STEVE JOBS

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is
for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only
way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only
way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep
looking. Don’t settle.” The words of Steve Jobs portray who he had been and
the story of his success. He believed in not losing faith. He was a man who
had the power to fight against all the odds and yet shine.

Steven Paul Jobs, an American entrepreneur, businessman, inventor and

industrial designer was born on 24th February 1955 in San Francisco, California,
US to Joanne Carole and Abdulfattah Jandali and adopted by Paul and Clara.
By the age of 10, he was deeply involved in electronics and befriended many
of the engineers who lived in his neighbourhood. As a boy, Jobs with his father
Paul worked on electronics in the family garage. While Jobs was always a
thinker and an innovator, he retorted formal education badly. Jobs was
considered notorious by his teachers and was frequently suspended for
misbehaving. He was bullied by others and usually proclaimed as a loner in
school as he had difficulty making friends of his own age

A few years later, when Jobs was enrolled to Homestead High School, it was
the time when he first met Steve Wozniak which proved to be the turning
point of his life. Back then, after high school, Jobs enrolled himself in Reed
College in Portland. Lacking interest and concentration, he dropped out
within 6 months and remained a dropout for the next 18 months. Steve Jobs
engaged in Eastern spirituality and Zen Buddhism quite intensely while
studying at Reed College. He was described as “very much Zen”. It was a
profound influence. In 1984, Jobs took a position as a video game designer
with Atari. Several months later, he left the company to find spiritual
enlightenment in India, traveling and finding what he wanted to do.
Wozniak and Jobs took their mutual love for electronics a step forward and
became business partners. And finally, it was the time in 1976 where the duo
created a company, Apple, which turned out to be a multination corporation
which spun the world around.
The journey of Apple began with the launching of the very first computer,
Apple I designed by Jobs and Wozniak by generating a capital of $1350 by
selling their credentials. In 1997, they introduced the Apple-II which was a
huge success, leading to an era of personal computers. Two years later to the
release of Apple II, sales touched the count of $200 million. But the year of
1980, Apple saw a rapid decline in its sale with which Jobs introduced the
Apple Macintosh in the year 1984. In the year 1983, Jobs clashed with the Board
of Directors of Apple resulting in the ouster of Jobs from the Board. Jobs faced
a position of being deprived of power and control, he sold his shares and
resigned in 1985.

“I was a public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.
But something slowly began to dawn on me- I still loved what I did. The turn
of events at Apple had not changed the one bit. I had been rejected, but I was
still in love. And so, I decided to start over.” Steve said during the Stanford
Commencement. The love and passion for what he did, kept him going.

After being fired from Apple, Jobs was motivated to find his biological
family. Jobs always considered Paul and Clara Jobs his birth parents and had
a lot of love and admiration for them. Still, there were certain moments
when he felt that they could not connect. Jobs was artistic, ambitious, and
intellectual – the exact opposite of his adoptive parents who did not have a
college degree and a creative mindset. Having discovered his biological
parents, he learned where this seed of intellectuality came from – as he found
that both of them were artistic and smart like he was. It filled up a certain
darkness in his soul, as he describes his post-Apple years to be his most
creative and personally fulfilling.

Moving forward, Jobs purchased Pixar Animation Studios from George Lucas
in 1986 and later launched NeXT Computer Corporation. NeXT computer
boasted a series of innovations but could not withstand the market
competition due to excessive purchase value. Later, he started working on the
first ever computer animation movie, Toy Story which was released in
November 1995 which turned out to be a blockbuster hit and swayed the
scenario. It is said that if you had been working for something dedicating, you
get what you deserve. You ripe what you sow.

Steve Jobs, with a struggle of more than 15 years achieved all the success in
his life and reached the stage where he had always wanted to. After reaching
a point in his life where he could fulfil all his desires, Jobs died at the middle
age of 56 years. He battled pancreatic cancer for more than a decade and then
finally gave up on October 5, 2011 in Palo Alto. The story of Steve Jobs has
been an inspiration for millions of people around the globe: How a college
dropout tossed the world with his ideas and innovation by making apple a
multinational company with a market value of $624 billion.