~ 9 Little-Known Facts About Steve Jobs ~

[MysteRy]

For all of his years in the spotlight at the helm of Apple, Steve Jobs in many ways remains an inscrutable figure, even in his death. Fiercely private, Jobs concealed most specifics about his personal life, from his curious family life to the details of his battle with pancreatic cancer, a disease that ultimately claimed him on Wednesday October 5th 2011, at the age of 56.

While the CEO and co-founder of Apple steered most interviews away from the public fascination with his private life, there's plenty we know about Jobs the person, beyond the Mac and the iPhone. If anything, the obscure details of his interior life paint a subtler, more nuanced portrait of how one of the finest technology minds of our time grew into the dynamo that we remember him as today.

We all know Steve Jobs as the man behind the magic, but what we don't know is the magic behind the man. The unfortunate passing of this pioneer left us with a lot of unanswered question. Who was this guy? Why was he so passionate about this product? How did he become who he was? Can his success be duplicated? - Probably not.




Here are some interesting tidbits about the life of Steve Jobs.



1. Early life and childhood
Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted shortly after his birth and reared near Mountain View, California by a coupled named Clara and Paul Jobs. His adoptive father, a term that Jobs openly objected to, was a machinist for a laser company and his mother worked as an accountant.

Later in life, Jobs discovered the identities of his estranged parents. His birth mother, Joanne Simpson, was a graduate student at the time and later a speech pathologist; his biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, was a Syrian Muslim who left the country at age 18 and reportedly now serves as the vice president of a Reno, Nevada casino. While Jobs reconnected with Simpson in later years, he and his biological father remained estranged.


2. College dropout
In fact, Jobs never came close to graduating college. Surprising, considering he was one of the most brilliant masterminds behind the most successful company in the world. After graduating from high school in Cupertino, Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Oregon, where he stayed for a total of one semester. He dropped out due to the financial strain the tuition placed on his parents.

In 2005, Jobs gave a commencement speech at Stanford University in which he described his short-lived experience at Reed: "It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with and I would walk seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple."


3. He lied to Apple co-founder about a job at Atari
We all know Jobs for his amazing innovations in mobile technology, software, and computers, but what most people don't know is that he helped in the creation of Atari's game, Breakout. Jobs was offered $750 for his work on the product development, with the possibility of a bonus $100 for each chip eliminated from the game's final design.

To help him with this challenge, Jobs called upon Steve Wozniak, a man who would later become one of Apple's co-founders. Because of Wozniak's talent, Atari gave Jobs a $5,000 bonus, which he kept all for himself! He gave Wozniak a total of $375 for his help with the job.


4. His marriage
Jobs did an excellent job keeping his family and marriage out of public watch. In the public eye, Jobs was known for donning his signature black turtleneck and jeans on stage solo. However, at his Palo Alto home, Jobs had a family with his wife, Laurene. Laurene was an entrepreneur with a degree from University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school and an MBA from Stanford, where she met Jobs for the first time.

Though he was always dedicated to his company, Jobs skipped a meeting to take Laurene out for their first date. Jobs says: "I was in the parking lot with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, 'If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?' I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we've been together ever since." The two were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park by a Zen Buddhist monk.


5. His sister is a famous author
Later in his life, Jobs crossed paths with his biological sister while seeking the identity of his birth parents. His sister, Mona Simpson (born Mona Jandali), is the well-known author of Anywhere But Here — a story about a mother and daughter that was later adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon.

After reuniting, Jobs and Simpson developed a close relationship. Of his sister, he told a New York Times interviewer: "We're family. She's one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days.'' Anywhere But Here is dedicated to "my brother Steve."


6. Celebrity romances
In The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, an unauthorized biography, a friend from Reed reveals that Jobs had a brief fling with folk singer Joan Baez. Baez confirmed the the two were close "briefly," though her romantic connection with Bob Dylan is much better known (Dylan was the Apple icon's favorite musician). The biography also notes that Jobs went out with actress Diane Keaton briefly.


7. His first daughter
When he was 23, Jobs and his high school girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan conceived a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. She was born in 1978, just as Apple began picking up steam in the tech world. He and Brennan never married, and Jobs reportedly denied paternity for some time, going as far as stating that he was sterile in court documents. He went on to father three more children with Laurene Powell. After later mending their relationship, Jobs paid for his first daughter's education at Harvard. She graduated in 2000 and now works as a magazine writer.


8. Alternative lifestyle
In a few interviews, Jobs hinted at his early experience with the psychedelic drug LSD. Of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Jobs said: "I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."

The connection has enough weight that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized (and took) LSD, appealed to Jobs for funding for research about the drug's therapeutic use.

In a book interview, Jobs called his experience with the drug "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." As Jobs himself has suggested, LSD may have contributed to the "think different" approach that still puts Apple's designs a head above the competition.

Jobs will forever be a visionary, and his personal life also reflects the forward-thinking, alternative approach that vaulted Apple to success. During a trip to India, Jobs visited a well-known ashram and returned to the U.S. as a Zen Buddhist.

Jobs was also a pescetarian who didn't consume most animal products, and didn't eat meat other than fish. A strong believer in Eastern medicine, he sought to treat his own cancer through alternative approaches and specialized diets before reluctantly seeking his first surgery for a cancerous tumor in 2004.


9. His fortune
As the CEO of the world's most valuable brand, Jobs pulled in a comically low annual salary of just $1. While the gesture isn't unheard of in the corporate world, Google's Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt all pocketed the same 100 penny salary annually; Jobs has kept his salary at $1 since 1997, the year he became Apple's lead executive. Of his salary, Jobs joked in 2007: "I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance."

In early 2011, Jobs owned 5.5 million shares of Apple. After his death, Apple shares were valued at $377.64, a roughly 43-fold growth in valuation over the last 10 years that shows no signs of slowing down.

He may only have taken in a single dollar per year, but Jobs leaves behind a vast fortune. The largest chunk of that wealth is the roughly $7 billion from the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006. In 2011, with an estimated net worth of $8.3 billion, he was the 110th richest person in the world, according to Forbes. If Jobs hadn't sold his shares upon leaving Apple in 1985 (before returning to the company in 1996), he would be the world's fifth richest individual.

While there's no word yet on plans for his estate, Jobs leaves behind three children from his marriage to Laurene Jobs (Reed, Erin, and Eve), as well as his first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs.