2011
Steve Jobs dies
The Apple co-founder died at home in Palo Alto at 56, weeks after stepping down as CEO of the company he had built and later rescued.
Steve Jobs died at his home in Palo Alto, California, on October 5, 2011, at the age of 56. The cause was respiratory arrest brought on by the return of a rare pancreatic tumor that doctors had first found in 2003. He had lost consciousness the day before, and his wife, children, and sisters were with him at the end. Only six weeks earlier, on August 24, he had resigned as Apple’s chief executive, handing the job to Tim Cook while staying on as chairman. He kept working for the company until the day before he died.
The news spread quickly. Apple and Pixar both announced his death, and Apple set up an email address where people could send their memories. Apple and Microsoft lowered their flags to half-staff, and Disney did the same at its parks the following week. Statements came from Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, George Lucas, and President Barack Obama. A small private funeral took place on October 7, and Jobs was buried, as he had asked, in an unmarked grave in Palo Alto.
His career had followed an unusual arc. Born in San Francisco in 1955 and adopted as a baby, he co-founded Apple with Wozniak in 1976, lost a boardroom struggle and left in 1985, then founded NeXT and bought the studio that became Pixar. Apple’s purchase of NeXT brought him back in 1997, when the company was close to bankruptcy.
Why it matters
Few business leaders shaped everyday technology as directly. Jobs found early success with the Apple II, one of the first mass-produced microcomputers to sell widely, brought the graphical interface to a mass-produced computer with the Macintosh, and, on his return, oversaw the iMac, the iPod, the iTunes Store, the iPhone, the App Store, and the iPad. Working closely with designer Jony Ive, he made the look and feel of a device as important as its specifications.
His influence reached beyond computers. Pixar, which he backed for years, released Toy Story in 1995, the first computer-animated feature film. When Disney bought the studio in 2006, Jobs became its largest single shareholder. In 2022 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom after his death, and he is named on hundreds of patents.
Did you know?
At a memorial at Stanford University on October 16, 2011, each guest received a small box from Jobs containing a copy of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi.
