Steve Jobs Timeline:

Steve Jobs Life Timeline from his birth to death.

24 Feb 1955

Steven Paul was born in San Francisco, the son of Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble. He is quickly adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs

1960

The Jobs family moves from San Francisco to Mountain View, a suburban town in Santa Clara county, more famous under the name Silicon Valley

Summer 1968

13-year-old Steve Jobs calls up Bill Hewlett and gets a summer job at the HP factory

1969

Steve Jobs meets Steve Wozniak, 5 years older, through a mutual friend. Woz and Steve share a love of electronics, Bob Dylan, and pranks

1972

Steve and Woz build and illegally sell 'blue boxes' that allow to make phone calls for free

1973

Steve spends the fall semester at Reed College, Oregon, then drops out. He will stay on campus and attend the classes that interest him for a while, then move to a hippie commune

1974

Steve gets his first job at video game maker Atari, and later makes a trip to India to 'seek enlightenment' with his college friend Dan Kottke

Mar 1976

Woz and Steve show the early Apple I board at the Homebrew Computer Club

1 Apr 1976

Apple Computer Inc. is incorporated by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne

Spring 1976

Steve and Woz start assembling Apple I computers in the Jobses' garage, and sell them to computer hobbyists, including 50 for the Byte Shop

28 Aug 1976

Steve Jobs and Woz show off the Apple I at the Personal Computing Festival in Atlantic City, with help from Dan Kottke

Jan 1977

Former Intel executive turned business angel Mike Markkula invests in Apple and hires former colleague Mike Scott as CEO. Woz is forced to leave HP to join Apple full time

17 Apr 1977

Apple makes a huge sensation at the West Coast Computer Faire with a prototype Apple II

1978

The Apple II becomes the first mass-market personal computer, with impressive sales around the US. Apple becomes a symbol of the personal computing revolution

1978

Steve's ex-girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan gives birth to their daugher Lisa. Steve refuses to acknowledge he is the father

1978

At Apple, work starts on the Apple III and the Lisa, while Jef Raskin begins The Book of Macintosh

Dec 1979

Steve Jobs is shown the first working graphical user interface at Xerox PARC

1979

Sales of Apple II skyrocket after pioneer spreadsheet software Visicalc is introduced

1980

Jef Raskin’s Macintosh project is green-lighted. Lisa evolves into a GUI-computer, in part because of Steve Jobs' demands

May 1980

Apple launches the Apple III, which will prove a disastrous flop

12 Dec 1980

Apple goes public, increasing Steve Jobs' net worth from dozens of millions of dollars to over $200 million

Early 1981

Jef Raskin is forced out of his Macintosh project as Steve Jobs takes over

25 Feb 1981

Black Wednesday: 50 Apple employees laid off by CEO Mike Scott without notice. The board asks him to leave shortly afterwards. Mike Markkula becomes interim CEO

12 Aug 1981

IBM launches the IBM PC, the biggest threat to Apple's future yet

Feb 1982

A portrait of Steve Jobs ends up on the cover of Time Magazine, under the title 'Striking it Rich'. Steve trusts Time correspondent Michael Moritz to follow him on the Mac team for months, hoping to become Man of the Year

3 Jan 1983

Time instead makes The Computer 'machine of the year' and publishes a hatchet job on Steve Jobs, who becomes furious and suspicious of journalists for the rest of his life

Jan 1983

Launch of the Lisa computer. The Lisa team later merges with the Mac team under Steve Jobs's leadership

8 Apr 1983

PepsiCo CEO John Sculley becomes Apple's CEO after having been wooed by Steve Jobs for several months

24 Jan 1984

Macintosh is launched in great fanfare at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting

24 Feb 1985

Steve Jobs celebrates his 30th birthday in great fanfare, with Ella Fitzgerald as guest singer for the night

May 1985

Palace coup: Apple's board sides with John Sculley and strips Steve off all executive duties

Summer 1985

Alan Kay first introduces the Pixar team to Steve Jobs

17 Sep 1985

Steve Jobs resigns from Apple and starts NeXT with five other refugees from Apple. Apple announces it will sue NeXT

1986-1996 NeXT Pixar and wilderness

30 Jan 1986

Jobs buys the computer division of George Lucas' ILM for $10 million and incorporates it as Pixar

