The Life and Times of Apple's Steve Jobs Quiz

Answer: San Francisco, California

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs was born in San Francisco, California on February 24, 1955 to unwed parents. He was put up for adoption shortly after birth and was raised in Los Altos, California (which would become part of "Silicon Valley"), by Paul and Clara Jobs.

Answer: He never graduated from college

Steve Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, for one semester. Unwilling to take required courses he dropped out and for a year and a half audited courses that interested him. He had little training in computer science or engineering.

Answer: April Fool's Day

Apple was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. While the Apple mythology has grown to indicate that the April Fool's date was chosen to thumb their noses at authority, it just happened to be the day the Apple I computer was first delivered to a retailer, so the three decided they had a real company. Apple was incorporated in 1977.

The first Apple logo was designed by Ronald Wayne, featuring Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree (he was reading a book). Rob Janoff designed the rainbow-colored Apple logo in 1977.

There are many conflicting stories on why the name "Apple" was chosen but Steve Wozniak has said it was Jobs' idea.

Answer: True

Jobs worked for video game manufacturer Atari in 1974 as a technician, primarily to save enough money for a spiritual retreat to India. He made the trip and came back as a Buddhist. He returned to Atari and was given the job of designing a circuit board for the game "Breakout" with the incentive of receiving a bonus for each computer chip he could eliminate from the design. Jobs was not a computer engineer so he enlisted the aid of friend Steve Wozniak. Wozniak eliminated five chips from the fifty in the design so Atari paid Jobs $700 plus the bonus but Jobs told Wozniak Atari only paid $700 and gave Wozniak $350. Yes, he stiffed his best friend!

Answer: Jef Raskin

Jef Raskin was recruited by Jobs and Wozniak in 1977 to write the BASIC programming manual for the Apple II computer. He officially joined Apple in 1978. He worked on what was to become the Macintosh until 1981 when Jobs took over the project. Raskin left Apple in 1982 to work on his own projects. Jobs was known for his temper and Raskin later said of him: "He would have made an excellent king of France."

Answer: Xerox

Xerox, the copier company, had a research center in Palo Alto, California (PARC). Among their inventions was the experimental Alto computer, which used a mouse, a graphical user interface featuring icons on a "desktop" and networking capability. The project was stalled because no one at Xerox really knew what to do with the computer.

In 1979, Steve Jobs and other Apple employees, in exchange for the right to buy $1,000,000 of Apple's pre-IPO (Initial Public Offering) stock, were allowed three days in the PARC facility to learn all they could and then use what they learned as they chose.

Answer: He was forced out by the board of directors

While the Macintosh computer was heralded as brilliant in its debut in 1984 (over 400,000 were sold in the first year) sales eventually slowed because of limited software availability until Apple formed a partnership with Adobe Systems, which introduced the laser printer and PageMaker desktop publishing software. As sales decreased, the relationship between Jobs and then-CEO John Sculley became strained. Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and Jobs was relieved of all decision-making responsibility. He resigned in September, 1985.

Jobs was, in fact, featured in a commercial for the Nissan 280ZX.

Answer: NeXT Computer

Jobs founded NeXT as a company to make high-powered computer work stations, primarily to be used by academics. Because of the high prices of the workstations ($6,500 to $9,999 US) NeXT did not sell enough to be profitable and the company turned to software development, introducing NeXTSTEP, an advanced operating software that used the UNIX programming language for its underpinnings. NeXTSTEP would eventually become the basis for the Mac OS X operating system. Here's some further trivia for you: Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989, did so on a NeXT workstation.

Answer: To sell high-end graphics computers

Jobs bought George Lucas' (Star Wars) "The Graphics Group" in 1986. The computer the group was developing was aimed at scientific markets (medicine, geophysics and meteorology). After Jobs bought the division (for $10 million) and changed the name to Pixar, the computers were released.

They were extremely expensive and didn't sell in large numbers. To bring in some money, Pixar formed a deal with the Walt Disney Company to produce computer-animated films. In 1995 Pixar released "Toy Story", a highly successful movie. Among further releases were "A Bug's LIfe", "Cars" and "Finding Nemo". Disney bought Pixar from Jobs in in 2006 for $7.4 billion of stock.

Answer: 1996

Then-Apple CEO, Gil Amelio, bought NeXT in 1996, hoping to use it as the basis for a new Macintosh operating system (which did happen). Steve Jobs came along, originally as an advisor to Amelio. In July, 1997 Jobs orchestrated Amelio's removal and reshaped the company to his own liking. With a talented management team, notably design chief, Jonathan Ive, the company designed the iMacs, iPods, iPhones and iPads we have today, in turn making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world.