Steve Jobs Dies at 56 After Long Battle With Pancreatic Cancer
After a very long, public battle with pancreatic cancer, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc. died Wednesday. He was 56.
"We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," the company said in a brief statement.
"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."
Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems.
He reportedly avoided cancer treatment early on in favor of altering his diet, but eventually had the tumor – which he said was a rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor – successfully removed.
About 85 to 90 percent of people who have liver transplants will be alive one year later, and about 75 to 85 percent of people will survive at least five years after a transplant, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) said on its website.
Patients who receive liver transplants must take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives to limit their risk for rejection.
But while these drugs serve their purpose, a compromised immune system can leave patients vulnerable to other diseases.
Jobs took another leave of absence in January -- his third since his health problems began -- before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Jobs became Apple's chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.
Most pancreatic cancer cases are asymptomatic, meaning patients rarely exhibit symptoms of an illness until it's too late to stop its spread.
Caught in its advanced stages, pancreatic cancer, which affects about 30,000 people a year, has a 5 percent survival rate for five years. Caught early enough and treated with surgery and chemotherapy, the five-year survival rate goes up 17 to 25 percent.
Islet cell neuroendocrine tumors are typically a less aggressive, less common form of pancreatic cancer, representing only 1.3 percent of cases. Pancreatic cancer usually proves fatal within 4 to 6 months of diagnosis, but neuroendrocrine tumors tend to have a much better survival rate.
In 2010, there were 43,140 new cases and 36,800 deaths, according to the National Cancer Institute website. Most cases aren’t diagnosed until it reaches the later stages, making it the fourth leading cause of death in both men and women. Patients are typically in their mid-to-late 60s and cases are usually sporadic.
But there are risk factors including smoking, heavy drinking, and in some cases a genetic predisposition for the disease. Some sufferers of chronic pancreatitis may also be at risk.
Besides eating right and abstaining from smoking and heavy drinking, there's very little that can be done to prevent the disease.
In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Jobs delivered Stanford University's commencement speech.
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said. "Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."
The Associated Press and FoxNews.com's Karlie Pouliot contributed to this report.
By Jessica Mulvihill
Published October 05, 2011
| FoxNews.com
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Apple's Steve Jobs Dies at 56
Apple's Steve Jobs Dies at 56
CUPERTINO, Calif. – Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO who invented and masterfully marketed ever-sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology, from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, died Wednesday. He was 56.
Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause. He died peacefully, according to a statement from family members who said they were present.
"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple's board said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve"
Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January -- his third since his health problems began -- and officially resigned in August. He took another leave of absence in January -- his third since his health problems began -- before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Jobs became Apple's chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.
Outside Apple's Cupertino headquarters, three flags -- an American flag, a California state flag and an Apple flag -- were flying at half-mast late Wednesday.
"Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor." Cook wrote in an email to Apple's employees. "Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."
The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest version of the iPhone, just one in a procession of devices that shaped technology and society while Jobs was running the company.
Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Almost all that wealth has been created since Jobs' return.
Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health.
He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries.
For transformation of American industry, he has few rivals He has long been linked to his personal computer-age contemporary, Bill Gates, and has drawn comparisons to other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.'s largest shareholder, a by-product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006.
Perhaps most influentially, Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered "1,000 songs in your pocket." Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch.
In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple's App Store, where developers could sell iPhone "apps" which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one.
By 2011, Apple had become the second-largest company of any kind in the United States by market value. In August, it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company.
Under Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand didn't exist, he leveraged a cult-like following to create it.
When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda -- "One more thing" -- before introducing its latest ambitious idea.
In later years, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues about his health. Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a very rare form of pancreatic cancer -- an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He underwent surgery and said he had been cured. In 2009, following weight loss he initially attributed to a hormonal imbalance, he abruptly took a six-month leave. During that time, he received a liver transplant that became public two months after it was performed.
He went on another medical leave in January 2011, this time for an unspecified duration. He never went back and resigned as CEO in August, though he stayed on as chairman. Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, he didn't reference his illness in his resignation letter.
Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist.
Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, Calif., a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school.
Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972 but dropped out after six months.
"All of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it," he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. "I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out."
When he returned to California in 1974, Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club -- a group of computer hobbyists -- with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older.
Wozniak's homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple Computer Inc. in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. According to Wozniak, Jobs suggested the name after visiting an "apple orchard" that Wozniak said was actually a commune.
Their first creation was the Apple I -- essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor.
The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25.
During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Jobs again spotted mass potential in a niche invention: a computer that allowed people to control computers with the click of a mouse, not typed commands. He returned to Apple and ordered the team to copy what he had seen.
It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people's concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products. Under Jobs, Apple didn't invent computers, digital music players or smartphones -- it reinvented them for people who didn't want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working.
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas," Jobs said in an interview for the 1996 PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds."
The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier Lisa -- the same name as his daughter -- launched to a cool reception in 1983. The less-expensive Macintosh, named for an employee's favorite apple, exploded onto the scene in 1984.
The Mac was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referenced George Orwell's "1984" and captured Apple's iconoclastic style. In the ad, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother-like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track uniform burst into the hall and launched a hammer into the screen, which exploded, stunning the drones, as a narrator announced the arrival of the Mac.
