Steve Jobs

Jobs was born in San Francisco[1] and was adopted by the family of Paul Jobs and Clara Jobs (née Hagopian) of Mountain View, California.[31] Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, Patti. Jobs' biological parents—Abdulfattah John Jandali, a Syrian Muslim immigrant to the U.S.,[32][33] who later became a political science professor at the University of Nevada and is presently a vice president of Boomtown Hotel Casino in Reno, Nevada,[34] and Joanne Schieble (later Simpson), an American graduate student[35] of Swiss and German ancestry[36] who went on to become a speech language pathologist[37]—eventually married. The marriage produced Jobs' biological sister, novelist Mona Simpson; the two of them first met in 1986 as adults and enjoyed a close relationship since, with Jobs regularly visiting Simpson in Manhattan. From Simpson, Jobs learned more about their birth parents and he invited his biological mother Joanne to some events.[38][39] Jandali claims that he didn't want to put Jobs up for adoption but that Simpson's parents did not approve of her marrying a Syrian. Jandali's few attempts to contact Jobs were unsuccessful;[40] Jobs did not contact his biological father either.[41] Jandali gave an interview to The Sun in August 2011 when Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple; Jandali also mailed in his medical history after Jobs' pancreatic disorder was made public that year.[42][43]
Waist-high portrait of man in his fifties wearing a black turtle-neck shirt and blue jeans, gesturing in front of a blue curtain
Steve Jobs at the WWDC 07

Jobs attended Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. He frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California, and was later hired there, working with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee.[44] Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester,[45] he continued auditing classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.[46] Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."[46]

In the fall of 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak. He took a job as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of popular video games, with the primary intent of saving money for a spiritual retreat to India.

Jobs then traveled to India to visit the Neem Karoli Baba[47] at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed College friend (and, later, the first Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing.[48][49] During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".[50] He later said that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.[50]

Jobs returned to his previous job at Atari and was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game Breakout. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest in or knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. According to Wozniak, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had given them only $700 (instead of the actual $5,000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.