Steve Jobs

Here's a timeline of Steve Jobs's life:

• - February 24, 1955 - Born in San Francisco to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali.
• 1961 - The Jobs family moves to Mountain View, Calif., part of what would later become known as Silicon Valley.
• 1968 - 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.
• 1970 - 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.
• 1972 - Graduates from Homestead High School in Cupertino, Calif., and enrolls at Reed College in Portland, Ore., only to drop out a semester later. Jobs would go on to sit in on classes that interested him, such as calligraphy, despite not getting credit for them.
• 1974 - 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.
• 1976 - Co-founds Apple Computer with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. That same year, the company sells the Apple I in the form of a kit that sells for $666.66.
• 1944 - Rejects a 100% salary increase from Dupont, leaves behind his pregnant wife, and flies to Mexico to head a new plant pathology program. Over the next 16 years, his team breeds 6,000 different strains of disease resistent wheat - including different varieties for each major climate on Earth.
• January 3, 1977 - Apple incorporates.
• June 5, 1977 - Releases the Apple II, the first commercially available personal computer in a plastic case with color graphics--and Apple's first successful personal computer.
• December 12, 1980 - Apple goes public, putting Jobs' net worth north of $200 million.
• January 24, 1984 - Two days after the $1.5 million Ridley Scott-directed "1984" Super Bowl commercial airs, introduces the Macintosh to much fanfare during Apple's shareholder meeting. "For the first time ever, I'd like to let Macintosh speak for itself." The computer's voice then says, "Never trust a computer you can't lift." Macintosh becomes the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface.
• September 12,1985- 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. An "interpersonal" NeXT workstation, sporting a built-in Ethernet port, is used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN to become the first server of the World Wide Web
• February 3, 1986 - For $10 million, buys the Graphics Group division of Lucasfilm that becomes Pixar Animation Studios.
• 1988 - NeXT Computer releases its first computer.
• 1993 - NeXT discontinues hardware business, gets into software instead. The company is renamed NeXT Software, Inc.
• November 29, 1995 - Becomes Pixar's president and CEO. Later in the year, Jobs brings Pixar public, one week after the release of "Toy Story," with Tom Hanks doing the voice of Woody and Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear. The film earns $192 million at the box office. Its success helps make it quite attractive for celebrities to lend their voices to animated characters
• December 10, 1996 - Returns to Apple, as an adviser, after it buys NeXT for $429 million.
• July 9, 1997 - Becomes CEO, initially as the de facto chief, then as interim chief in September.
• January 8, 1998 - Apple returns to profitability.
• January 5, 2000 - Drops the "interim" from his CEO title at the Macworld Expo, joking that he would be using the title "iCEO," paying homage to the company's product-naming conventions. Takes a $1 annual salary. Soon terminates projects including Newton and OpenDoc, and changes licensing terms to make Mac-cloning cost-prohibitive. Technologies developed at NeXT ultimately evolve into Apple products such as the Mac OS.
• January 9, 2001 - Introduces iTunes, then exclusively for Mac users. "iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukebox application, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even more people into the digital music revolution."
• July 17, 2002 - Apple introduces the first Windows-compatible iPods at Macworld.
• April 28, 2003April 28, 2003
• August 1, 2004 - Jobs undergoes surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his pancreas.
• January 11, 2005 - Apple introduces an iPod Shuffle. "iPod Shuffle is smaller and lighter than a pack of gum and costs less than $100...With most flash memory music players, users must use tiny displays and complicated controls to find their music; with iPod Shuffle you just relax, and it serves up new combinations of your music every time you listen."
• January 13, 2006 - That year, Apple's market capitalization surpasses Dell's.
• January 9, 2007 - Drops "Computer" from Apple's name. Introduces the iPhone: "iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone...We are all born with the ultimate pointing device--our fingers--and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse." Apple owns 19.1 percent of the smartphone market as of August 2011, having shipped 108 million iPhones worldwide as of March 2011
• January 15, 2008 - Introduces the App Store as an update to iTunes. Also introduces the MacBook Air. The App Store facilitated 18 billion app downloads as of October 4, 2011.
• January 14, 2009 - Jobs takes a 6-month leave of absence for medical reasons.
• January 27, 2010 - Introduces the iPad. Apple sells 500,000 iPads during their first week on the market and gains 84 percent of the tablet market by the end of the year, with an estimated 12.9 million shipped as of December 10, 2010, and 25 million shipped worldwide as of June 2011. That same month, the company discloses that it has sold 200 million iOS devices
• November 16, 2010 - Convinces Apple Corps. and EMI Group to make Beatles albums available on iTunes: "We love the Beatles, and are honored and thrilled to welcome them to iTunes...It has been a long and winding road to get here. Thanks to the Beatles and EMI, we are now realizing a dream we've had since we launched iTunes 10 years ago."
• January 17, 2011 - Goes on medical leave of absence from CEO post nearly two years after the six-month break he took to undergo a liver transplant.
• February 10, 2011 - Apple starts selling iPhones via Verizon Wireless, officially ending AT&T's exclusive U.S. contract.
• February 15, 2011 - Launches a media subscription service in the App Store: "Our philosophy is simple--when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent, and Apple earns nothing."
• March 2, 2011 - Jobs makes a surprise appearance to take the wraps off the iPad 2 at an invite-only event in downtown San Francisco. It's his first public appearance at a company event since announcing his third medical leave from the company in January.
• June 6, 2011 - Gives a keynote speech at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, it's Jobs' last public appearance at an Apple event.
• August 9, 2011 - Apple shares edge past those of Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable U.S. company, in terms of market capitalization, at $337.17 billion.
• August 24, 2011 - Resigns from Apple CEO post; becomes chairman.
• 5 Oct 2011 - Steve Jobs dies at home, surrounded by his family.

"If you want to be average, do what others do. If you want to be awesome, do what no one does."
– Alexander Den Heijer