There were early stumbles at Apple. Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial spike, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programs had been written for it.
With Apple's stock price sinking, conflicts between Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Jobs out of his day-to-day role leading the Macintosh team. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months.
"What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating," Jobs said in his Stanford speech. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
He got into two other companies: Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer-animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million.
Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then in 1995 came "Toy Story," the first computer-animated full-length feature. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar's next two films, "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2." Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock in a deal that got him a seat on Disney's board and 138 million shares of stock that accounted for most of his fortune. Forbes magazine estimated Jobs was worth $7 billion in a survey last month.
With Next, Jobs came up with a cube-shaped computer. He was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details, insisting on design perfection even for the machine's guts. The machine cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000, and he never managed to spark much demand for it.
Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software -- a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers.
By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows.
Larry Ellison, Jobs' close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the CEO of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year.
He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company's focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to "Think different."
Apple's first new product under his direction, the brightly colored, plastic iMac, launched in 1998 and sold about 2 million in its first year. Apple returned to profitability that year. Jobs dropped the "interim" from his title in 2000.
He changed his style, too, said Tim Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for Creative Strategies.
"In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak," he said. In his second stint, "he clearly was much more mellow and more mature."
In the decade that followed, Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products.
Apple's popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget.
The arrival of the iTunes music store in 2003 gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet-savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.
Jobs' command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone's launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad's debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance.
The decade was not without its glitches. In the mid-2000s, Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock options backdating, a practice that artificially raised the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC.
Jobs' personal ethos -- a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy -- was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology -- a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals.
For technology lovers, buying Apple products has meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating -- even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno-geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own.
Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as "deeply moody and maddeningly erratic." In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978.
Few seemed immune to Jobs' charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything -- even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off.
"He always has an aura around his persona," said Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. "When you talk to him, you know you're really talking to a brilliant mind."
But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.
Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman.
In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford's graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near-repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then-girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Jobs relented.
Jobs started looking for his biological family in his teens, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997. He found his biological sister when he was 27. They became friends, and through her Jobs met his biological mother. Few details of those relationships have been made public.
But the extent of Apple secrecy didn't become clear until Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagonosed with -- and "cured" of -- a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. The company had sat on the news of his diagnosis for nine months while Jobs tried trumping the disease with a special diet, Fortune magazine reported in 2008.
In the years after his cancer was revealed, rumors about Jobs' health would spark runs on Apple stock as investors worried the company, with no clear succession plan, would fall apart without him. Apple did little to ease those concerns. It kept the state of Jobs' health a secret for as long as it could, then disclosed vague details when, in early 2009, it became clear he was again ill.
Jobs took a half-year medical leave of absence starting in January 2009, during which he had a liver transplant. Apple did not disclose the procedure at the time; two months later, The Wall Street Journal reported the fact and a doctor at the transplant hospital confirmed it.
In January 2011, Jobs announced another medical leave, his third, with no set duration. He returned to the spotlight briefly in March to personally unveil a second-generation iPad and again in June, when he showed off Apple's iCloud music synching service. At both events, he looked frail in his signature jeans and mock turtleneck.
Less than three months later, Jobs resigned as CEO. In a letter addressed to Apple's board and the "Apple community" Jobs said he "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."
In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Jobs delivered Stanford University's commencement speech.
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said. "Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."
Jobs is survived by his biological mother, sister Mona Simpson; Lisa Brennan-Jobs, his daughter with Brennan; wife Laurene, and their three children, Erin, Reed and Eve.
Published October 05, 2011| Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/05/apple-says-founder-steve-jobs-is-dead/
CUPERTINO, Calif. – Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO who invented and masterfully marketed ever-sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology, from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, died Wednesday. He was 56.
Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause. He died peacefully, according to a statement from family members who said they were present.
"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple's board said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve"
Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January -- his third since his health problems began -- and officially resigned in August. He took another leave of absence in January -- his third since his health problems began -- before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Jobs became Apple's chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.
Outside Apple's Cupertino headquarters, three flags -- an American flag, a California state flag and an Apple flag -- were flying at half-mast late Wednesday.
"Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor." Cook wrote in an email to Apple's employees. "Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."
The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest version of the iPhone, just one in a procession of devices that shaped technology and society while Jobs was running the company.
Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Almost all that wealth has been created since Jobs' return.
Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health.
He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries.
For transformation of American industry, he has few rivals He has long been linked to his personal computer-age contemporary, Bill Gates, and has drawn comparisons to other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.'s largest shareholder, a by-product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006.
Perhaps most influentially, Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered "1,000 songs in your pocket." Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch.
In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple's App Store, where developers could sell iPhone "apps" which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one.
By 2011, Apple had become the second-largest company of any kind in the United States by market value. In August, it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company.
Under Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand didn't exist, he leveraged a cult-like following to create it.
When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda -- "One more thing" -- before introducing its latest ambitious idea.
In later years, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues about his health. Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a very rare form of pancreatic cancer -- an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He underwent surgery and said he had been cured. In 2009, following weight loss he initially attributed to a hormonal imbalance, he abruptly took a six-month leave. During that time, he received a liver transplant that became public two months after it was performed.
He went on another medical leave in January 2011, this time for an unspecified duration. He never went back and resigned as CEO in August, though he stayed on as chairman. Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, he didn't reference his illness in his resignation letter.
Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist.
Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, Calif., a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school.
Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972 but dropped out after six months.
"All of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it," he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. "I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out."
When he returned to California in 1974, Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club -- a group of computer hobbyists -- with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older.
Wozniak's homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple Computer Inc. in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. According to Wozniak, Jobs suggested the name after visiting an "apple orchard" that Wozniak said was actually a commune.
Their first creation was the Apple I -- essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor.
The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25.
During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Jobs again spotted mass potential in a niche invention: a computer that allowed people to control computers with the click of a mouse, not typed commands. He returned to Apple and ordered the team to copy what he had seen.
It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people's concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products. Under Jobs, Apple didn't invent computers, digital music players or smartphones -- it reinvented them for people who didn't want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working.
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas," Jobs said in an interview for the 1996 PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds."
The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier Lisa -- the same name as his daughter -- launched to a cool reception in 1983. The less-expensive Macintosh, named for an employee's favorite apple, exploded onto the scene in 1984.
The Mac was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referenced George Orwell's "1984" and captured Apple's iconoclastic style. In the ad, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother-like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track uniform burst into the hall and launched a hammer into the screen, which exploded, stunning the drones, as a narrator announced the arrival of the Mac.
There were early stumbles at Apple. Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial spike, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programs had been written for it.
With Apple's stock price sinking, conflicts between Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Jobs out of his day-to-day role leading the Macintosh team. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months.
"What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating," Jobs said in his Stanford speech. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
He got into two other companies: Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer-animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million.
Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then in 1995 came "Toy Story," the first computer-animated full-length feature. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar's next two films, "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2." Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock in a deal that got him a seat on Disney's board and 138 million shares of stock that accounted for most of his fortune. Forbes magazine estimated Jobs was worth $7 billion in a survey last month.
With Next, Jobs came up with a cube-shaped computer. He was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details, insisting on design perfection even for the machine's guts. The machine cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000, and he never managed to spark much demand for it.
Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software -- a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers.
By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows.
Larry Ellison, Jobs' close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the CEO of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year.
He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company's focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to "Think different."
Apple's first new product under his direction, the brightly colored, plastic iMac, launched in 1998 and sold about 2 million in its first year. Apple returned to profitability that year. Jobs dropped the "interim" from his title in 2000.
He changed his style, too, said Tim Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for Creative Strategies.
"In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak," he said. In his second stint, "he clearly was much more mellow and more mature."
In the decade that followed, Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products.
Apple's popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget.
The arrival of the iTunes music store in 2003 gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet-savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.
Jobs' command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone's launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad's debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance.
The decade was not without its glitches. In the mid-2000s, Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock options backdating, a practice that artificially raised the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC.
Jobs' personal ethos -- a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy -- was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology -- a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals.
For technology lovers, buying Apple products has meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating -- even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno-geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own.
Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as "deeply moody and maddeningly erratic." In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978.
Few seemed immune to Jobs' charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything -- even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off.
"He always has an aura around his persona," said Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. "When you talk to him, you know you're really talking to a brilliant mind."
But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.
Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman.
In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford's graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near-repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then-girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Jobs relented.
Jobs started looking for his biological family in his teens, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997. He found his biological sister when he was 27. They became friends, and through her Jobs met his biological mother. Few details of those relationships have been made public.
But the extent of Apple secrecy didn't become clear until Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagonosed with -- and "cured" of -- a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. The company had sat on the news of his diagnosis for nine months while Jobs tried trumping the disease with a special diet, Fortune magazine reported in 2008.
In the years after his cancer was revealed, rumors about Jobs' health would spark runs on Apple stock as investors worried the company, with no clear succession plan, would fall apart without him. Apple did little to ease those concerns. It kept the state of Jobs' health a secret for as long as it could, then disclosed vague details when, in early 2009, it became clear he was again ill.
Jobs took a half-year medical leave of absence starting in January 2009, during which he had a liver transplant. Apple did not disclose the procedure at the time; two months later, The Wall Street Journal reported the fact and a doctor at the transplant hospital confirmed it.
In January 2011, Jobs announced another medical leave, his third, with no set duration. He returned to the spotlight briefly in March to personally unveil a second-generation iPad and again in June, when he showed off Apple's iCloud music synching service. At both events, he looked frail in his signature jeans and mock turtleneck.
Less than three months later, Jobs resigned as CEO. In a letter addressed to Apple's board and the "Apple community" Jobs said he "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."
In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Jobs delivered Stanford University's commencement speech.
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said. "Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."
Jobs is survived by his biological mother, sister Mona Simpson; Lisa Brennan-Jobs, his daughter with Brennan; wife Laurene, and their three children, Erin, Reed and Eve.
Published October 05, 2011| Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/05/apple-says-founder-steve-jobs-is-dead/
Steve Jobs: a visonary leader with a lasting legacy
Steve Jobs: a visonary leader with a lasting legacy
There are not many people that can be described as a genius without it sounding trite, but Steve Jobs is one of them.
Not only did he dominate the technology industry, building a company which briefly ranked as the biggest in the world, but he dominated it without recourse to any of the consumer testing and hedging of bets that proliferates in the rest of the sector.
