Amazing Facts about Steve Jobs

Here are some amazing facts about the incredible man, Steve Jobs, curated by the Viewired review team.

He was adopted

His biological father, Abdulfattah Jandali, grew up in Syria and met his biological mother, Joanne Schieble at the University of Wisconsin. At the age of 23, they both thought it was too young to marry and having a child out of wedlock was unconventional so they gave their baby to Steve's adoptive parents, Paul and Clara. They raised him on the promise that he would go to college.

He was bullied

In the sixth grade, Steve attended at Crittenden Middle School where he was bullied for allegedly being odd. This resulted in Steve giving his parents an ultimatum - he would drop out of school if they didn't move. So, they moved to Los Altos in California (the birthplace of Apple) where he met fellow engineer Bill Fernandez, who introduced him to Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak.

He was a Zen Buddhist

In 1974 after working with electronics and video game company, Atari, Jobs travelled to India for 7 months in search for spiritual enlightenment. He meditated often, and was a known pescatarian - eating fish but not meat. He also liked to walk barefoot.

He was a college dropout

Jobs graduated from Homestead High School in Silicon Valley, but dropped out of Reed College in Oregon because he didn't want to spend his parent's money. Although he did attend some classes, including calligraphy. In his 2005 commencement speech for Stanford University, Jobs stated that if he didn't drop into that class the Mac wouldn't have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

He experimented with psychedelics

Jobs experimented with LSD a few times claiming that it was a "profound experience" and "one of the most important things" in his life. He claimed it helped him to think differently.

He ripped off his partner Steve Wozniak

When Jobs worked for Atari, he had to make a circuit board for the video game Breakout. He told Wozniak that they would split the profit evenly if they could use less "TTL" chips. Jobs apparently told Wozniak that the pay out was $700 giving him $350. In fact Atari gave a sum of $5000 - which meant that Wozniak was owed $2500.

Hewlett Packard offered Jobs a summer job

When Jobs was 12 HP founder Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job after Steve called him asking for parts for an electronics project. It was known that Jobs had a keen interest in engineering from a young age as he used to help his guardian, Paul, fix things on his workbench.

He was fired from Apple

Jobs was fired because Pepsi Executive John Sculley told the board that he was far too young. This was after Jobs recruited him. Jobs then started another project creating the NeXT computer, but sales were limited because it was too expensive.

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