Aug 1986

Pixar unveils John Lasseter’s short film Luxo Jr. at SIGGRAPH. It is praised by the expert audience as one of the first computer-animated work of art

1986

Steve's mother Clara dies. A couple months later, Steve discovers his biological mother Joanne and his sister, novelist Mona Simpson. They will become close friends

Feb 1987

Ross Perot invests $20 million in NeXT, based on a $125 million valuation. The startup has still to release a product

Sep 1988

NeXT and IBM form a partnership to have NeXT’s system run on IBM machines

12 Oct 1988

Steve Jobs introduces the NeXT Cube in San Francisco to great critical acclaim, pitching it as a workstation for higher education

Winter 1988

Pixar launches its new computer graphics workstation, the Pixar Image Computer II, and starts working on the RenderMan computer animation software

Dec 1988

At SIGGRAPH, Pixar releases its new short Tin Toy. It will win 1988's Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film

Mar 1989

NeXT partners with retailer Businessland to sell to corporate America in addition to higher ed

Apr 1989

Steve Jobs is named 'Entrepreneur of the decade' by Inc. magazine

Jun 1989

Canon invests $100 million in NeXT, now valued at $600 million

30 Apr 1989

Steve shuts down all of Pixar’s hardware operations

13 Sep 1989

Steve introduces the cheaper NeXT Station in San Francisco, to boost the modest sales of NeXT hardware

Mar 1991

Steve Jobs fires almost half of Pixar’s staff and takes back all of the employees' stock in an effort to cut costs, as the company is still in the red 5 years after its launch

18 Mar 1991

Steve Jobs marries Laurene Powell in Yosemite under the blessing of Steve's old zen guru Kobin Chino. Laurene is already pregnant

May 1991

Pixar signs a deal with Disney to make a computer-animated feature film

Fall 1991

Laurene gives birth to Steve’s first son, Reed Paul Jobs

Late 1991

Ross Perot leaves NeXT as his investment is still not paying off

Jan 1992

NeXT licenses its operating system, NeXTSTEP, to run on x86 machines

1992

NeXT COO Peter Van Cuylenburg betrays Steve Jobs by trying to have the company bought by its giant competitor Sun. Sun CEO Scott McNealy warns Steve Jobs instead

11 Feb 1993

NeXT fires 300 employees as it discontinues all its hardware operations and becomes NeXT Software Inc. This is the nadir of Steve's career

Mar 1993

Steve's father, Paul Jobs, dies

Nov 1993

Jeffrey Katzenberg puts a halt to the development of Toy Story because of creative disagreements

Nov 1994

Pixar resumes work on Toy Story

Feb 1995

Steve starts focusing less on NeXT and more on Pixar before Toy Story is released. He becomes President & CEO of Pixar Animation Studios

29 Nov 1995

One week after Toy Story is out, Pixar goes public. Steve Jobs's worth rises to $1.5 billion, more than it ever was during his first tenure at Apple

Late 1995

Laurene gives birth to Erin Siena Jobs, her second child with Steve

Early 1996

Steve Jobs negotiaties a breakthrough deal between Pixar and Disney with its CEO Michael Eisner. The deal includes landmark rights for a studio, such as equal billing

1996

Steve's biological sister Mona Simpson publishes her third novel, A Regular Guy, whose main character Tom Owens is largely based on her brother

Dec 1996

Apple, which was desperately looking for a modern operating system to buy, eventually buys NeXT for $400 million. Steve Jobs is named "informal adviser" to Apple CEO Gil Amelio

1997-2004 Rebuilding Apple

Jul 1997

Gil Amelio is ousted by the Apple Board of directors after a disastrous quarter. Steve Jobs is named interim CEO in his place and installs his NeXT executive team at the top of Apple

6 Aug 1997

Steve Jobs introduces Apple's new board of directors and a truce with Microsoft at Macworld Boston

Fall 1997

Apple starts its 'Think Different' campaign to restore its damaged brand image. The new slogan will quickly enter popular culture and define the company for the next five years

8 Jan 1998

At Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs announces that Apple is profitable again, thanks to sales of the new Power Macintosh computers

6 May 1998

Steve Jobs introduces Apple's revolutionary iMac at the Flint Center auditorium in Cupertino, 14 years after he had introduced the Macintosh at that same place