Along with a relentless pursuit of beauty in Apple's designs and slick technology, Jobs had a steely backbone that saw him rely, resolutely, on his own gut instinct. The way he saw it, Apple's role was not to follow or second guess what people wanted from their gadgets. It was to lead them, and by doing so, to create the market.
So the world began to crave iPods, then iPhones and finally the iPad which, as many analysts pointed out earlier this week, met with a lacklustre reaction when it was first unveiled, but has quickly spawned an entirely new industry.
This "I know best" outlook could have seemed arrogant in anyone else, but Jobs got it so exactly right every time that it allowed Apple to seduce users into an entire ecosystem that changed the way many of us lived. To think that such a small line up of products can have created a company of Apple's size and influence is, by anyone's book, astonishing.
But perhaps Mr Jobs' influence as an individual is even more remarkable than his prominence through Apple. Before Jobs, the drop out arts student, turned his hand to technology, the hardware industry was often dismissed by the mainstream or creative industries as a deeply unglamourous sector populated by unremitting scientists and so-called "geeks".
By combining technology with beautiful design, Jobs not only brought technology into the mainstream, making it cool and covetable – he also inspired a generation of talent from diverse backgrounds to eye technology up as a sector to work in.
For creatives, marketers, graphic designers and product designers, Apple is one of the most desirable companies to work in, and technology has transformed from the annexe of the uncool to one of the most rapidly changing and creatively challenging industries there is.
He may have gone, and his absence may rattle Apple, but his legacy in energising a generation of talent is unlikely to fade at all.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8810053/Steve-Jobs-a-visonary-leader-with-a-lasting-legacy.html
There are not many people that can be described as a genius without it sounding trite, but Steve Jobs is one of them.
Not only did he dominate the technology industry, building a company which briefly ranked as the biggest in the world, but he dominated it without recourse to any of the consumer testing and hedging of bets that proliferates in the rest of the sector.
Along with a relentless pursuit of beauty in Apple's designs and slick technology, Jobs had a steely backbone that saw him rely, resolutely, on his own gut instinct. The way he saw it, Apple's role was not to follow or second guess what people wanted from their gadgets. It was to lead them, and by doing so, to create the market.
So the world began to crave iPods, then iPhones and finally the iPad which, as many analysts pointed out earlier this week, met with a lacklustre reaction when it was first unveiled, but has quickly spawned an entirely new industry.
This "I know best" outlook could have seemed arrogant in anyone else, but Jobs got it so exactly right every time that it allowed Apple to seduce users into an entire ecosystem that changed the way many of us lived. To think that such a small line up of products can have created a company of Apple's size and influence is, by anyone's book, astonishing.
But perhaps Mr Jobs' influence as an individual is even more remarkable than his prominence through Apple. Before Jobs, the drop out arts student, turned his hand to technology, the hardware industry was often dismissed by the mainstream or creative industries as a deeply unglamourous sector populated by unremitting scientists and so-called "geeks".
By combining technology with beautiful design, Jobs not only brought technology into the mainstream, making it cool and covetable – he also inspired a generation of talent from diverse backgrounds to eye technology up as a sector to work in.
For creatives, marketers, graphic designers and product designers, Apple is one of the most desirable companies to work in, and technology has transformed from the annexe of the uncool to one of the most rapidly changing and creatively challenging industries there is.
He may have gone, and his absence may rattle Apple, but his legacy in energising a generation of talent is unlikely to fade at all.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8810053/Steve-Jobs-a-visonary-leader-with-a-lasting-legacy.html
Steve Jobs: the man who made Apple
Steve Jobs: the man who made Apple
Steve Jobs turned his zeal for perfection - whether it be iPod or iPad - into an ideology that dominated modern computing.
One Sunday morning in 2008, Vic Gundotra, a senior executive at Google, received a message from Steve Jobs, asking him to call him at home immediately. “So, Vic,” said Jobs, “we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I’ve already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow.” What was this critical problem, so important that it was disrupting the weekend of two of the most important men in Silicon Valley? “I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone,” said the man from Apple, “and I’m not happy with the icon. The second 'O’ in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?”
It might seem beneath the dignity of a chief executive – let alone the co-founder of one of America’s most successful companies – to let such a trifling matter intrude into his leisure time. But it is an anecdote that reveals what made Steve Jobs such a unique, and uniquely lionised, figure. It is this attention to detail, this fanatical preoccupation with aesthetics, that turned the head of Apple into the world’s first auteur chief executive, the creative titan behind the coolest, most lucrative and most desirable devices on the planet.
To many in the outside world, Apple and Jobs had long been synonymous. It is not just that he founded the company with his friend Steve Wozniak, or guided it to the point where it vies with Exxon Mobil for the status of most valuable corporation in the world. It is that both Apple’s products and Apple as a company are constructed in the image of their creator, and of his ideals.
Where Bill Gates, his great rival, represented the All-American nerd, Jobs was a college drop-out who went to India to find himself, returning as a shaven-headed Buddhist and vegetarian. As Robert Cringely wrote in Accidental Empires, a history of Silicon Valley: “Gates sees the personal computer as a tool for transferring every stray dollar, pound, peso, franc and kopeck into his back pocket. Steve Jobs looks on it as a way of changing the world.”
