releases a new product, competitors scramble to produce comparable technologies. In 2007, Apple’s quarterly reports were the company’s most impressive statistics to date. Stocks were worth a record-breaking $199.99 a share, and the company boasted a staggering $1.58 billion dollar profit, an $18 billion dollar surplus in the bank, and zero debt.
In 2008, iTunes became the second biggest music retailer in America-second only to Wal-Mart. Half of Apple’s current revenue comes from iTunes and iPod sales, with 200 million iPods sold and six billion songs downloaded. For these reasons, Apple has been rated No. 1 in America’s Most Admired Companies, and No. 1 amongst Fortune 500 companies for returns to shareholders.
Personal Life
Early in 2009, reports circulated about Jobs’ weight loss, some predicting his health issues had returned, which included a liver transplant. Jobs had responded to these concerns by stating he was dealing with a hormone imbalance. After nearly a year out of the spotlight, Steve Jobs delivered a keynote address at an invite-only Apple event September 9, 2009.
In respect to his personal life, Steve Jobs remained a private man who rarely discloses information about his family. What is known is Jobs fathered a daughter with girlfriend Chrisann Brennan when he was 23. Jobs denied paternity of his daughter Lisa in court documents, claiming he was sterile. Jobs did not initiate a relationship with his daughter until she was 7 but, when she was a teenager, she came to live with her father.
In the early 1990s, Jobs met Laurene Powell at Stanford business school, where Powell was an MBA student. They married on March 18, 1991, and lived together in Palo Alto, California, with their three children.
Final Years
On October 5, 2011, Apple Inc. announced that co-founder Steve Jobs had died. He was 56 years old at the time of his death.