Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Steven Paul "Steve" 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.

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. His aim, to develop products that are both functional and elegant, had earned him a devoted following

Steve Jobs

February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself -- at the university's 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005.

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."


"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The official Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, which is now set for the November 21 release, has been available for pre-order on Amazon for a while and Apple’s iBooks store also had an entry and meta data in place, but without a price and sporting the old cover, depicted below.that iTunes now lists the book for pre-order, also featuring the new cover by Albert Watson and the official description from publisher Simon & Schuster

List Price: $35.00

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This title will be released on November 21, 2011.

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Pirates of Silicon Valley

Plot
In 1984, Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) speaks to director Ridley Scott (J. G. Hertzler), who is in the process of creating the 1984 commercial for Apple Computer which introduced the Macintosh personal computer to an American audience for the first time. Jobs sees the commercial as a poetic, consciousness-raising statement but Scott is more concerned at the moment with its technical aspects.
The film flashes forward to 1997 and Jobs has returned to Apple, announcing a new deal with Microsoft at the 1997 Macworld Expo. His partner, Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnick), is introduced as one of the two central narrators of the story. Wozniak notes to the audience the resemblance between "Big Brother" and the image of Bill Gates (Anthony Hall) on the screen behind Jobs during this announcement. Asking how they "got from there to here," the film turns to flashbacks of his youth with Jobs, prior to the forming of Apple.
The film then flashes to U.C. Berkeley campus during the period of the early seventies student movements. Jobs and Wozniak are shown caught on the campus during a riot between students and police. Jobs and Wozniak flee the riot, and after finding safety, Jobs states to Wozniak that it is they, not the protesters, who are the true revolutionaries. Despite the spiritual dimension in which Jobs views their work, Wozniak simply sees their computer work in terms of kilobytes and circuit boards. Meanwhile, a young Bill Gates at Harvard University, his classmate Steve Ballmer (John DiMaggio), and Gates’ high school friend Paul Allen (Josh Hopkins) are conducting their early work with MITS, which is juxtaposed against the involvement of Jobs and Wozniak with the Homebrew Computer Club, eventually leading to the development of the Apple I in 1976 with the help of angel investor Mike Markkula (Jeffrey Nordling). The story follows the protagonists as they develop their technology and their businesses. At a San Francisco computer fair where the Apple II computer is introduced, Gates (the then-unknown Microsoft CEO), attempts to introduce himself to Jobs, who snubs him.
The film then follows the subsequent development of the IBM-PC with the help of Gates and Microsoft in 1981. Meanwhile, Apple has developed the Lisa and later, the Macintosh, computers which were inspired by the Xerox Alto (a computer which the Apple team viewed during a tour of Xerox PARC during the late 1970s). Gates would later refer to this event during an argument with Jobs over whether or not Gates betrayed Jobs.
In 1985, Steve Jobs is given a birthday toast shortly before he is fired by CEO John Sculley from Apple Computer. A brief epilogue notes what happened afterward in Jobs', Wozniak's, and Gates' lives.


Watch the trailer Pirates of Silicon Valley