The way Jobs planned to do that was to turn the computer into something you wanted – needed – to use. While Wozniak focused on circuit boards and programing, Jobs was obsessed with the end product. It was his vision that brought to life the Macintosh computer, released in 1984, which introduced the mass market to such revolutionary concepts as computer mice and screens filled with adjustable windows. The advertising campaign – directed by Ridley Scott and cheekily themed after Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four – promised a vision of the computer as liberator, an antidote to grey, corporate uniformity.
The irony is that this commitment to quality and beauty made Jobs something of a control freak: he offered users liberation, but only on his terms. In its first incarnation, Apple lost its grip on the computing market because its products could not be modified, functioning only according to the rigid restrictions Jobs imposed. Once others – most notably Gates – had copied Apple’s innovations, the industry gradually shunned the Mac in favour of the PC. Jobs was booted out of the company he had founded, amusing himself by buying, for $10 million, the company that became Pixar.
In 1997, a demoralised and near-defunct Apple begged its founder to return. The result was the most dramatic turnaround in corporate history – inspired by a vision of computing that Jobs had been espousing all along. Apple’s new products, which drew upon the genius of the British designer Jonathan Ive, were more gorgeous and tactile than ever. Anything clunky and cumbersome was stripped away, from keyboards to floppy disk drives. Users fell in love with the sleek, transparent iMac; Mac OS X, a beautifully intuitive new interface; the cathedral-like Apple stores; the paper-thin laptops. And then the holy trinity, the three products on which Apple’s current supremacy is built: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.
Just as Jobs clung to his obsession with aesthetics, he still insisted on controlling every aspect of his products. The iPod or iPad would link seamlessly to Apple’s online store, where the applications had to meet the company’s painstakingly high standards. The aim was to create a garden of delights – a gentrified, beautified version of the internet where all were welcome, as long as they obeyed Apple’s rules, and paid its entry fees.
Today, Apple is reshaping industries as diverse as music, mobile phones, computer gaming and publishing. Business leaders queued up to hymn Jobs’s praises as a guru of marketing, product design and corporate strategy. Yet the downside of the “Cult of Mac” was that the company had come to be identified with the man. And the company’s culture, dictated by its boss, came to resemble its products: mysterious, perfectionist, with the inner workings sealed away. Even when Jobs developed pancreatic cancer, followed by a liver transplant, he remained Apple’s public face – leading many to believe that when he stepped back from the chief executive’s role, he would take the magic with him.
But there is more to Apple today than Jobs. The cult of personality has disguised others’ contribution to its success. As with other corporate titans such as Tesco or Wal-Mart, Apple is pervaded by a shared ethos. In 2008, the company recruited the dean of the Yale School of Management to establish an “Apple University”. This low-key institution was intended to codify the values and processes that made Apple tick, and then inculcate them into its workers: in essence, to create a Steve Jobs production line.
Of course, it is impossible to understate Jobs’s contribution. In an industry built around adding more and more features to products, his great strength was to be the man who says no, who demanded that his subordinates make an unarguable case for Apple to enter a particular market, or for its engineers to include a particular function that might detract from the purity of the user experience. His talent for generating adulatory press coverage also enabled him to point the spotlight away from Apple’s missteps, such as Apple TV, an attempt to create an iPod for television, or his prediction that electronic books would be an insignificant market. Tim Cook, his successor as chief executive, might not get the same benefit of the doubt.
Yet even if Apple’s aura starts to dim, Cook is being handed an inheritance to make any executive weep. With profits surging, Apple has shrugged off the recession: the company has $76 billion in ready cash, more than the US government.
Jobs has transformed the way we use computers, think of phones, listen to music, or play games. And by building a company that incarnates his ideals, he has done his best to ensure that the Cult of Mac will remain a part of all our lives.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/8809991/Steve-Jobs-the-man-who-made-Apple.html
Steve Jobs turned his zeal for perfection - whether it be iPod or iPad - into an ideology that dominated modern computing.
One Sunday morning in 2008, Vic Gundotra, a senior executive at Google, received a message from Steve Jobs, asking him to call him at home immediately. “So, Vic,” said Jobs, “we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I’ve already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow.” What was this critical problem, so important that it was disrupting the weekend of two of the most important men in Silicon Valley? “I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone,” said the man from Apple, “and I’m not happy with the icon. The second 'O’ in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?”
It might seem beneath the dignity of a chief executive – let alone the co-founder of one of America’s most successful companies – to let such a trifling matter intrude into his leisure time. But it is an anecdote that reveals what made Steve Jobs such a unique, and uniquely lionised, figure. It is this attention to detail, this fanatical preoccupation with aesthetics, that turned the head of Apple into the world’s first auteur chief executive, the creative titan behind the coolest, most lucrative and most desirable devices on the planet.
To many in the outside world, Apple and Jobs had long been synonymous. It is not just that he founded the company with his friend Steve Wozniak, or guided it to the point where it vies with Exxon Mobil for the status of most valuable corporation in the world. It is that both Apple’s products and Apple as a company are constructed in the image of their creator, and of his ideals.
Where Bill Gates, his great rival, represented the All-American nerd, Jobs was a college drop-out who went to India to find himself, returning as a shaven-headed Buddhist and vegetarian. As Robert Cringely wrote in Accidental Empires, a history of Silicon Valley: “Gates sees the personal computer as a tool for transferring every stray dollar, pound, peso, franc and kopeck into his back pocket. Steve Jobs looks on it as a way of changing the world.”
