1The last words of Steve Jobs were:
2"Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow".
3He died as he lived - filled with wonder.
4He had this magical way of thinking that you could create the reality that you envisioned in your head.
5That outlook gave him a stunningly successful life.
6But it may have also contributed to his early death.
7Steve Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955.
8According to a cousin, his birth name was Abdul Lateef Jandali.
9His father, Abdulfattah al Jandali was born to a well-off Arab family in Syria.
10His mother Joanne Schieble, a Swiss-German American,
11was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin where they met.
12She became pregnant when the two were visiting Abdulfattah's family in Syria,
13and she quickly high-tailed it back to California to give birth to Steve.
14They decided to put the baby up for adoption because they were not married.
15Initially, they chose a wealthy Catholic family.
16But the adoption fell through, and the child went to Paul and Clara Jobs.
17Paul was a mechanic, Clara an accountant.
18Neither had gone to university.
19Before al Jandali would agree to the adoption,
20the couple had to promise that Steve would get a college education one day.
21Steve's biological parents did eventually marry and had another child, Steve's sister.
22The successful novelist, Mona Simpson.
23She and Steve remained close until his death.
24But his relationship with his birth parents was virtually non-existent.
25He told biographer Walter Isaacson
26that his biological parents "were my sperm and egg bank."
27"That's not harsh, it's just the way it was."
28He did, however, choose to meet his biological mother "...to thank her,"
29"because I'm glad I didn't end up as an abortion."
30In 1959, the Jobs family moved from San Francisco to Mountain View, California.
31Mountain View was becoming a center for electronics.
32Young Steve began dabbling in electronics but he was far less interested in school.
33A fourth grade teacher tried to cure his boredom by reportedly bribing him with candy
34and $5 of her own bills to get him to finish his schoolwork.
35It apparently kindled a passion in him for learning.
36So much so that he skipped fifth grade and went directly to middle school.
37But life was hard at Crittenden Middle School where he was often bullied.
38Jobs gave his parents an ultimatum: either take him out or he would drop out.
39He ended up going to a better school district when his parents moved to Los Altos
40in the heart of the emerging Silicon Valley.
41He attended Homestead high school where a friend introduced him to Steve Wozniak
42who graduated a few years earlier.
43They bonded over their love of electronics.
44Jobs would later found Apple with Wozniak.
45When he was still in high school, Jobs cold-called Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard one day
46to ask for leftover electronic parts.
47He got the parts and a summer internship.
48Jobs worked on the assembly line at HP putting nuts and bolts on frequency counters.
49After he graduated high school and went to college,
50he mentioned his HP experience on his application for a campus job -
51though he misspelled Hewlett-Packard.
52This job application was not very inspiring.
53He vaguely lists his address as Reed College.
54Jobs famously dropped out of the liberal arts school in Oregon after one semester
55because he didn't like the required classes.
56However, he later said his experiences at Reed helped him in everything that he's ever done.
57Because after dropping out, he still hung around campus,
58dropping in on the courses he found interesting,
59which would help shape the innovator he became.
60He took a class in calligraphy
61where he learned about beautiful fonts and typefaces,
62about varying spaces between letter combinations.
63It didn't appear to have any practical application at the time.
64But as Jobs would later say:
65"If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class,"
66"and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do."
67"Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college."
68"But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later."
69His days were otherwise spent recycling Coca-Cola bottles for money for food
70and hitchhiking across town to the local Hare Krishna temple for a free Sunday meal.
71His diet would become very obsessive later on.
72He'd eat nothing but fruit and leafy greens
73which he said prevented his body from forming harmful mucus.
74And he regularly fasted as a way to cleanse his body.
75While at Reed, he also got a part-time gig at the psychology department,
76repairing equipment used for experiments on pigeons and rats.
77When he wasn't at work, he spent long hours at the college library reading about Buddhism.
78He told biographer Isaacson that the simplicities of the religion informed his sense of design -
79apparent not only in Apple's beautifully simple designs but in his personal life.
80Jobs was famous for wearing simple black turtlenecks and blue jeans.
81During his time in college, he also experimented with psychedelics.
82He described using LSD as one of the most profound experiences of his life,
83crediting it with opening up his mind.
84And the name "Apple" came from visiting an apple farm with another acid tripper from Reed.
85While at college, Wozniak paid him a visit.
86He brought an early prototype of a hacking device that lets users make free international phone calls.
87Before long, Steve and Woz were building blue boxes themselves
88and selling them to their friends which was highly illegal.
89Making the blue boxes pushed the boundaries of what they could do with technology
90and would lead them further down the path to Apple.
91But before then, Jobs started working at Atari, the American video game developer.
92He was hired in 1974 as a technician
93after he showed them a version of Pong that they assumed he had created when in fact Wozniak said it was his work.
94Jobs was difficult to get along with.
95But Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell knew Jobs was valuable,
96once remarking: "he was very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know that."
97Jobs' prickly personality and lack of hygiene are said to have been the reasons he got put on the night shift.
98He used to soak his feet in toilet water as a stress reliever when he worked at Apple.
