Steve Jobs

  • Steve Jobs was born.

    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.
  • He gets an internship at HP

    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.
  • Meets Wozniak

    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.
  • Gets a job at Atari

    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.
  • Apple incorporates

  • Apple II

    Releases the Apple II, the first commercially available personal computer in a plastic case with color graphics--and Apple's first successful personal computer.
  • Apple goes public

    Apple goes public, putting Jobs' net worth north of $200 million.
  • Jobs fired from Apple

    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.
  • NeXT releases it's first computer.

  • Steve Jobs passes away