The way Jobs planned to do that was to turn the computer into something you wanted – needed – to use. While Wozniak focused on circuit boards and programing, Jobs was obsessed with the end product. It was his vision that brought to life the Macintosh computer, released in 1984, which introduced the mass market to such revolutionary concepts as computer mice and screens filled with adjustable windows. The advertising campaign – directed by Ridley Scott and cheekily themed after Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four – promised a vision of the computer as liberator, an antidote to grey, corporate uniformity.
The irony is that this commitment to quality and beauty made Jobs something of a control freak: he offered users liberation, but only on his terms. In its first incarnation, Apple lost its grip on the computing market because its products could not be modified, functioning only according to the rigid restrictions Jobs imposed. Once others – most notably Gates – had copied Apple’s innovations, the industry gradually shunned the Mac in favour of the PC. Jobs was booted out of the company he had founded, amusing himself by buying, for $10 million, the company that became Pixar.
In 1997, a demoralised and near-defunct Apple begged its founder to return. The result was the most dramatic turnaround in corporate history – inspired by a vision of computing that Jobs had been espousing all along. Apple’s new products, which drew upon the genius of the British designer Jonathan Ive, were more gorgeous and tactile than ever. Anything clunky and cumbersome was stripped away, from keyboards to floppy disk drives. Users fell in love with the sleek, transparent iMac; Mac OS X, a beautifully intuitive new interface; the cathedral-like Apple stores; the paper-thin laptops. And then the holy trinity, the three products on which Apple’s current supremacy is built: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.
Just as Jobs clung to his obsession with aesthetics, he still insisted on controlling every aspect of his products. The iPod or iPad would link seamlessly to Apple’s online store, where the applications had to meet the company’s painstakingly high standards. The aim was to create a garden of delights – a gentrified, beautified version of the internet where all were welcome, as long as they obeyed Apple’s rules, and paid its entry fees.
Today, Apple is reshaping industries as diverse as music, mobile phones, computer gaming and publishing. Business leaders queued up to hymn Jobs’s praises as a guru of marketing, product design and corporate strategy. Yet the downside of the “Cult of Mac” was that the company had come to be identified with the man. And the company’s culture, dictated by its boss, came to resemble its products: mysterious, perfectionist, with the inner workings sealed away. Even when Jobs developed pancreatic cancer, followed by a liver transplant, he remained Apple’s public face – leading many to believe that when he stepped back from the chief executive’s role, he would take the magic with him.
But there is more to Apple today than Jobs. The cult of personality has disguised others’ contribution to its success. As with other corporate titans such as Tesco or Wal-Mart, Apple is pervaded by a shared ethos. In 2008, the company recruited the dean of the Yale School of Management to establish an “Apple University”. This low-key institution was intended to codify the values and processes that made Apple tick, and then inculcate them into its workers: in essence, to create a Steve Jobs production line.
Of course, it is impossible to understate Jobs’s contribution. In an industry built around adding more and more features to products, his great strength was to be the man who says no, who demanded that his subordinates make an unarguable case for Apple to enter a particular market, or for its engineers to include a particular function that might detract from the purity of the user experience. His talent for generating adulatory press coverage also enabled him to point the spotlight away from Apple’s missteps, such as Apple TV, an attempt to create an iPod for television, or his prediction that electronic books would be an insignificant market. Tim Cook, his successor as chief executive, might not get the same benefit of the doubt.
Yet even if Apple’s aura starts to dim, Cook is being handed an inheritance to make any executive weep. With profits surging, Apple has shrugged off the recession: the company has $76 billion in ready cash, more than the US government.
Jobs has transformed the way we use computers, think of phones, listen to music, or play games. And by building a company that incarnates his ideals, he has done his best to ensure that the Cult of Mac will remain a part of all our lives.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/8809991/Steve-Jobs-the-man-who-made-Apple.html
Apple: can the company continue the magic of Steve Jobs?
Apple: can the company continue the magic of Steve Jobs?
As the “Leonardo of Silicon Valley”, Steve Jobs encapsulated a rare union of technological genius and an instinctive and perfectionist eye for design.
But while his death is a major loss to the world at large, it's the company he co-founded that will feel his absence most keenly.
Shares in the technology giant are expected to come under pressure when trading opens in New York tomorrow, as investors take in the news that Jobs, co-founder and inspiration of Apple, has passed away at the age of 56.
Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976, stepped back from the day to day running of the technology giant in August, but steadied shareholder confidence with a promise to remain as chairman and keep his hand on the tiller for as long as he could.
He said at the time of resigning: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s chief executive, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
It was well-known that he was suffering from cancer, so instead of causing Apple’s shares to fall, the announcement of Tim Cook as Apple’s new chief executive acted to draw a line under the uncertainty surrounding Apple’s succession plan. But the suddeness of Mr Jobs's death may still come as a surprise to many.
Apple has suffered from Jobs’ absence before now: the company famously teetered on the brink of bankruptcy after he left in 1985 following a power struggle. He was cajoled to return just over a decade later, and presided over an extraordinary period of growth which saw the Apple overtake Exxon Mobil to become the biggest company in the world earlier this year.
However, shareholder confidence also rested on the assumption that Apple had a strong pipeline of new products which would see Apple through the next two years. On Tuesday, Apple’s lacklustre launch of the iPhone 4S – an iteration of the iPhone4 which fell far short of expectations of the iPhone5 that Apple had been widely rumoured to be launching – rattled confidence. Apple’s shares fell 5pc to $356.14 at one point on Tuesday, as Wall Street was left underwhelmed by the launch.
Mr Cook passed muster with a slick presentation, but the iPhone 4S was so similar to the previous model that many analysts and technology experts felt Apple had left itself exposed to competition from new entrants to the competitive smartphone market.
Underpinning that fear however, will be an even deeper worry that Apple cast does not have quite the pipeline and deeply engrained culture of creativity. It has built its reputation over the last decade on a succession of game-changing products, whose glossy, tactile designs have helped to define and often create new markets. The iPod, the iPhone and the iPad followed each other relatively closely, each one rapidly overtaking its predecessors to become the mainstay of Apple's revenues.
Built around the inspiration of its co-founder, Apple will be a company in mourning. In a memo to Apple's staff announcing his death, Mr Cook said that “those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”
Many will fear that in losing Mr Jobs, Apple has not only lost its iconic founder. It may have lost its Midas touch. Apple's chief executive now faces the challenge of proving that he can build on Jobs's legacy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8810051/Apple-can-the-company-continue-the-magic-of-Steve-Jobs.html
As the “Leonardo of Silicon Valley”, Steve Jobs encapsulated a rare union of technological genius and an instinctive and perfectionist eye for design.
But while his death is a major loss to the world at large, it's the company he co-founded that will feel his absence most keenly.
Shares in the technology giant are expected to come under pressure when trading opens in New York tomorrow, as investors take in the news that Jobs, co-founder and inspiration of Apple, has passed away at the age of 56.
Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976, stepped back from the day to day running of the technology giant in August, but steadied shareholder confidence with a promise to remain as chairman and keep his hand on the tiller for as long as he could.
He said at the time of resigning: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s chief executive, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
It was well-known that he was suffering from cancer, so instead of causing Apple’s shares to fall, the announcement of Tim Cook as Apple’s new chief executive acted to draw a line under the uncertainty surrounding Apple’s succession plan. But the suddeness of Mr Jobs's death may still come as a surprise to many.
Apple has suffered from Jobs’ absence before now: the company famously teetered on the brink of bankruptcy after he left in 1985 following a power struggle. He was cajoled to return just over a decade later, and presided over an extraordinary period of growth which saw the Apple overtake Exxon Mobil to become the biggest company in the world earlier this year.
However, shareholder confidence also rested on the assumption that Apple had a strong pipeline of new products which would see Apple through the next two years. On Tuesday, Apple’s lacklustre launch of the iPhone 4S – an iteration of the iPhone4 which fell far short of expectations of the iPhone5 that Apple had been widely rumoured to be launching – rattled confidence. Apple’s shares fell 5pc to $356.14 at one point on Tuesday, as Wall Street was left underwhelmed by the launch.
Mr Cook passed muster with a slick presentation, but the iPhone 4S was so similar to the previous model that many analysts and technology experts felt Apple had left itself exposed to competition from new entrants to the competitive smartphone market.
Underpinning that fear however, will be an even deeper worry that Apple cast does not have quite the pipeline and deeply engrained culture of creativity. It has built its reputation over the last decade on a succession of game-changing products, whose glossy, tactile designs have helped to define and often create new markets. The iPod, the iPhone and the iPad followed each other relatively closely, each one rapidly overtaking its predecessors to become the mainstay of Apple's revenues.
Built around the inspiration of its co-founder, Apple will be a company in mourning. In a memo to Apple's staff announcing his death, Mr Cook said that “those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”
Many will fear that in losing Mr Jobs, Apple has not only lost its iconic founder. It may have lost its Midas touch. Apple's chief executive now faces the challenge of proving that he can build on Jobs's legacy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8810051/Apple-can-the-company-continue-the-magic-of-Steve-Jobs.html
Steve Jobs, Visionary Leader of Apple Inc., Dies at 56
Steve Jobs, Visionary Leader of Apple Inc., Dies at 56
WEDNESDAY Oct. 5, 2011 -- Steve Jobs, the visionary leader of Apple Inc., which introduced the world to personal computers, then the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, died on Wednesday following a long battle with cancer.
He was 56.
"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," the company said in a statement it posted on its website Wednesday night. The statement did not cite a specific cause of death.
Jobs announced in August that he was stepping down as head of the hugely successful technology company he co-founded in a northern California garage 35 years ago. The announcement was thin on details, although speculation immediately turned to his ongoing health problems.
He first had surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer back in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took three medical leaves at Apple before turning over the helm to Timothy D. Cook, then chief operating officer, in August. But, even after he left, he was still engaged in the company's affairs, The New York Times reported Wednesday night.
In a letter to Apple's board of directors in August, Jobs said he "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."
This much was known about the health of Jobs, a legendarily private man: Since 2004, he had been fighting a rare form of pancreatic cancer called neuroendocrine cancer.