May 1998

Eve Jobs, Laurene and Steve's youngest daughter, is born

5 Jan 1999

Steve Jobs introduces the new Power Mac G3 and the color iMacs at Macworld San Francisco

April 1999

Pirates of Silicon Valley, a TV movie starring Noah Wyle as young Steve Jobs, airs

21 Jul 1999

The original iBook is unveiled at Macworld New York with the tagline iMac to go. Steve Jobs invites Noah Wyle on stage to impersonate him again

5 Oct 1999

Introduction of the iMac DVs and of iMovie, the first of Apple's first Digital Hub app

5 Jan 2000

At Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs drops the 'interim' in his title and officially becomes Apple’s CEO. He also demoes Mac OS X's revolutionary Aqua interface to a bewildered audience

19 Jul 2000

The Power Mac G4 Cube is unveiled at Macworld NY. It will be discontinued one year later because of disappointing sales

9 Jan 2001

Steve Jobs unveils Apple’s Digital Hub Strategy at Macworld: the Mac is to become the center of consumers' emerging digital lifestyles

24 Mar 2001

After four years of hard work, Mac OS X 10.0, the new incarnation of NeXTSTEP, ships

19 May 2001

Apple opens its first Retail Stores in Tysons Corner, Virginia and Glendale, California

23 Oct 2001

After an 8-month crash development program, Steve Jobs unveils iPod at a small media event on the company's campus. He has no idea how it will tranform Apple

7 Jan 2002

Steve unveils the iMac G4 and the fourth iApp, iPhoto, at Macworld San Francisco

Mid 2002

Apple starts its popular 'Switch' campaign with ads picturing PC users that switched to the Mac

17 Jul 2002

Steve Jobs introduces the first Windows-compatible iPods at Macworld NY

28 Apr 2003

Apple opens the revolutionary online iTunes Music Store in the US, after negotiating landmark deals with all major music labels

30 May 2003

Opening day of Finding Nemo, Pixar’s first Best Animated Feature Academy Award winner

Spring 2003

Following increasing tension with Michael Eisner, Steve Jobs announces that Pixar is seeking a new distributor to replace Disney after its contract expires

23 Jun 2003

Steve Jobs unveils the Power Mac G5, the world’s fastest computer, at WWDC

16 Oct 2003

"The day hell froze over": Steve Jobs introduces iTunes for Windows and further demonstrates Apple's growing lead over its competitors in the digital music business

Fall 2003

Steve Jobs is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but stubbornly refuses any modern medical treatment for months. He tries alternative diets instead

6 Jan 2004

Steve unveils the iPod mini and the iLife suite at Macworld. The iPod mini will soon become the world's best-selling MP3 player and truly establish Apple as a consumer electronics powerhouse

Aug 2004

Steve Jobs finally has his pancreatic tumor removed by surgery

2005-2011 The Big Apple

11 Jan 2005

At Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs unveils Apple's productivity suite iWork, the new Mac mini, and the iPod shuffle, the cheapest iPod ever at $49

29 Apr 2005

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is released. A stable, fast release, it is immensely popular and marks the end of the four-year transition from the old Mac OS to UNIX-based Mac OS X

6 Jun 2005

At WWDC 2005, Steve Jobs announces that Apple is going to switch away from Motorola's and IBM's PowerPC architectures, and use Intel processors in its future Macs instead. This move will further help the growing adoption of the Mac

12 Jun 2005

Steve Jobs makes a memorable commencement speech at Stanford University. History will remember its closing remarks, Steve's advice to the young students: 'Stay hungry, stay foolish', a quote from the last page of the Whole Earth Catalogue from his youth

7 Sep 2005

Steve introduces the Motorola ROCKR, an iTunes-compatible cell phone, and the iPod nano

12 Oct 2005

Steve Jobs invites Disney’s new CEO Bob Iger on stage at an Apple Music Event where he also introduces the new iPod videos and the iTunes movie store

10 Jan 2006

Steve Jobs unveils the first two Intel Macs at Macworld, the iMac and the new MacBook Pro

24 Jan 2006

The Walt Disney Company acquires Pixar for $7.4 billion. Pixar's largest shareholder Steve Jobs joins the Disney board while Ed Catmull becomes president of the Walt Disney Animation Studios, and John Lasseter its chief creative officer

