For all of his years in the spotlight at the helm of Apple,
Steve Jobs in many ways remains an inscrutable figure — even in his
death. Fiercely private, Jobs concealed most specifics about his
personal life, from his curious family life to the details of his battle
with pancreatic cancer — a disease that ultimately claimed him on Wednesday, at the age of 56.
While the CEO and co-founder of Apple
steered most interviews away from the public fascination with his
private life, there's plenty we know about Jobs the person, beyond the
Mac and the iPhone. If anything, the obscure details of his interior
life paint a subtler, more nuanced portrait of how one of the finest
technology minds of our time grew into the dynamo that we remember him as today.
1. Early life and childhood
Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted
shortly after his birth and reared near Mountain View, California by a
couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. His adoptive father — a term that Jobs
openly objected to — was a machinist for a laser company and his mother
worked as an accountant.
Later in life, Jobs discovered the identities of his estranged
parents. His birth mother, Joanne Simpson, was a graduate student at the
time and later a speech pathologist; his biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali,
was a Syrian Muslim who left the country at age 18 and reportedly now
serves as the vice president of a Reno, Nevada casino. While Jobs
reconnected with Simpson in later years, he and his biological father remained estranged.
2. College dropout
The lead mind behind the most successful company on the planet never
graduated from college, in fact, he didn't even get close. After
graduating from high school in Cupertino, California — a town now
synonymous with 1 Infinite Loop, Apple's headquarters — Jobs enrolled in
Reed College in 1972. Jobs stayed at Reed (a liberal arts university in
Portland, Oregon) for only one semester, dropping out quickly due to
the financial burden the private school's steep tuition placed on his
parents.
In his famous 2005 commencement speech
to Stanford University, Jobs said of his time at Reed: "It wasn't all
romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends'
rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food
with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to
get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple."
3. Fibbed to his Apple co-founder about a job at Atari
Jobs is well known for his innovations in personal computing, mobile
tech, and software, but he also helped create one of the best known
video games of all-time. In 1975, Jobs was tapped by Atari to work on the Pong-like game Breakout.
He was reportedly offered $750 for his development work, with the
possibility of an extra $100 for each chip eliminated from the game's
final design. Jobs recruited Steve Wozniak (later one of Apple's other
founders) to help him with the challenge. Wozniak managed to whittle the
prototype's design down so much that Atari paid out a $5,000 bonus —
but Jobs kept the bonus for himself, and paid his unsuspecting friend
only $375, according to Wozniak's own autobiography.
4. The wife he leaves behind
Like the rest of his family life, Jobs kept his marriage out of the
public eye. Thinking back on his legacy conjures images of him
commanding the stage in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, and
those solo moments are his most iconic. But at home in Palo Alto, Jobs
was raising a family with his wife, Laurene, an entrepreneur who
attended the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton business
school and later received her MBA at Stanford, where she first met her
future husband.
For all of his single-minded dedication to the company he built from the ground up, Jobs actually skipped a meeting
to take Laurene on their first date: "I was in the parking lot with the
key in the car, and I thought to myself, 'If this is my last night on
earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this
woman?' I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner
with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we've been together ever
since."
In 1991, Jobs and Powell were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at
Yosemite National Park, and the marriage was officiated by Kobin Chino, a
Zen Buddhist monk.
5. His sister is a famous author
Later in his life, Jobs crossed paths with his biological sister while
seeking the identity of his birth parents. His sister, Mona Simpson
(born Mona Jandali), is the well-known author of Anywhere But Here — a story about a mother and daughter that was later adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon.
After reuniting, Jobs and Simpson developed a close relationship. Of his sister, he told a New York Times interviewer: "We're family. She's one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days.'' Anywhere But Here is dedicated to "my brother Steve."
