Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View. In 1976, Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer in the Jobs family garage in Los Altos, California, producing the Apple I and then the Apple II, which became one of the first commercially successful personal computers. Jobs recruited John Sculley from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO in 1983, and the following year oversaw the launch of the Macintosh, introducing the graphical user interface to a mass American audience.

After a boardroom dispute with Sculley led to his departure from Apple in 1985, Jobs founded NeXT Computer and acquired Pixar Animation Studios from George Lucas for $10 million. Pixar produced Toy Story in 1995, the first fully computer-animated feature film, and Jobs became a billionaire when Disney acquired Pixar in 2006 for $7.4 billion. Apple purchased NeXT in 1997 for $429 million, and Jobs returned to Apple as interim CEO, becoming permanent CEO in 2000 and reversing the company's near-bankruptcy within two years.

Under Jobs's leadership after 1997, Apple launched the iMac in 1998, the iPod in 2001, the iTunes Music Store in 2003, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010, each product reshaping American consumer behavior and entire industries. The iPhone alone redefined telecommunications, mobile computing, and media distribution in the United States within a decade of its release. Jobs resigned as CEO on August 24, 2011, and died of pancreatic cancer on October 5, 2011, in Palo Alto, California.