Steve Jobs Timeline

1955-1979

1955 Feb. 24 Steven Paul is born in San Francisco, CA, soon to be adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs.

1960 The Jobs family moves to Palo Alto, heart of the growing Silicon Valley.

1969 Steve Jobs meets Steve Wozniak.

1972 Steve and Woz build and sell illegally blue boxes to Berkeley students.

1973 Fall Steve spends one semester at Reed College, Oregon, then drops out.

1974 Steve gets a job at Atari, and makes a trip to India to seek enlightenment.

1975 Steve and Woz start assembling Apple I computers in the Jobs' garage, and sell them to hobbyists.

1976 Mar. Woz and Steve show the early Apple I board at the Homebrew Computer Club.
Apr. 1 Apple Computer Inc. is incorporated by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne.
Summer Steve Jobs and Woz show off the Apple I at the Personal Computing Festival.

1977 Jan. Mike Markkula invests in Apple and hires Mike Scott as CEO. Woz is forced to leave HP.
Apr. 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, a huge hit all around the US.
Steve Jobs' and his ex-girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan's daugher Lisa is born out of wedlock.
At Apple, work starts on Apple III and Lisa while Jef Raskin begins The Book of Macintosh.

1979Dec. Steve Jobs is shown the first working graphical user interface at Xerox PARC.
Sales of Apple II skyrocket after Visicalc, the first spreadsheet, is introduced.

1980-1989

1980 Jef Raskin’s Macintosh project is green-lighted. Lisa moves toward a GUI-computer.
May Apple launches the Apple III, which will prove a disastrous flop.
Dec. 12 Apple goes public, increasing Steve Jobs' net worth to over $200 million.

1981 Jef Raskin is forced out of his Macintosh project as Steve Jobs takes over.
Feb. 25 Black Wednesday: 50 Apple employees laid off by CEO Mike Scott, who leaves afterward.
Aug. 12 IBM launches the IBM PC, the biggest threat to Apple's future.

1982 Feb. Steve ends up on the cover of Time Magazine.

1983 Jan. Launch of the Lisa computer. The Lisa team merges with the Mac team.
Apr. 8 PepsiCo CEO John Sculley becomes Apple's CEO.

1984 Jan. 24 Macintosh is launched in great fanfare at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting.

1985 May Palace coup: Apple's board sides with John Sculley and strips Steve off all executive duties.
Summer Alan Kay first introduces the Pixar team to Steve Jobs.
Sep. 17 Steve Jobs resigns from Apple. Apple announces it will sue Steve's future company, NeXT.

1986 Jan. 30 Jobs buys a division of George Lucas' ILM for $10 million and incorporates it as Pixar.
Aug. Pixar unveils John Lasseter’s short film Luxo Jr. at SIGGRAPH.
Steve discovers his biological mother and sister, novelist Mona Simpson.

1987 Feb. Ross Perot invests $20 million in NeXT, valuing it at $125 million.

1988 Winter Pixar launches the Pixar Image Computer II and starts working on the RenderMan language.
Sep. NeXT and IBM form a partnership to have NeXT’s system run on IBM machines.
Oct. 12 Steve Jobs introduces the NeXT Cube in San Francisco.
Dec. At SIGGRAPH, Pixar releases Tin Toy (1988's Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film).

1989 Mar. NeXT partners with distribution network Businessland to sell to corporate America.
Jun. Canon invests $100 million in NeXT, now worth $600 million.

1990-1999

The facts

Full name: Steven Paul Jobs

Birthdate: 24 February 1955

Birth location: San Francisco, California

Social background: lower middle-class. Father was fixing cars for a living.

Education: high-school certificate. Dropped out of Reed College after one semester.

Occupations: chairman & CEO at Apple Inc. + Director at The Walt Disney Company

Net worth: $5.5 billion according to Forbes' 2010 ranking — 136th richest man on Earth

Annual salary: $1

Family

Biological parents: Joanne Simpson and possibly Abdulfattah Jandali, political sciences professor from Syria

Adoptive parents: Paul and Clara Jobs, both deceased

Siblings: adoptive sister: Patti Jobs (born 1958), biological sister: Mona Simpson (born 1957)

Spouse: Laurene Powell (born 1964), married in 1991

Children: Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), with unmarried girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan. Reed (born 1991), Erin Siena (born 1995) and Eve (born 1998) with wife Laurene.

Personal tastes & opinion

Political orientation: Democrat. Steve funds the Democratic Party (using his wife’s name) for each Presidential election, and he entertained the Clintons several times at his home in Palo Alto. Steve himself thought of running for the office of governor of California after he left Apple in 1985 — but gave up in the end. He knew Gov. Jerry Brown from his days at the Los Altos Zen Center in the 1970s.