Childhood and Education
Steve Jobs was a brilliant businessman who helped the company “Apple” become big and successful. He also developed the first electronic devices, such as the iPhone and the MacBook.
Born on February 24, 1955, his biological mother left him for adoption because she was not able to take care of him. The family of the Jobs adopted him so they could have the son that they always wanted. They named him “Steven Paul Jobs”. As he grew up, the family moved into Mountain View because of Paul’s new job. He entered the Monta Loma Elementary School in Mountain View and learned his early years there.
At elementary school, he met a kid named Rick Ferrentino. The duo, both naturally interested in pranking people, achieved many complex pranks with each other. In fourth grade, he was taken in by a teacher named Mrs. Imogene Hill and later said “She got hip to my whole situation in about a month and kindled a passion in me for learning things.” One example was that Mrs. Hill offered him a five dollar bill and a toy if he could ace the test. Steve accepted the challenge and succeeded by really focusing and striving to earn those rewards.
Because of his talent of being a quick and decisive learner, the school system wanted to send him to high school, but his parents didn’t allow that. The parents did allow him to skip one grade, fifth grade, so in the September of 1966, Steve approached sixth grade at Crittenden Middle in Mountain View. Later, his family moved again to Los Altos, since the Jobs family had promised to give him the best education possible, and entered another school, Cupertino Junior High. he met Bill Fernandez, who showed Steve the Wozniaks, whose son he would later become lifetime friends with. In 1968, Steve entered Homestead High school.
At high school, he tried and rejected a few classes and only showed up to the classes that he wanted to show up at. For example, at John McCollum’s Electronics course, McCollum noticed that Steve didn’t seem very happy with him or the class, and said “He kind of faded into the background. He was usually off in a corner doing something on his own and really didn’t want to have much of anything to do with either me or the rest of the class.” He tried classes, then dropped out and tried new ones. He gradually started liking reading and poetry more than other things, and did well in those classes.
In 1972, he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, which was more than 500 miles away from the Bay Area . Steve had attended Reed College since it was the only college he really liked. After a visit, he decided to only want to attend that college. At Reed, he developed an interest in calligraphy and buddhism, and helped Friedland, a friend, work on a farm named All-one farm, owned by Friedland. After moving back home, he was accepted by Al Alcorn into Atari, a young video game company who was rising quickly.
Career
At Atari, Steve worked hard and saved money. Al Alcorn sensed his abilities and wanted him to stay. He was asked to stay up late at the office with one other person. In order to go to india to visit his guru, he agreed to go to Germany to help a group of technicians with their flawed technology, where he could then take a leave of absence to travel. But, when they went to find him, they were disappointed to find that the guru had died last fall.
After steve returned to Atari, he worked there for a few years, then found Woz at his job and convinced him to join their startup business. They also got someone else, Ron Wayne, to help them do business, since neither of them were really good at business. Their first buyer, a man named Paul Terrell, who owned a small electronics shop called the Byte Shop, agreed to buy fifty copies of their new computer.
So the two Steves went to find sponsors to get computer parts to build the computers for the order. When they went to a electronics supply house called Cramer Electronics, the person in charge agreed to sell them parts with no interest. Having gotten the parts, they now went to Woz’s house to assemble the computers, but they then moved to steve’s house after some complaints from steve’s family.
Later on, apple grew very popular after the beginning of the production of the Macintosh, and it’s stock prices grew very high. More than forty members suddenly became millionaires. Although he met many challenges in the later stages of apple’s development, he had raised an overall successful company.
What I think of Steve Jobs
In my opinion, Steve Jobs was a very good businessman who knew exactly how and what to do to succeed in his own business. There are a few good and bad things about him as a person. He was good at being a businessman, and at giving good ideas, and he was very focused when he was trying to make a thing, but he was was very stubborn and thought abstractedly. He also sometimes got mad at others easier than most people would. And he tended to overreact sometimes. He was great, but I feel that he could have been a better team with his workers at Apple.
