Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs resigned today as chief executive officer from Apple. His place at the top of the company will be taken by Tim Cook, previously Apple's chief operating officer.
The Steve Jobs era
Some notable moments for Jobs and his companies over the years.
1976
Co-founds Apple with Steve Wozniak.
1984
Apple introduces the Mac.
1985
CEO John Sculley engineers Jobs' ouster from Apple.
1985
Founds Next Computer (later becomes Next Software).
1986
Buys computer graphics division of LucasFilm, to be renamed Pixar.
1996
Returns to Apple as adviser when Apple buys Next Software
1997
Named interim CEO of Apple.
2001
Apple introduces iTunes software and the iPod; the iTunes store follows in 2003.
2006
Disney buys Pixar; Jobs becomes largest shareholder.
2007
Apple introduces the iPhone.
2009
Takes 6-month leave of absence for medical reasons.
2010
Apple introduces the iPad.
January 2011
Takes medical leave of absence.
August 2011
Resigns as CEO, becomes chairman. Tim Cook becomes CEO.
Jobs has been dogged by a string of health problems in recent years that forced him to take periodic leaves of absence from the company. Jobs announced in January that he was taking an indefinite medical leave from Apple--his third in recent years--and handed over day-to-day responsibility to Cook. He told his employees in January, "I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can."
In January 2009, Jobs said that he was suffering from a hormone imbalance that was impeding his body's ability to absorb certain proteins. In April of that year, Jobs underwent liver transplant surgery and returned to work by early July. In August 2004, Jobs underwent successful surgery to treat a rare form of pancreatic cancer, which sidelined him until September of that year.
In a separate note to Apple's board members and the Apple community today, Jobs said that he was no longer up to the job of CEO.
"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come," Jobs said.
Jobs concluded by saying that "Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it," and that he looks forward to contributing as Apple's chairman of the board, director, and as an Apple employee if the board allows it.
Cook, 50, joined Apple in 1998 and was promoted to COO in 2004. He has long been Jobs' right-hand executive, heading up shareholders meetings and earnings calls with Wall Street investors, and acting as a figurehead at product introductions.
The Jobs era
One of the most legendary businessmen in American history, Jobs turned three separate industries on their head in the 35 or so years he has been involved in the technology industry.
Personal computing was largely invented with the launch of the Apple II in 1977. Legal digital-music recordings were brought into the mainstream with the iPod and iTunes in the early 2000s, and mobile phones were never the same after the 2007 debut of the iPhone. Jobs played an instrumental role in the development of all three, and managed to find time to transform the art of computer-generated movie-making on the side.
The release of the iPad in 2010, a touch-screen tablet computer his competitors flocked to reproduce, could be considered the capstone of his career as a technologist. A conceptual hybrid of a touch-screen iPod and a slate computer, the 10-inch mobile device was Jobs' vision for a more personal computing device.
bs is considered brilliant yet brash. He values elegance in design yet is almost never seen in public wearing anything but a black mock turtleneck, blue jeans, and a few days' worth of stubble. A master salesman who considers himself an artist at heart, Jobs inspires both reverence and fear in those who work for him and against him, and is adored by an army of loyal Apple customers.
Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955 and moved out of the city five years later to the Santa Clara Valley, later to be known as Silicon Valley. He grew up in Mountain View and Cupertino, where Apple's headquarters are located.
He attended Reed College in Portland, Ore., for a year but dropped out, although he sat in on some classes that interested him, such as calligraphy. After a brief stint at Atari working on video games, he spent time backpacking around India, furthering teenage experiments with psychedelic drugs and developing an interest in Buddhism, all of which would shape his work at Apple.
Back in California, Jobs' friend Steve Wozniak was learning the skills that would change both their lives. When Jobs discovered that Wozniak had been assembling relatively (for the time) small computers, he struck a partnership, and Apple Computer was founded in 1976 in the usual Silicon Valley fashion: setting up shop in the home of one of the founder's parents.
Wozniak handled the technical end, creating the Apple I, while Jobs ran sales and distribution. The company sold a few hundred of the Apple I, but found much greater success with the Apple II, which put the company on the map and is largely credited as having proven that regular people wanted computers.
It also made Jobs and Wozniak rich. Apple went public in 1980, and Jobs was well on his way to becoming one of the first tech industry celebrities, earning a reputation for brilliance, arrogance, and the sheer force of his will and persuasion, often jokingly referred to as his "reality-distortion field."
The debut of the Macintosh in 1984 left no doubt that Apple was a serious player in the computer industry, but Jobs only had a little more than a year left at the company he founded when the Mac was released in January 1984.
