February 24, 1955:
Steven Paul Jobs is born in San Francisco to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali. The then-unmarried couple give up their son to adoption. Paul and Clara Jobs become Jobs' non-biological parents.
1961:
The Jobs family moves to Mountain View, Calif., part of what would later become known as Silicon Valley.
1968:
Jobs calls Bill Hewlett, the co-founder and co-namesake of Hewlett-Packard, looking for spare parts to build a frequency counter. Hewlett gives Jobs the parts, as well as an internship with the company that summer.
1970:
Meets future Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak through a friend. In Wozniak's 2006 autobiography, "iWoz," he notes that the two "hit it off" immediately, despite their four-year age difference.
1972:
Graduates from Homestead High School in Cupertino, Calif., and enrolls at Reed College in Portland, Ore., only to drop out a semester later. Jobs would go on to sit in on classes that interested him, such as calligraphy, despite not getting credit for them.
1974:
Begins a brief stint as an engineer at Atari. Working the night shift, he employs Wozniak to help whittle down the hardware required for a prototype of a single-player version of Pong, the game that would go on to become Breakout. Jobs leaves Atari in the summer to travel through India, only to return to California to live in a commune.
The Apple II computer.
The Apple II computer.
Computer History Museum
1976:
Co-founds Apple Computer with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. That same year, the company sells the Apple I in the form of a kit that sells for $666.66.
January 3, 1977:
Apple incorporates.
June 5, 1977:
Releases the Apple II, the first commercially available personal computer in a plastic case with color graphics--and Apple's first successful personal computer.
December 12, 1980:
Apple goes public, putting Jobs' net worth north of $200 million.
January 24, 1984:
Two days after the $1.5 million Ridley Scott-directed "1984" Super Bowl commercial airs, introduces the Macintosh to much fanfare during Apple's shareholder meeting. "For the first time ever, I'd like to let Macintosh speak for itself." The computer's voice then says, "Never trust a computer you can't lift." Macintosh becomes the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface.
September 12, 1985:
CEO John Sculley engineers Jobs' ouster from Apple. Jobs resigns as Apple chairman, saying in a board meeting, "I've been thinking a lot, and it's time for me to get on with my life. It's obvious that I've got to do something. I'm 30 years old." Soon thereafter, Jobs starts NeXT Computer (which later becomes NeXT Software), funded by selling $70 million of his Apple stock. An "interpersonal" NeXT workstation, sporting a built-in Ethernet port, is used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN to become the first server of the World Wide Web.
February 3, 1986:
For $10 million, buys the Graphics Group division of Lucasfilm that becomes Pixar Animation Studios.
1988:
NeXT Computer releases its first computer.
1993: NeXT discontinues hardware business, gets into software instead. The company is renamed NeXT Software, Inc.
November 29, 1995:
Becomes Pixar's president and CEO. Later in the year, Jobs brings Pixar public, one week after the release of "Toy Story," with Tom Hanks doing the voice of Woody and Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear. The film earns $192 million at the box office. Its success helps make it quite attractive for celebrities to lend their voices to animated characters.
December 10, 1996:
Returns to Apple, as an adviser, after it buys NeXT for $429 million.
July 9, 1997:
Becomes CEO, initially as the de facto chief, then as interim chief in September.
Apple's original iMac.
Apple's original iMac.
Apple
August 6, 1997: Announces a $150 million investment from Microsoft, coupled with a partnership on Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer for the Mac.
November 10, 1997:
Introduces the Apple Store, which lets consumers custom-order Apple products directly from the company online.
January 8, 1998:
Apple returns to profitability.
May 6, 1998:
Introduces the iMac, which becomes commercially available in August.
January 5, 2000:
Drops the "interim" from his CEO title at the Macworld Expo, joking that he would be using the title "iCEO," paying homage to the company's product-naming conventions. Takes a $1 annual salary. Soon terminates projects including Newton and OpenDoc, and changes licensing terms to make Mac-cloning cost-prohibitive. Technologies developed at NeXT ultimately evolve into Apple products such as the Mac OS.
January 9, 2001:
Introduces iTunes, then exclusively for Mac users. "iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukebox application, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even more people into the digital music revolution."
March 24, 2001:
Apple ships the the first version of Mac OS
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