28 Feb 2006

Apple releases its first living-room product, the iPod hi-fi, discontinued a year and a half later

18 Apr 2006

Steve Jobs announces Apple’s intention to erect a second campus in Cupertino

Mid 2006

Apple starts its famous 'Mac vs PC' campaign, a series of TV commercials featuring Justin Long as Mac and John Hodgman as PC. The campaign will last for three years and mark popular culture

7 Aug 2006

Apple completes the transition of its entire product line to the Intel platform with the new Mac Pro

9 Jan 2007

In his most memorable keynote presentation ever, at Macworld 2007, Steve Jobs introduces iPhone and its revolutionary touch-screen interface. He also introduces Apple TV and announces the company's name change from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. to better reflect its new nature

Apr 2007

The SEC files charges against Apple’s Nancy Heinen and Fred Anderson for options backdating

29 Jun 2007

iPhone is released in the US, the same day as Pixar’s 8th feature film, Ratatouille

5 Dec 2007

Steve Jobs is inducted in the California Hall of Fame by Gov. Schwartzenegger

15 Jan 2008

At Macworld 2008, Steve Jobs introduces MacBook Air, with the tagline 'the world's thinnest notebook'. Three years later, it will come to redefine all of Apple's notebook product line

6 Mar 2008

Apple announces it will open the iPhone platform to outside developers with the App Store. VC fund KPCB starts iFund to invest in the new mobile app economy that they (rightly) believe will sprout from it

9 May 2008

The press starts speculating about Steve Jobs's health as he appears very thin to unveil the iPhone 3G with an entry price of $199 on stage at WWDC

Aug 2008

The SEC clears Steve Jobs of any responsibilities in the options backdating scandal

Late 2008

Apple starts its popular 'There's an app for that' campaign to illustrate the growing popularity of the App Store and the thousands of iPhone apps it offers

5 Jan 2009

Steve Jobs announces he will not speak at Macworld 2009 because of his health, and takes a six-month medical leave of absence

Apr 2009

Steve receives a liver transplant at the Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. He was weeks away from dying when he got the surgery

3 Aug 2009

Google CEO Eric Schmidt leaves Apple's board because of conflicting interests due to Android

28 Aug 2009

Apple releases Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, stripped off any code from the original Mac OS

9 Sep 2009

Back at Apple, Steve Jobs makes the first public appearance after his transplant to introduce new iPods at the 'It's Only Rock'N'Roll' event

27 Jan 2010

After months of wild rumors, Steve Jobs unveils iPad, 'the biggest thing Apple's ever done'. The tablet runs the same operating system as iPhone

16 July 2010

One month after the release of the new iPhone 4, Steve Jobs holds a press conference to address the smartphone's supposed reception issues, the so-called 'Antennagate'

17 Jan 2011

Jobs surprises the world by announcing his new medical leave of absence, without any end date

2 Mar 2011

Despite his medical leave, Steve Jobs takes the stage to unveil the new iPad 2

6 Jun 2011

At his last keynote at WWDC 2011, a freil Steve Jobs unveils Apple's cloud offering, iCloud, the foundation for the next decade of Apple products

7 Jun 2011

Steve Jobs appears at the Cupertino City Council to unveil Apple's plans for its new 'Spaceship' campus. This is his last public appearance

24 Aug 2011

Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple, with the words 'I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.' Tim Cook becomes Apple CEO

5 Oct 2011

Steve Jobs dies at home, surrounded by his family

24 Oct 2011

After two years of work, and forty interviews with Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson publishes his authorized biography of the Apple and Pixar co-founder, simply named Steve Jobs

Sources: www.allaboutstevejobs.com

Steve At Home:

Bachelor days

Steve Jobs grew up in a lower-middle class suburban neighborhood in the 1960s. When he was a young adult, in the early 1970s, he delved into eastern mysticism, Zen Buddhism, and hippie ideals. Then he started Apple and became a millionaire at 23, an icon of entrepreneurialism and capitalism. It is not hard to picture how big of a shock to his values this new status must have created. In his late 20s, while he was still single, Steve Jobs was not living the life of a typical young nouveau riche.

