Steve Jobs Facts

Steve Jobs was half Arab.

Steve Jobs' annual salary was $1, just enough to keep company health benefits.

Two of Apple's three founders worked at Atari before starting Apple. Steve Jobs was a technician there, and Steve Wozniak helped design the circuitry for Breakout as a contractor.

Steve Jobs's secretary - a single mom - told him she was late because her car would not start. That afternoon, he walked into her office and tossed her a set of keys. They were for a brand new Jaguar. Cost in 1981: $35,000. That is roughly $123,000 today, more than twice the median household income of the time. Here, do not be late anymore, he said.

Steve Jobs never wrote a single line of programming code.

Steve Jobs' biological father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, managed a popular Mediterranean restaurant near San Jose. Jobs ate there a couple of times without knowing the owner was his father. Jandali didn't know either. Years later, when Jobs' biological sister Mona Simpson tracked Jandali down, he casually boasted: "Even Steve Jobs used to eat there. He was a great tipper." That's how Jobs found out.

Steve Jobs had to follow an exact sequence of taps during the first iPhone demo in 2007 — one wrong move and it would crash on live TV. Apple engineers called it the "golden path." They had backup phones ready backstage to swap in if he slipped. The most important product launch in tech history was held together with duct tape.

Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and later said it was 90 days from going bankrupt. He struck a deal with Apple's biggest rival - Microsoft - to survive: they invested $150 million in non-voting preferred Apple stock. When Jobs announced it at Macworld Boston, Bill Gates appeared live via satellite on a giant screen above the stage. The crowd booed. Jobs later called it his worst staging mistake ever.

Some tech CEOs intentionally use the same outfit every day—like Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck—not out of laziness, but to minimize decision fatigue and boost creativity.

Steve Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985. He sold nearly every share he owned, keeping just one share to attend meetings. With the money, he bought George Lucas's animation studio for $10 million. That studio was Pixar. Toy Story came out 10 years later. Pixar made him a billionaire first.