Pancreatic cancer expert Dr. Craig Devoe, from the department of medicine at North Shore-LIJ Health System in New Hyde Park, N.Y., said that "neuroendocrine tumors are uncommon, with only a few thousand cases a year."
For those that affect the pancreas, the numbers are even lower with fewer than 1,000 cases a year in the United States. In contrast, there are around 40,000 cases of other pancreatic cancers a year, Devoe said.
Dr. David M. Levi, a professor of clinical surgery, liver and GI transplantation at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said neuroendocrine cancer "is an unusual tumor. It can arise in a number of places, including the pancreas." Such tumors can also start in the lungs.
It's one of the few tumors that can benefit -- to some extent -- from a transplant, Levi said. Jobs' cancer started in the pancreas and then spread to the liver, making the liver transplant an option, Levi said, adding he has treated patients with this type of cancer and done liver transplants.
While the prognosis for neuroendocrine cancer is often better than for the more common type of pancreatic cancer, in which patients generally live less than a year after diagnosis, neuroendocrine cancer "can also be bad," Levi said.
Neuroendocrine cancer can return after treatment, Levi explained. And while a liver transplant can be effective, "it is not as great a picture as we first thought," he said. "A lot of these patients who have transplants eventually do recur."
"The vast majority of patients that have recurrent disease will die of their disease. One of the problems with the [liver] transplant is that now you are on immunosuppressant drugs, and while they keep you from rejection or destroying the liver, the immune system also would have helped deal with tumors," he explained.
Devoe said a liver transplant is a treatment when "your back's against the wall," and isn't expected to cure neuroendocrine cancer, so very few are done.
"The fact that the disease came back [was] not surprising," he said.
These treatments won't cure the disease, but they may slow its progression, Devoe said. "It may extend the life of patients. But at this point, your best treatments are behind you and survival may be under a year or two," he said. "It's clearly incurable."
Doctors don't really know what causes neuroendocrine tumors. In the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two new drugs for neuroendocrine tumors -- sunitinib and everolimus.
In a commencement address in 2005 to Stanford University graduates, Jobs said: "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it."
http://www.drugs.com/news/steve-jobs-visionary-leader-apple-inc-dies-56-34074.html
WEDNESDAY Oct. 5, 2011 -- Steve Jobs, the visionary leader of Apple Inc., which introduced the world to personal computers, then the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, died on Wednesday following a long battle with cancer.
He was 56.
"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," the company said in a statement it posted on its website Wednesday night. The statement did not cite a specific cause of death.
Jobs announced in August that he was stepping down as head of the hugely successful technology company he co-founded in a northern California garage 35 years ago. The announcement was thin on details, although speculation immediately turned to his ongoing health problems.
He first had surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer back in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took three medical leaves at Apple before turning over the helm to Timothy D. Cook, then chief operating officer, in August. But, even after he left, he was still engaged in the company's affairs, The New York Times reported Wednesday night.
In a letter to Apple's board of directors in August, Jobs said he "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."
This much was known about the health of Jobs, a legendarily private man: Since 2004, he had been fighting a rare form of pancreatic cancer called neuroendocrine cancer.
Pancreatic cancer expert Dr. Craig Devoe, from the department of medicine at North Shore-LIJ Health System in New Hyde Park, N.Y., said that "neuroendocrine tumors are uncommon, with only a few thousand cases a year."
For those that affect the pancreas, the numbers are even lower with fewer than 1,000 cases a year in the United States. In contrast, there are around 40,000 cases of other pancreatic cancers a year, Devoe said.
Dr. David M. Levi, a professor of clinical surgery, liver and GI transplantation at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said neuroendocrine cancer "is an unusual tumor. It can arise in a number of places, including the pancreas." Such tumors can also start in the lungs.
It's one of the few tumors that can benefit -- to some extent -- from a transplant, Levi said. Jobs' cancer started in the pancreas and then spread to the liver, making the liver transplant an option, Levi said, adding he has treated patients with this type of cancer and done liver transplants.
While the prognosis for neuroendocrine cancer is often better than for the more common type of pancreatic cancer, in which patients generally live less than a year after diagnosis, neuroendocrine cancer "can also be bad," Levi said.
Neuroendocrine cancer can return after treatment, Levi explained. And while a liver transplant can be effective, "it is not as great a picture as we first thought," he said. "A lot of these patients who have transplants eventually do recur."
"The vast majority of patients that have recurrent disease will die of their disease. One of the problems with the [liver] transplant is that now you are on immunosuppressant drugs, and while they keep you from rejection or destroying the liver, the immune system also would have helped deal with tumors," he explained.
Devoe said a liver transplant is a treatment when "your back's against the wall," and isn't expected to cure neuroendocrine cancer, so very few are done.
"The fact that the disease came back [was] not surprising," he said.
These treatments won't cure the disease, but they may slow its progression, Devoe said. "It may extend the life of patients. But at this point, your best treatments are behind you and survival may be under a year or two," he said. "It's clearly incurable."
Doctors don't really know what causes neuroendocrine tumors. In the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two new drugs for neuroendocrine tumors -- sunitinib and everolimus.
In a commencement address in 2005 to Stanford University graduates, Jobs said: "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it."
http://www.drugs.com/news/steve-jobs-visionary-leader-apple-inc-dies-56-34074.html
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