He bought a large house in Los Gatos, not far from his parents' and Apple, which he almost didn't furnish (the famous 1982 Diana Walker picture in his living room was taken in that house) He kept his peculiar food habits, staying a vegan and fasting for spa few weeks - although he sometimes allowed himself some fish and even meat once in a while. And he worked. He worked really, really hard, and spent most of his waking hours at Apple — including weekends. He didn't have many friends a the time, although he socialized quite a bit, including in New York where he purchased a luxurious apartment in the San Remo Towers. (Diane Keaton once told the story of how he tried to woo her when she was living there).

In 1984, Jobs bought the Jacking mansion in Woodside and moved in a few months later. His life remained pretty much the same, the mansion remaining unfurnished, apart from the kitchen where a young couple he had hired prepared him his vegan meals. Steve's longtime girlfriend, Tina Redse, whom he met during that year, hated staying at the empty house. She kept her house in Palo Alto, which was also a refuge when she and Steve would have one of their frequent fights. Finally, in the summer of 1989, he asked her to marry him, and she declined because it would "drive her crazy".

A few weeks later, a new woman entered the life of Steve Jobs while he was giving a talk at Stanford. "There's this beautiful woman and she's really smart and she has this dog and I'm going to marry her", he told his sister Mona over the phone that night. And he did: Laurene Powell became Mrs. Jobs on March 18, 1991.

Family man

Steve Jobs's lifestyle changed a lot after the birth of Reed, his first child with Laurene. He took his family very seriously, and became an affectionate father. Until the end of his life, he would keep that same way of life: that of a hard-working CEO, but one who don't choose the celebrity circuit: "What's astonishing is how normal a family life it is. Steve just never went out socially. He was home every evening", wrote Jobs's biographer Walter Isaacson. Jobs himself said: "I have a very simple life. I have my family and I have Apple and Pixar. And I don't do much else."

Indeed, Steve Jobs apparently turned into a loving father and peaceful neighbor, the sighting of whom was commonplace to the residents of Palo Alto. However, in his official biography, Isaacson reveals that the relationships between Jobs and his children was not all that idyllic. Although he had a special relation with his son Reed, the same apparently cannot be said of his daughters. He often had arguments with his first daughter Lisa, his child with Chrisann Brennan; he apparently did not pay much attention to Erin, his second, quiet daughter; but he liked the strong will and temper of his youngest child, daughter Eve.

Isaacson writes: "Jobs developed a strong relationship with Reed, but with his daughters he was more distant. As he would with others, he would occasionally focus on them, but just as often would completely ignore them when he had other things on his mind. 'He focuses on his work, and at times he has not been

there for the girls,' Powell said. At one point Jobs marveled to his wife at how well their kids were turning out, 'especially since we're not always there for them.' This amused, and slightly annoyed, Powell, because she had given up her career when Reed turned two and she decided she wanted to have more children."

Apart from his wife and children, Steve Jobs's inner family circle also included his biological sister Mona Simpson. The daughter of Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble, Mona was a brilliant writer whom Jobs discovered in 1986, after tracking down his biological parents. "My brother and I are very close," Simpson said in 1997. "I admire him enormously." Jobs said: "We're family. She's one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days." They remained friends even after Mona published her second novel A Regular Guy ,which was heavily inspired by Jobs's relationship with Lisa. In her essay Driving Jane, Lisa recounted her stupefaction at seeing her personal history described in great detail in her aunt's book. As for Jobs, he didn't read the book so as not to get mad at his sister.

Jobs also connected late in life with his biological mother Joanne Simpson (born Schieble), although they did not become very close, as he always considered Paul and Clara Jobs to be his true and only parents. He never sought to contact Abdulfattah Jandali, his biological father, because of the way he had abandoned his mother and sister when they were young. However, he revealed to biographer Isaacson that the two had met by chance in the early 1980s when Jobs frequented Jandali's restaurant in San Jose

The real deal

In his post about working with Steve Jobs, Mike Evangelist wrote: "In my dealings with him I've seen one thing vividly: Steve Jobs is the real deal. This is not some sort of act". Indeed, Steve's way of life proved that he applied the same values at home and at work.

Steve Jobs spent the last twenty years of his life in a simple country house in Palo Alto. Although the house is larger than your typical suburban house, and relatively expensive at around $4 million, it does not stand out in the wealthy city of Palo Alto, and is a testament to Jobs's modest lifestyle. Despite his net worth of over $8 billion, his garden had no walls and he did not even lock the front door.

