Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Cannot compare Picasso to Steve Jobs if you don't know the Jobs bio


Steve Jobs
Originally uploaded by macevangelist
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (1955 – 2011)[6][7] was an American entrepreneur best known as the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc.

He was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution[9][10], says Wikipedia. Jobs also co-founded Pixar Animation Studios.

Jobs oversaw the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store.[17] The success of these products and services propelled Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company in 2011.[18]

The reinvigoration of the company after the mid-1990's is regarded by many commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business history.

He was raised by adoptive parents in San Francisco. His father taught him to rebuild radios and TV's in the garage.

In 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes, including a course on calligraphy.[41] He continued auditing classes at Reed while sleeping on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.[42]

He traveled to India in mid-1974[44] with a Reed College friend (and, later, an early Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment.

Staying for seven months, Jobs shaved his head and wore traditional Indian clothing.[47][48] During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, later calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".[49][50] He also became a serious practitioner of Zen Buddhism, engaged in lengthy meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. He maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen.[52]

Jobs and Steve Wozniak met in 1971. Wozniak had designed a low-cost digital "blue box" to generate the necessary tones to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. Jobs decided that they could make money selling it. The clandestine sales of the illegal "blue boxes" went well, and perhaps planted the seed in Jobs's mind that electronics could be fun and profitable.[55]

When Woz revealed that he had invented a computer in 1976 (the Apple I ), they founded Apple computer in the garage of Jobs's parents in order to sell it.[59]

Jobs's design aesthetic was influenced by the modernist architectural style of Joseph Eichler, and the industrial designs of Braun's Dieter Rams.[36] His design sense was also greatly influenced by the Buddhism which he experienced in India while on a seven-month spiritual journey.[126] His sense of intuition was also influenced by the spiritual people with whom he studied.[126]

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