# Life of Steve Jobs > Life of Steve Jobs: an interactive timeline spanning Feb 24, 1955 to Oct 24, 2011 with 42 events, published on Linecept. - Source: https://www.linecept.com/p/life-of-steve-jobs-xu59l8 - Published: Jul 21, 2026 - Time span: Feb 24, 1955 – Oct 24, 2011 - Timezone: UTC - Timelines: 9 - Events: 42 - Contributors: David Kutas ## Timelines - Apple — The Founding Years (Apr 1, 1976 – Sep 17, 1985): The company Jobs co-founded in a garage in 1976 and built into a personal-computer pioneer, until a boardroom defeat pushed him out in 1985. - Apple — The Return (Feb 7, 1997 – Oct 5, 2011): Jobs's second act at Apple: back from exile in 1997, he took a near-bankrupt company and led it to the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. - NeXT (Nov 1, 1985 – Dec 20, 1996): The high-end computer company Jobs founded after leaving Apple in 1985; its software became the foundation of the modern Mac and brought him back to Apple. - Pixar (Feb 3, 1986 – May 5, 2006): The animation studio Jobs bought from Lucasfilm in 1986 and funded for years, until Toy Story and a Disney sale made him a billionaire and a media power. - Steve Jobs — Life (Feb 24, 1955 – Oct 5, 2011): The central lifeline: adopted son of Silicon Valley, college dropout and seeker, father, husband, and, at the end, a patient facing a cancer he could not… - Cultural Impact & Wealth (Dec 12, 1980 – Oct 24, 2011): Jobs beyond the products — the fortunes, the persona, and the legacy of a man who reshaped industry after industry. - The ‘1984’ Ad (Jan 22, 1984): Apple's Super Bowl commercial announcing the Macintosh, directed by Ridley Scott — the most famous ad in technology. - Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish (Jun 12, 2005): Jobs's 2005 Stanford commencement address, one of the most-watched speeches ever given. - Reinventing the Phone (Jan 9, 2007): The Macworld keynote where Jobs unveiled the iPhone — a landmark of product theater. ## Events (chronological) - Feb 24, 1955: Born and Adopted — Steven Paul Jobs was born on 24 February 1955 in San Francisco to two graduate students and given up for adoption. Paul and Clara Jobs raised him in what would soon become Silicon… - Jan 1, 1968: A Valley Childhood — His father Paul, a machinist, taught him to build things by hand and to care about the parts of a product no one would ever see — a lesson Jobs carried into everything he made. - Jan 1, 1971: Meeting Woz — Around 1971 a mutual friend introduced Jobs to Steve Wozniak, an electronics prodigy five years older. Their partnership — Woz the engineer, Jobs the visionary — would create… - Sep 1, 1972: Reed and the Calligraphy Class — Jobs enrolled at Reed College in 1972, dropped out after a semester, and stayed on to audit classes that interested him — including a calligraphy course whose lettering later… - Jan 1, 1974: India and Zen — In 1974 Jobs traveled through India seeking enlightenment, experimented with psychedelics, and embraced Zen Buddhism. The pursuit of simplicity he found there stayed with him for… - Apr 1, 1976: Founding Apple — On 1 April 1976 Jobs, 21, co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Wozniak designed the Apple I; Jobs supplied the drive, the salesmanship, and the belief that… - Jun 5, 1977: The Apple II — Launched in 1977, the Apple II was one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers. Its color graphics and friendly design carried the company for years and… - May 17, 1978: Lisa — His daughter Lisa Brennan was born in 1978. Jobs denied paternity for years — a painful chapter he later worked to repair, building a genuine relationship with her. - Dec 12, 1980: Millionaire at Twenty-Five — Apple's 1980 IPO made Jobs one of the youngest self-made multimillionaires in America — wealth he treated less as an end than as fuel for the next thing to build. - Dec 12, 1980: Going Public — Apple's December 1980 IPO was the biggest since Ford's, and it made the 25-year-old Jobs worth over $200 million on paper — along with hundreds of newly minted Apple millionaires. - Jan 22, 1984: Big Brother Meets the Mac — Aired just once, during Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984, Apple's '1984' commercial cast the Macintosh as a hammer against conformity. It set the template for the event-launch… - Jan 24, 1984: The Macintosh — On 24 January 1984 Jobs unveiled the Macintosh, the first mass-market computer built around a graphical interface and a mouse. It was late, expensive, and underpowered — and it… - Sep 17, 1985: Pushed Out — In 1985, after a power struggle with CEO John Sculley — the Pepsi executive Jobs himself had recruited — the board sided with Sculley. Jobs resigned from the company he had… - Nov 1, 1985: Founding NeXT — In late 1985 Jobs founded NeXT, taking a few Apple colleagues with him to build powerful workstations for universities and researchers — a chance to prove his ouster wrong. - Jan 1, 1986: Finding His Birth Family — In the mid-1980s Jobs sought out his biological mother and discovered he had a sister — the novelist Mona Simpson — with whom he formed a close, lasting bond. - Feb 3, 1986: Buying Pixar — In 1986 Jobs paid about $5 million for the computer-graphics division of Lucasfilm and spun it out as Pixar, then poured in tens of millions more over the lean years that followed. - Oct 