99But in a Reddit thread, Bushnell mentioned he got Jobs to work overnight
100because he knew Wozniak would visit him since they were buddies,
101so: "I'd get two Steves for the price of one."
102It was thanks to Atari that Jobs fulfilled his desire to travel to India.
103When Atari sent Jobs on a trip to Germany,
104he convinced the company to give him a one-way ticket and the rest, he'd take in cash.
105Then, instead of flying back to California, he flew to India.
106He wanted to go on a spiritual retreat to find his inner self.
107His travel companion was Daniel Kottke, a college friend
108and later, one of the first employees of Apple.
109India was a life-changing experience for Jobs.
110He soaked in the culture, wore loose-fitting clothing,
111and roamed around barefoot -
112a habit he would later continue around Apple's offices.
113He embraced eastern spirituality, including the precept of intuition.
114When he traveled to the Indian countryside,
115he noticed that people didn't use their intellect like Americans did,
116but instead relied more on intuition.
117He told biographer Isaacson:
118"Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion."
119"That's had a big impact on my work."
120It was intuition that helped him understand what customers wanted
121when he went on to develop Apple's products.
122He returned home from India with a shaved head and a powerful intuition
123that prompted him to start Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976.
124Wayne acted more like the adult supervisor to the younger Wozniak and Jobs, who were still in their twenties.
125But he left after less than two weeks, selling 10% of his stake for $800.
126That, by the way, is worth billions today!
127The company's headquarters was the garage of Jobs' parents.
128That's where they built Apple's first computer, the Apple 1
129with the help of Jobs' India travel buddy, Kottke.
130It wasn't anything like the computers of today.
131It had no keyboard or screen
132and served more as part of a kit that computer hobbyists could build into something more useful.
133The owner of this unit added a keyboard and case afterward.
134Woz coded while Jobs spent hours on the phone trying to find investors.
135He managed to convince a former Intel executive to put up some cash,
136allowing them to produce 200 Apple Ones.
137Wozniak continued to mold it into something better
138and the following year, they unveiled the Apple II,
139a personal computer aimed at the consumer market.
140It could be taken home, plugged in, and used.
141The Apple II became the symbol of the personal computing revolution.
142Over the next three years, Apple's annual sales ballooned
143from $775,000 to $118 million
144and so did Jobs' net worth.
145But not everything the company did was a hit.
146The Apple III and Lisa were flops.
147The Lisa computer, launched in 1983, was named after Jobs' child.
148He wasn't happy when his high school sweetheart Chrisann Brennan became pregnant
149and denied he was the father for years.
150He refused to even admit the Apple computer was named after Lisa for the longest time
151and chalked it up to coincidence,
152saying LISA stood for Local Integrated Software Architecture.
153A DNA test proved he was the father.
154Decades later, he confessed to Isaacson:
155"Obviously, it was named for my daughter."
156He may have changed the world but Jobs failed in ordinary ways, like being a father to Lisa.
157They had a strained relationship.
158Lisa would later say, "Clearly, I was not compelling enough for my father'"
159As for the computer that carried her name,
160the failure would be forgotten when Apple launched the Macintosh in 1984
161during the Super Bowl in this now-famous commercial.
162"On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh."
163"And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984."
164That's a reference to George Orwell's famous dystopian novel.
165The estate of Orwell sent a cease-and-desist order to Apple and the commercial never aired again.
166As it turned out, the Mac would cost Jobs more than public embarrassment.
167It would cost him his job.
168He was in charge of the Macintosh division
169and when the expensive original version didn't sell as well as he expected,
170he told CEO John Scully to lower the price and spend more on advertising.
171Scully didn't think it had anything to do with the price or advertising.
172He went to Apple's Board of Directors, which sided with him,
173and got Jobs ousted as head of the Macintosh division
174and stripped him of all of his executive duties.
175Jobs was forced out of Apple.
176When he resigned, he took five employees with him to form a new company.
177NeXT specialized in computers aimed at the higher education market.
178In 1986, he also invested some of his wealth
179by acquiring the computer graphics division of George Lucas' special effects company, renamed Pixar.
180He later sold it to Disney for 7.4 billion dollars in stock.
181He was Pixar's CEO when it produced Toy Story,
182the first feature-length film created entirely in 3D animation.
183The main character, Woody, had evolved into a jerk,
184mainly because of script changes by Disney.
185Jobs fought back to make Woody into a likable character.
186This demonstrated his ability to rework something that he thought wasn't perfect.
187He told Isaacson, "If something isn't right, you can't just ignore it and say you'll fix it later."
188"That's what other companies do."
189Unfortunately, Jobs didn't take this to heart when it came to his own health,
190which worsened when he took on more work.
191At the time that Toy Story became a monumental success,
192Apple was in a financial mess.
193In 1997, it was 90 days away from bankruptcy because it failed to innovate.
194Apple desperately needed a new, modern operating system
195and in a remarkable turn of events, bought NeXT for $400 million.
196The NeXT operating system paved the way for the OS X - later renamed MacOS.
