Steve Jobs & Bill Gates

Bill Gates is best known as the founder of Microsoft and a philanthropist.

Steve was born to Abdulfattah Jandali (born in Syria in 1931, a Muslim, who attended the University of Wisconsin, PhD) and Joanne Schieble (Swiss/German Catholic, born in the US) and he was adopted by Paul and Clara (Hagopian) Jobs. His adoptive father Paul was a Coast Guard mechanic prior to marrying Clara. According to Abdulfattah, Joanne left him and moved to San Francisco (behind his back) and she alone chose an adoptive family who was "Catholic, well-educated, and wealthy". After that couple changed their minds about adoption, Steve was placed with Paul and Clara but Joanne refused to sign the adoption papers because they didn't have a college education. After they pledged to pay for Steve's college education, she consented. Steve had a biological sister, Mona Simpson, and an adoptive sister, Patricia (with whom he grew up). By 1959, the entire Jobs family had moved to Mt View, CA. While a seeming loner to classmates, he said that he loved hanging out with his father and "building things" as well as the adult engineers who lived in their neighborhood. Steve had said that he was bored in school and was often in trouble for "resisting authority." His mother had taught him to read when he was a toddler and he had an (obviously!) bright, quick mind. By 4th grade, however, he had a teacher who knew how to reach him and he did so well, he ended up skipping 5th grade. And when they moved to Los Altos in 1967 and he was in a new school, he began to thrive. The school was in the Cupertino school district where a lot of the fathers were engineers. And it was in this house that Apple Computer, his first business founded with co-founder Steve Wozniak was born. Since he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, he went through many of the same experiences that his peers did: exposure to innovation and entrepreneurship; creative, new music; cultural diversity; civil protest (Woz went to UC Berkeley and he often visited there); and drug experimentation. All of these influences as well as the bright minds of his biological parents and the steadying influence of his adoptive parents, probably lead to his becoming an extraordinary and inventive entrepreneur. He was survived by his wife Laurene, with whom he had three children. He also had a daughter with a long-time girlfriend who he dated before marrying. Scroll down for a CNET obituary that includes much of his business career as well as some of his quotes about life. All of us Apple users celebrate your life, Steve - and miss your influence on Apple corporation. What wonderful new creations would we have had by now?