Time reporters Cathy Booth and David Jackson had a glimpse of the life at the Jobses in 1997. They wrote: "Laurene has planted a garden of wildflowers, herbs and vegetables all around. The rooms are sparsely decorated, the only extravagances being Ansel Adams photographs. We dine as the Jobses always do: both are strict vegans, eating no meat products. Dinner is pasta with raw tomatoes, fresh raw corn from the garden, steamed cauliflower and a salad of raw shredded carrots. While the adults eat, their six-year-old son picks lemon verbena and other herbs in the garden for the after-dinner tea. His reward is a tickle and being tucked into bed by Dad. Conversation is a mix of politics, Laurene's work setting up a mentor group for a nearby high school and tales of a presidential visit last summer when Bill Clinton rang up and invited himself to dinner so he could meet with Silicon Valley executives. "We had to rent a Dumpster to clean out the house before they came!" says Jobs, whose prenuptial housing style was "spare," if that's the term for lacking furniture. The couple giggle over their search for cheap wine glasses to serve the President. The menu was, naturally, vegan. Grabbing a couple of bottles of mineral water from the fridge, the two took off for a stroll around Palo Alto. Jobs was barefoot."

Life at the Jobses did have some peculiarities: the strict vegan meals; the absence of TV for the kids, lest it stifle their creativity; and the occasional dinner with Bill Clinton or Rupert Murdoch. But overall they had a very quiet, typical life similar to millions of couples in America.

Besides his simplicity, Steve Jobs was also a great perfectionist in his personal choices, not only at work. His sister Mona explained at a memorial event held in his honor that "They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old." Jobs himself explained how he had spent several weeks debating which washing machine to buy with his family. Most people speculate this is why his furnishing habits were so spare: it was because he wouldn't buy anything short of perfect — and perfect was a rare thing to buy.

Jobs, who was also 'strictly business' at work, suffered no waste of time. In one interview, he explained that it was why he wore the same thing everyday, his famous black mock turtleneck: so he didn't have to waste time picking what to wear every morning. There are several explanations as to how he ended up wearing so many turtlenecks. In the biographySteve Jobs, Isaacson recalls Jobs explaining, "So I asked Issey [Miyake] to make me some of his black turtlenecks that I liked, and he made me like a hundred of them. […] That's what I wear. I have enough to last for the rest of my life." John Lasseter remembered a slightly different story: "He found this one really great black turtleneck which he loved – I think it was Issey Miyake – so tried to buy another one and they didn't have any more. He called the company and asked if they would make another one, and they refused. So he said: 'Fine, how many do you have to make before I can buy them?' So they made them – I think he has a closet full of them.'"

Personal beliefs

Steve Jobs didn't vote when he was young, as he professed in an interview with Playboy. After he left Apple in 1985, he caressed the idea of a career in politics, which was suggested to him by his friend and fellow Los Altos Zen Center adept, California governor Jerry Brown. But his mentor PR man Regis McKenna explained to him it wouldn't be that easy: Steve Jobs was risking public exposure for his private life, including its darkest sides, such as abandoning his daughter or taking LSD in college. Jobs gave up the idea and eventually founded NeXT.

As he grew older, Jobs became a supporter of the Democratic Party. He was friendly with President Clinton, whom he entertained at his house with Hillary while in office, and he invited Al Gore to join Apple's board in 2003. Although Steve didn't donate to the Democrats in his name, his wife Laurene contributed to each campaign to the fullest amount possible for an individual.

However, Steve Jobs was not a liberal on every subject. In 2011, as his health declined severely, he still accepted to attend a dinner with President Obama on February 17. He was blunt: "You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told the president, according to Steve Jobs. "To prevent that, he said, the administration needed to be a lot more business-friendly. He described how easy it was to build a factory in China, and said that it was almost impossible to do so these days in America, largely because of regulations and unnecessary costs."

Jobs also had firm beliefs regarding public education. He voiced his point of view on several occasion, including an extensive interview with Computerworld in 1995 and a press conference in Texas in 2007. Steve thought the worst evil of public education were the 'corrupt' unions of teachers, which he denounced for blocking reform, and called "off-the-charts crazy". He advocated that "principals should be able to hire and fire teachers based on how good they were" and that "schools should be staying open until at least 6 p.m. and be in session eleven months of the year". He also often called for the digitalization of notebooks, a dream he caressed toward the end of his life, and that Apple made true in January 2012 with iBooks Author and iTunes U.

