Steve Jobs passed away

Steve Jobs, who built the world's most valuable technology company by creating devices that
changed how people use electronics and revolutionized the computer, music and mobile-phone industries, died. He was 56.
Jobs, who resigned as Apple Inc. chief executive officer on Aug. 24, 2011, passed away today, the Cupertino, California-based company said today. He was diagnosed in 2003 with a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare form of pancreatic cancer, and had a liver transplant in 2009.

Jobs embodied the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He was a long-haired counterculture technophile who dropped out of college and started a computer company in his parents garage on April Fools' Day, 1976.

On his watch, Apple came to dominate the digital age, first through the creation of the Macintosh computer and later through the iPod digital music player, the iPhone wireless handset and more recently, the iPad tablet.

With each product, Jobs confronted new adversaries --from International Business Machines Corp. in computers to Microsoft Corp. in operating systems, to Sony Corp. in music players and
Google Inc. in mobile software.

The opening act of Jobs professional ascent stretched from 1976 to 1984. He scored his first hit with the Apple II computer, a device that resonated with schools and some consumers and small businesses, and made Apple an alluring alternative to IBM, then the world's largest computer maker.

Apple had its initial public offering in 1980 and the graphical Macintosh was born just over three years later. During his second act, from 1984 to 1997, Jobs's star dimmed. In 1985, he was fired after a power struggle with Apple's board.

He started another computer company, NeXT Computer Inc., and bought a digital animation studio from filmmaker George Lucas. The firm later took the name Pixar.
String of Hits Apple's purchase of NeXT in 1997 brought Jobs back to the computer maker he helped found and commenced his careers third act. The company was foundering. He ignited a flurry of innovation and growth -- and achieved what may be the greatest comeback in business history.

Whether he was working on the Mac or the iPhone or backing the computer animation that yielded an unbroken string of Pixar hits, Jobs proved that complex technologies could be designed into simple, beautiful products that people would find irresistible.

Steve Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, in San Francisco, to unwed college graduate students Joanne Carole Schieble and Syrian emigrant Abdul Fattah. He was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs, who raised Steve in the middle-class enclaves of Mountain View and Los Altos in California.