Steve Jobs, R.I.P.

October 5, 2011 permalink

Steve Jobs 1955-2011
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Steve Jobs was born to Syrian immigrant Abdul Fattah “John” Jandali and Joanne Carole Sciebele, later Joanne Simpson, in 1955. This was still the period in which shame attached to births out of wedlock. Though Joanne and Jandali were willing to marry, Joanne's father would not stand for a marriage to a Syrian so Joanne gave birth alone. In those days unmarried fathers had no say in the matter, and Joanne gave her baby up for adoption. The parents did marry later and had a daughter, Steve's biological sister Mona Simpson. Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. Already a millionaire, at age 27 he was able to discover the identity of his bio parents but never make contact with his father. Jandali eventually learned the identity of his famous son but contact never went beyond an unanswered email — not wanting to appear as a gold-digger, he never phoned.

In 1976 Steve Jobs became the co-founder of Apple Computer. Its product line included the first mass-produced personal computer the Apple II and later the Macintosh. In one of the worst personnel decisions of all time, the Apple board fired Jobs in 1985. He went on to found NeXT and lead Pixar, producing the full-length animated movie Toy Story. After a decade without Jobs, Apple was approaching bankruptcy in 1996 when it acquired NeXT, putting Jobs back in Apple management. He was formally named president the next year. In his second tenure, Apple introduced more revolutionary products, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. The company also became a leading music distributor through the online iTunes store. At Steve Jobs' retirement on August 24, 2011, markets priced Apple as the world's most valuable corporation.

Fixcas has had a lot of stories of adoption failure. This one has to be called an adoption success. The portrait at the right is from his epitaph on the Apple home page.