197Jobs returned to Apple as CEO, while continuing to lead Pixar.
198With Jobs in the driver's seat, Apple was about to go in a different direction.
199He worked closely with designer Jony Ive to develop stunning new products:
200the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
201Apple wanted to let the world know it was different from other companies.
202It came up with the "Think Different" advertising campaign in response to IBM's "Think" slogan.
203IBM was at the time considered the top of the PC line.
204"Think Different" doesn't make sense grammatically
205but Jobs insisted "Think Differently" would not have the same effect.
206This is one of the Think Different commercials.
207"Here's to the crazy ones."
208This commercial was crucial in turning around Apple.
209The original version was actually voiced by Jobs.
210"The round pegs in the square holes."
211It never aired because he hated his version and let it be known.
212There was a side of him that could be nasty according to those who worked with him.
213Rob Siltanen, a creative director on the Think Different campaign,
214later wrote in a Forbes Magazine article,
215"I must say I saw and experienced his tongue lashings and ballistic temper firsthand."
216Jobs attributed his angry outbursts to perfectionism.
217He was such a perfectionist he had trouble buying furniture -
218his home was only furnished with the bare essentials.
219His temper was in sharp contrast to his public image as a warm and loving family man.
220He met his wife, Laurene Powell when she was an MBA student at Stanford
221where he gave a lecture in 1989.
222They married two years later and had three children together.
223Despite his difficult personality,
224employees concede that there's no way Apple could have completely turned around its business without Jobs.
225And his genius continued to flourish.
226"There it is, right there."
227In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod
228which changed not only how we listen to music but the entire music industry.
229And in 2007, he took to the stage to announce the most successful product launch to date.
230"An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator.
231An iPod, a phone...are you getting it?
232"These are not 3 separate devices.
233"This is one device,"
234"and we are calling it iPhone."
235The future seemed without limits,
236but Jobs had already begun to have health problems.
237He traced it back to the brutal demands of running two companies at the same time,
238telling Isaacson, "It was rough, really rough, the worst time in my life."
239"I had a young family. I had Pixar."
240"I would go to work at 7 a.m. and I'd get back at 9 at night,"
241"and the kids would be in bed."
242"And I couldn't speak, I literally couldn't, I was so exhausted."
243"I couldn't speak to Laurene."
244All I could do was watch a half-hour of TV and vegetate.
245"It got close to killing me."
246He started to get kidney stones.
247When Jobs had a cat scan for kidney stones in 2003,
248doctors saw a shadow on his pancreas.
249It turned out to be a neuroendocrine tumor,
250a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is often treatable with surgery.
251Unlike the common form of pancreatic cancer,
252survival is measured in years if not decades.
253But according to Isaacson, he refused to undergo surgery for nine months,
254and later regretted his decision as his health declined.
255Jobs initially opted for alternative treatments such as acupuncture, dietary supplements, and juices
256instead of potentially life-saving surgery.
257Why?
258Because he thought he could bend reality to his will.
259It worked for him at Apple.
260Employees often joked that Jobs would distort reality to achieve his goals.
261Like the time when he asked Apple engineer Larry Kenyon to reduce the boot time of the Macintosh by 10 seconds.
262Kenyon said it was impossible, but Jobs didn't care, telling him to find a way.
263As Isaacson recounted, Jobs said:
264"If it could save a person's life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?"
265A few weeks later, Kenyon reduced the boot time by 28 seconds.
266So Jobs willed the impossible possible.
267In the same way, when it came to his health,
268he ignored reality and wanted to bend reality to his liking.
269Isaacson gave his thoughts to CBS:
270"I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist,"
271"you can have magical thinking."
272"And it had worked for him in the past."
273As his condition worsened, he had part of his pancreas removed which bought him some time
274but wasn't enough to eradicate the disease.
275In January 2009, he took a six month leave of absence to focus on his health.
276That April, he had a liver transplant.
277Tim Cook became acting CEO of Apple,
278with Jobs still involved with major strategic decisions.
279For the next two years, he continued working off and on.
280Then on August 24, 2011,
281he resigned as CEO in this letter made public on Apple's website:
282"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO,"
283"I would be the first to let you know."
284"Unfortunately, that day has come."
285Jobs became chairman of the Board and continued to work for Apple reportedly until the day before he died.
286On October 5th, 2011, around 3 pm Pacific time,
287he passed away surrounded by his family at his Palo Alto home.
288He was 56 years old.
289Jobs once said: Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.
290It is Life's change agent.
291It clears out the old to make way for the new.
292Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now,
293you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
294Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
295Jobs had a small, private funeral
296but he was mourned around the world like the passing of a rock star.
297He was buried in an unmarked grave - at his own request -
298at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in the heart of Silicon Valley.
299Reflecting on his life, when he had to build his way back up again
300after getting fired from the company he started, he said:
301I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.
302You've got to find what you love.
303And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.
304Your work is going to fill a large part of your life,
305and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
306And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
307If you haven't found it yet, keep looking.
308Don't settle.
309As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.
310Steve Jobs believed that his intuition and curiosity would guide him down the right path.