12, 1988: The NeXT Cube — The 1988 NeXT Computer — a striking black magnesium cube running the advanced NeXTSTEP system — was widely admired but too expensive to sell in volume. - Dec 1, 1990: The Web is Born on a NeXT — In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee built the first web browser and server on a NeXT machine at CERN — the World Wide Web's first home was one of Jobs's cubes. - Mar 18, 1991: Marrying Laurene — In 1991 Jobs married Laurene Powell, whom he had met after giving a talk at Stanford. They had three children — Reed, Erin, and Eve — and she became his closest confidante. - Nov 22, 1995: Toy Story — Released in 1995, Toy Story was the first fully computer-animated feature film — a critical and commercial triumph that vindicated a decade of Jobs's patience and money. - Nov 29, 1995: Pixar Goes Public — Pixar's IPO, one week after Toy Story opened in 1995, made Jobs a billionaire for the first time — through animation, not computers. - Nov 29, 1995: A Billionaire Through Pixar — It was Pixar, not Apple, that first made Jobs a billionaire, when the studio's stock soared after Toy Story in 1995. - Dec 20, 1996: Apple Buys NeXT — In December 1996 Apple acquired NeXT for roughly $429 million, making NeXTSTEP the basis of the future Mac OS X — and, far more consequentially, bringing Steve Jobs back home. - Sep 16, 1997: The Return — Apple, months from insolvency, bought NeXT in early 1997 and Jobs came back. By that September he was interim CEO, killing dozens of projects and betting the company on a handful… - Sep 28, 1997: Think Different — The 1997 'Think Different' campaign re-centered the brand on creativity and rebellion, restoring Apple's identity before a single new product shipped. - Aug 15, 1998: The iMac — The translucent, all-in-one iMac arrived in 1998 as Apple's first post-return hit — proof that a computer could be a design object, and that the company was alive again. - Jan 1, 2000: The Turtleneck — The black mock turtleneck, faded jeans, and running shoes became one of the most recognizable personal brands in business — a uniform that turned each keynote into an event. - Oct 23, 2001: The iPod — 'A thousand songs in your pocket.' The 2001 iPod redefined portable music and set Apple on the path from computer maker to consumer-electronics giant. - Apr 28, 2003: The iTunes Store — Launched in 2003, the iTunes Store made legal, 99-cent downloads mainstream and gave the reeling music industry a new business model. - May 30, 2003: A String of Hits — A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo followed through the early 2000s, establishing Pixar as the most consistently successful animation studio in the world. - Oct 1, 2003: A Private Illness — In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare pancreatic tumor and, for months, chose alternative treatments over surgery — a delay he is widely reported to have later regretted. - Jun 12, 2005: Three Stories — On 12 June 2005 Jobs told Stanford's graduates three stories — about connecting the dots, about love and loss, and about death — closing with 'Stay hungry, stay foolish.' It… - Jan 24, 2006: Disney Buys Pixar — In 2006 Disney acquired Pixar for about $7.4 billion in stock, making Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder and a member of its board. - Jan 9, 2007: Three Products in One — At Macworld on 9 January 2007 Jobs teased 'three products' — a phone, an iPod, and an internet device — before revealing they were one. The keynote is now taught as a masterclass… - Jan 9, 2007: The iPhone — In January 2007 Jobs unveiled the iPhone as 'a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator' in one device. It reset the entire industry and became the best-selling product of its… - Jun 29, 2007: Reinventing Industries — Over his career Jobs reshaped personal computers, animated film, music, phones, tablets, and digital publishing — few individuals have redefined so many businesses at once. - Jul 10, 2008: The App Store — Opening the iPhone to outside developers in 2008 created an entirely new economy, turning the device into a platform for hundreds of thousands of apps. - Apr 1, 2009: Liver Transplant — As the cancer spread, Jobs took medical leave and received a liver transplant in 2009, returning to Apple thinner but determined to finish the products he had in motion. - Jan 27, 2010: The iPad — The 2010 iPad created the modern tablet category, a product Jobs had wanted to build for decades and chose to introduce near the end of his life. - Aug 24, 2011: Stepping Down — With his health failing, Jobs resigned as CEO on 24 August 2011, writing that the day had come as he'd always predicted it might. He handed the company to Tim Cook and stayed on… - Oct 5, 2011: Death — Steve Jobs died on 5 October 2011 at his home in Palo Alto, aged 56. Mourners left flowers at Apple stores around the world, and his final word, his sister wrote, was wonder. - Oct 24, 2011: The Isaacson Biography — Walter Isaacson's authorized biography, published weeks after his death in 2011, became a global bestseller and fixed the image of Jobs as the defining creative technologist of… --- This is an interactive timeline published on Linecept. View it at https://www.linecept.com/p/life-of-steve-jobs-xu59l8. Create your own at https://www.linecept.com/.