As 16 October is Steve Jobs Day, here are some things you might not know about Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs was born on 24 February 1955 in San Francisco. So, as today isn’t his birthday, why choose today to celebrate him? It’s not the anniversary of his death, either – that was 5 October 2011. Steve Jobs Day was declared in 2011 by the Governor of California, Jerry Brown, on 16 October 2011, because that was the date that Apple held a memorial service for him.
He was adopted. His biological father was Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian immigrant, and his mother Joanne Schieble, an American Catholic whose parents owned a mink farm. Religious differences prevented them from being together, so when Joanne became pregnant, the baby was put up for adoption. The biological parents stipulated that their child must be adopted by people with college degrees. However, neither Clara nor Paul Jobs had been to college. They were willing, however, to make sure their son got a college education, and so the adoption was agreed. Ironically, Steve Jobs dropped out of college in the end, mainly because his adopted family were struggling to pay the college fees.
He was known for always wearing black turtlenecks. His signature attire was designed by Japanese designer Issey Miyake and Jobs owned about 100 of them. He actually wanted all his employees to wear them, too, after being impressed by Japanese companies insisting on uniforms. The workers, however, refused point blank. Jobs adopted his own personal uniform, however, and the exact style was discontinued after he died. Another fashion quirk of his was that he often appeared barefoot in public.
He wasn’t a tech nerd – he never learned to code. He was the business brain behind Apple, because he knew the business people were the most important. He actually hated computers and once said that he’s rather sell dog shit than PCs. In fact, when the iPhone first launched in 2007, during his his keynote speech at the launch event, he stated that he intended it to be simply a phone. He said, “We want to reinvent the phone ... What’s the killer app? The killer app is making calls. It’s amazing how hard it is to make calls on most phones.”
He experimented with drugs in his youth and saw trying LSD as one of the most significant events in his life.
He was a Zen Buddhist and even considered entering a Buddhist monastery at one point. It may be that the Buddhist principles of mindfulness and simplicity helped shape Apple’s product designs. Jobs was a pescetarian, meaning he ate no meat except for fish.
He never put number plates on his car. He was able to do that because of a California law allowing drivers six months to put registration plates on their cars. When the six months was up, he’d simply buy an identical new car.
Before meeting his wife, Laurene, he dated the singer Joan Baez. He had an illegitimate child with his high school sweetheart Chrisann Brennan. He refused to acknowledge his daughter Lisa for many years. He’d turned quite nasty towards Chrisann when she told him she was expecting. She states that Jobs told her "If you give up this baby for adoption, you will be sorry" but also, "I am never going to help you". Yet, he named the Apple Lisa after her despite insisting it was an acronym for "Local Integrated System Architecture". He and Lisa eventually did form a closer relationship and she changed her name to Lisa Brennan-Jobs.
He also had a biological sister that he met when she was in her 20s. Her name is Mona Simpson, and she is a novelist.
When diagnosed with cancer, Jobs at first decided to shun conventional medicine and embrace alternative treatments, although he did eventually give in and have surgery. Some believe he might have survived if he’d had the surgery earlier. He died from the disease at the age of 56. It was reported that he died peacefully, and that his last words, spoken while looking over the shoulders of his family, were “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”
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