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Steve Jobs
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pencil on paper
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21cm x 30cm
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Sold
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£4 per print plus P&P
The charismatic American businessman, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Apple Inc. widely recognized, along with Steve Wozniak, as the pioneer of the pc revolution.
Born in California and adopted at birth, he moved to San Francisco with his adopted ‘parents’, who were instrumental in setting the young Jobs on his ‘hands on’ education and the rudiments of electronics. His teenage years were his period of enlightenment, eventually finding his way to India in search for spiritual enlightenment and upon his return experimented with psychedelics.
In the late 70’s whilst Wosniak engineered the Apple II series, Jobs brought his sense of intuition, aesthetic design and marketing to the table. In the early 80’s he saw the commercial potential of Xerox’s, mouse driven interface and married it with Apple. However, by 1985, he lost a power struggle with the then Board of Directors, Jobs went on to set up NeXt out of which was developed an operating system that became Mac OSX.
In 1986 year later he acquired the graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd for $10million, which eventually became Pixar. After some years they were contracted to Disney to produce a number of computer animated films, starting with Toy Story in 1995, this with great success. It was acquired by Disney in 2006 in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4billion and leaving Jobs with a stockholding, in Disney of 7%.
In 1996, Apple bought NeXt for $429million and Jobs returned to ultimately head up the company he co-founded, bringing us first the iMac, followed by the iPod, a portable music player and the iTunes Store. Branching out even further, in 2007 they entered the cellular phone business with the iPhone.
A complicated character himself, his personal life is equally complicated and much reported on. Suffice to say in October 2003 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and after trying alternative treatments underwent surgery in July 2004. By January 2009 he took a leave of absence and underwent a liver transplant. Two years later there followed another leave of absence and on August 24 he resigned as CEO … sadly he died on October 5 leaving his wife of 20yrs, their three children and a daughter from a previous relationship.
A couple of quotes by him: ‘Be a yardstick for quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected’ and maybe, ‘Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night and saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me’.