The legacy of Apple CEO Steve Jobs

How Rich Was Steve Jobs Really?

Albeit a Assets of 9.4 billion euros is an unimaginably large sum for many people, Steve Jobs should actually have amassed a lot more money by the time he died. According to current estimates, the Apple founder could have been worth at least 127 billion US dollars. What happened? A new biography about Steven Paul Jobs, published in May 2015, unfortunately raises more questions than answers for all interested readers. Although Steve Jobs was one of the first men to get rich in the computer business, an anomaly crept into his résumé. Jobs had made his first million at the tender age of 23. Just one year later, the genius had 10 million US dollars in his bank account. By the age of 25, the Apple co-founder was worth $ 250 million.

Steve Jobs could have been even richer

And yet Steve Jobs was nowhere near as rich when he died as Bill Gates is today. How can this be explained? It makes sense to refer to the very different personalities of the two computer geniuses. Because Gates always stayed on the ball with Microsoft and never turned his back on the company, which Steve Jobs had done several times with Apple. In 1985 he had sold all of his shares in Apple – perhaps on a whim. The smart Steve Jobs only kept a single share in order to continue to be able to view Apple’s business figures. And in 1997 he did it again and sold all Apple shares that he had received up to that point for the sale of his second company, NeXT Computers. However, if he hadn’t sold his original stake in Apple, Steven Paul Jobs would have made a fortune by that alone $ 127 billion accumulate until his death and would have been twice as rich as Bill Gates is today. Still, of course, Steve Jobs was not a child of sadness. Because even with only 10.2 billion US dollars, you could live wonderfully and his heirs have probably taken care of things.

The life story of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was put up for adoption at a young age. His very young parents just weren’t up to the situation. Although his birth mother actually wanted academics as adoptive parents, this unfortunately never happened. Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs, who came from Armenia, had to promise, however, that they would at least finance their adoptive son’s education at a college. It wasn’t until the age of 20 that he found out that the future Apple founder had even been adopted.

The tech guru grew up in Mountain View, California, not far from his native San Francisco. the Electronics industry of Silicon Valley, which was also in its infancy during Steve Jobs’ childhood, fascinated the clever boy from an early age. The later Apple mogul was eager to learn from a very early age and quickly got bored in school, so that he skipped a class in elementary school. Although Steve enrolled in college in Oregon after graduating from high school in 1972, he dropped out after just one semester. Fortunately, as one must say today. When Steven Paul Jobs started at Atari at the beginning of 1974, he had his first experiences that should help him a lot on the way to becoming Apple co-founder. Incidentally, the name “Apple” of the later global corporation is derived from Steve Jobs’ former lifestyle as a fruitarian.

Apple, NeXT and Pixar

That Steve Jobs was a real genius, hardly anyone will doubt. Because not only Apple but also Pixar would not be what they are today without the smart American. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded the Apple Computer Company together with their third colleague, Ronald Wayne, in 1976 – at that time in Jobs Garage in Los Altos, California. Although there are many milestones in Apple’s company history to report, the Macintosh in particular has been remembered. Apple introduced it in 1984, bringing the first computer to market that was commercially successful. Above all, the graphical user interface and the computer mouse as an input medium made this computer veteran such a big seller. Only one year later, in 1985, there was an internal power struggle, so that Steve Jobs left the company during this phase of the spectacular upswing. Nevertheless, the former Apple co-founder did not allow himself to be dissuaded from his successful course and founded another computer company called NeXT Computer the next year.

Even if NeXT Computer was only able to celebrate great success in scientific circles, the technologies that the group had developed were so sophisticated that NeXT Computer was later taken over by Apple. From 1986 Steve Jobs also got involved with Pixar and invested 5 million US dollars together with a business partner to buy George Lucas the rights to the group. After Toy Story was celebrated around the world in 1995 and Pixar went public, it ensured that Steve Jobs became a billionaire. So his first billion did not go to Apple’s account. It was later acquired by Disney, which brought in 138 million Disney shares for Steve Jobs.

The return to Apple

When Apple bought NeXT Computer in 1996, it heralded the return of Steve Jobs. It was Job’s leadership that made the iMac possible in 1998. With the iTunes Store, iPod, iPhone and the introduction of the iPad, Jobs was able to seal his superstar status in the computer industry. In fact, there have been many years when Steve Jobs only received a salary of $ 1. With the small salary, he also landed in the Guinness Book of Records. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs had to step down from day-to-day business at Apple in January 2011. Tim Cook took over from then on, although Steve remained Apple’s CEO. Until his death in October 2011, however, the American continued to be the chairman of the board of directors of Apple. A legend that will never be forgotten.

Image sources:
Apple: Rixie / Bigstock.com
Steve Jobs memorial picture: Photocritical / Bigstock.com