On a more spiritual note, Steve Jobs did not have any religion, although he was an adept of Zen Buddhism. In the late 1970s, he attended meditation sessions and primal scream therapies at the Los Altos Zen center. The center was led by Otogawa Kobun Chino, a soto Zen monk. Jobs later adopted Otogawa as his teacher, and hired him as 'spiritual advisor' for NeXT, then to celebrate his wedding with Laurene in 1991. The comic The Zen of Steve Jobsdescribes their relationship.

Regarding God and life after death, he explained his beliefs to Walter Isaacson late in his life: "He talked about his experiences in India almost four decades earlier, his study of Buddhism, and his views on reincarnation and spiritual transcendence. 'I'm about fifty-fifty on believing in God,' he said. 'For most of my life, I've felt that there must be more to our existence than meets the eye.' He admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odds out of a desire to believe in an afterlife. 'I like to think that something survives after you die,' he said. 'It's strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures.' He fell silent for a very long time. 'But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch,' he said. 'Click! And you're gone.'"

Steve Jobs & Money

Steve Jobs used to say: "I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over ten million dollars when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and… it wasn't that important — because I never did it for the money". The truth is that although he never spent his money lavishly, Jobs often used it politically in the course of his career.

Steve's sister Mona Simpson said during her eulogy "This is not to say that [Steve] didn't enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there. And he did." There was a little more to that. Steve received a private jet (a Gulfstream V) as a gift from the Apple board in 2000, which he used to take his family to Kona Village in Hawaii almost every year. He bought a new model of the same car every 6 months (a Mercedes SL55 AMG in his later years), so he wouldn't have the legal obligation to get a license plate — and he was a reckless driver to boot. And in 2010-2011, he spent a considerable of time designing a yacht with a glass deck, which he hoped to use to take his family on vacation, and to eventually retire. Yet all these millionaire perks where nothing compared to what he could afford with his $8.3 billion dollar net worth (in 2011)… compare and contrast with his good friend Larry Ellison, multi-billionaire co-founder of Oracle.

However, Steve's relationship with money was a bit odd. When Apple went public in 1980, he refused to give away stock and preferred to keep as much as possible to himself. When Woz asked him to give stock to Dan Kottke, the college friend that traveled with him to India and helped him out in the garage, Steve replied: "Fine. I'll give him zero." The same happened fifteen years later, during the Pixar IPO. Steve made sure that he, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter got plenty of stock, but all the employees who had stuck with the company for many years, despite its failures, were hardly compensated at all. In fact, Steve had taken back their stock in 1991, when he created a new company where he was the sole owner in exchange for another line of credit from his personal money. When he came back to Apple, he insisted to have a $1 salary and kept him for his 14 years there, but he got generously compensated with stock and options. He actually even asked for more options in 2001, a SEC investigation revealed: "It wasn't so much about the money," he told an SEC lawyer. "Everybody likes to be recognized by his peers. … I felt that the board wasn't really doing the same with me. I just felt like there is nobody looking out for me here, you know… So I wanted them to do something, and so we talked about it. … I thought I was doing a pretty good job."The board approved an option on 7.5 million shares.

Some suggest it was a political use of stock and had nothing to do with their value. This is the same rationale that made Steve sell all but one of his Apple stock back in 1985, after he left the company, even though it made little business sense.

After Jobs's death, a controversy arose again about his lack of any philanthropic initiatives. The refrain goes that Jobs never gave money to philanthropy, and that after shutting down Apple's philanthropic arm in 1997, when the company was in dire straits, he never reinstated it later. He wouldn't talk about it to his biographer Walter Isaacson either. The truth is that he made donations to a couple of institutions, including the Stanford Hospital, and that he was a big help in the (RED) campaign by creating a red iPod. However, he did not spend his time picking up charities, feeling he served a better cause by working for Apple and creating money that his shareholders could distribute. He actually started a foundation in 1986, but closed it after 15 months, as he spent all his time at NeXT.

Sources: www.allaboutstevejobs.com