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Apple Founder Steve Jobs Passes Away at 56

Steve Jobs, the iconic co-founder of Apple and one of the most important tech leaders of the 20th century passed away on Wednesday at the age of 56.  Jobs' passing came at the end of a prolonged battle with cancer that forced him to resign as Apple's Chief Executive in August after he took a medical leave of absence in January.

Jobs was born February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, but was put up for adoption by his birth parents.  He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, who raised him in Cupertino, California, where Apple would later be headquartered.  Jobs showed an early interest in technology, phoning Hewlett-Packard president William Howard to request parts for a school project as a teen.  Hewlett sent the parts, and offered Jobs a summer job with his company.

Jobs graduated high school in 1972 and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon.  He would drop out after just one semester, but continued to audit classes at the school, including a calligraphy class which he credits with his vision of Apple's aesthetic characteristics.  He later took a job designing video games at Atari to save money for backpacking trip across India.  During the trip, Jobs experimented with psychedelic drugs, and credits that experience for shaping his creative vision.

Jobs met Steve Wozniak during his summer gig with HP, and the two became friends and maintained contact.  The two men would later be in a computer hobbyist club, and joined two other men in 1976 to form Apple Computer Inc.  Jobs and Wozniak built the company's first commercial product, the Apple 1, in the garage of Jobs' parents home in Cupertino.  The primitive computer had no keyboard or display, and customers had to assemble it themselves.  The computer carried a price tag of $666.66.

Apple's second offering, the Apple II, debuted at the West Coast Faire in 1977, and was an immediate success, launching a personal computer craze that would take the country, and the world, by storm.  Apple would become a tech giant within just a few years, and its success would be magnified in 1984 with the release of the Macintosh computer.  Jobs spent two more years with the company he co-founded before being forced out by a power struggle.  During the ensuing ten years Jobs founded NeXT Computer and acquire and revive Pixar Animation Studios from George Lucas.  NeXT's pricey computer offerings never quite took off with consumers, and Apple bought the struggling company in 1996, bringing Jobs back into the fold in the process.

Within a year of returning to Apple, Jobs was once again running the show.  Ever since, he has been wowing gadget junkies with a string of successful products that changed technology.  The iPod in 2001, iTunes in 2003, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010 all fundamentally changed some aspect of technology, and all were developed and released under Jobs' watch.  Tech writers, business leaders, and people from all walks of life took to the Internet Wednesday to honor Jobs and mourn the loss of the legendary tech titan.