Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs: Co-Founder of Apple Computers

Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images


Steve Jobs teamed together with Steve Wozniak to invent one of the first ready-made personal home computers.

Steve Jobs was also a smart business who became a multimillionaire before the age of 30. In 1984, he founded NeXT computers. In 1986, he bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd and started Pixar Animation Studios.

Impact Steve Jobs Had On History of Computers

Steve Jobs co-invented the Apple I and Apple II computers together with Steve Wozniak (main designer) and others. The Apple II is noted as the first commercially successful line of personal computers. In 1984, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and others co-invented the Apple Macintosh computer, the first successful home computer with a mouse-driven graphical user.

Steve Jobs Quotes




Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.





He studied as an undergraduate: physics, literature, and poetry, at Reed College, Oregon, an interesting combination of subjects.

Steve Jobs formally only attended only one semester at Reed College, however, he remained at Reed crashing on friend's sofas and auditing courses including a calligraphy class, which he attributes as being the reason Apple computers had such elegant typefaces.




Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak also proved their chops as hackers, and designed a telephone blue box. A blue box was an electronic device that simulated a telephone operator's dialing console and provided the user with free phone calls. Steve Jobs spent plenty of time at Wozniak's Homebrew Computer Club, a haven for computer geeks and a source of invaluable information about the field of personal computers.

Out of Mom and Pop's Garage

Jobs and Wozniak had learned enough to try their hand at building personal computers. Using Steve Job's family garage as a base of operation, the team produced fifty fully assembled computers that were sold to a local Mountain View electronics store called the Byte Shop.

The sale encouraged the pair to found the Apple Corporation on April 1, 1979.

Apple Corporation

The Apple Corporation was named after Steve Job's favorite fruit. The Apple logo was a representation of the fruit with a bite taken out of it. The bite represented a play on words - bite and byte.

During the early 80's, Steve Jobs controlled the business side of the Apple Corporation and Steve Wozniak, the design side. However, in 1984 a power struggle with the board of directors caused Steve Jobs to leave Apple.


After things at Apple got a little rotten, Steve Jobs founded NeXT, a high-end computer company. Ironically Apple bought NeXT in 1996, and Steve Jobs returned to Apple to serve once more as its CEO from 1997 until his recent retirement in 2011.

The NeXT was an amazing workstation computer that sold poorly.


Disney Pixar

In 1986, Steve Jobs bought "The Graphics Group" from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for ten million dollars. The company was later renamed Pixar. At first, Jobs intended that Pixar become a high-end graphic hardware developer, but that goal was not well achieved, and Pixar moved on to do what it does best - make animated films. Steve Jobs negotiated Pixar and Disney to collaborate on a number of animated films including Toy Story. In 2006, Disney bought Pixar from Steve Jobs.

Expanding Apple

After Steve Jobs return to Apple as CEO in 1997, Apple Computers has had a renaissance in product development with the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and more.

Before his death, Steve Jobs was listed as the inventor and/or co-inventor on 342 United States patents, with technologies ranging from computer and portable devices, user interfaces, speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages. His last patent was issued for the Mac OS X Dock user interface and was granted the day before his death.