Steve Jobs
More info
- Born
- Died
- Known for
- Co-founder of Apple, NeXT and Pixar
- Nationality
- American
Did not build the computers himself, but decided which ones got built — and what they were for.
Jobs founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976 and pushed through the decision that the Macintosh would carry the graphical interface he had seen at Xerox PARC. He was forced out in 1985, founded NeXT, and bought what became Pixar.
Apple's 1997 purchase of NeXT brought him back — and NeXTSTEP became the foundation of macOS and later iOS. The iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad followed within twelve years. His strength lay in removal: fewer products, fewer buttons, fewer choices for the user. He resigned as CEO in August 2011 and died of cancer six weeks later.