Pixar and Disney

In 1986 Steve Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the price of US$10 million, US$5 million of which was given to the company as capital.[35] The major cause of the low purchase price was George Lucas' need to finance his 1983 divorce without significantly reducing his stock and control of the Star Wars enterprises.

The new company, which was originally based in Point Richmond, California, has since relocated to Emeryville, California, contracted with Disney to produce a number of computer-animated feature films, which Disney would co-finance and distribute.

The first film produced by the partnership, Toy Story, brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released in 1995. Over the next ten years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company would produce the box-office hits A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), and Ratatouille (2007). Both Finding Nemo and The Incredibles received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.

In the years 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership, and in early 2004 Jobs announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films once its contract with Disney expired. Personal animosity between the two executives was largely blamed for the companies' failure to renew their partnership.

In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to patch up relations with Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth US$7.4 billion. Once the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest single shareholder with approximately 7% of the company's stock.[36] Jobs' holdings in Disney far exceed those of Eisner, who holds 1.7%, and Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who holds about 1% of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner included the soured Pixar relationship and accelerated his ousting. Jobs joined the company's board of directors upon completion of the merger.
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Jobs also helps oversee Disney and Pixar's combined animation businesses with a seat on a special six-man steering committee. One of the committee's first decisions was to discontinue the production of so-called "cheapquels" (cheap direct-to-video sequels). Many also see Jobs as a valuable and influential advisor to Iger and Disney on technology matters.

Managerial style

Much has been made of Jobs's aggressive and demanding personality. Fortune noted that he "is considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs."[37] Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in Mike Moritz’s The Little Kingdom, one of the few authorized biographies of Jobs; Jeffrey S. Young’s unauthorized Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward; The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon.

In iCon: Steve Jobs the authors point out that Paul Jobs, his father by adoption, was also known for his aggressive side: "Paul was soon hired as a kind of strongarm man by a finance company that sought help collecting on auto loans — an early repo man. Both his bulk and his aggressive personality were well suited to this somewhat dangerous pursuit, and his mechanical bent enabled him to pick the locks of the cars he had to repossess and hot-wire them if necessary."

In the documentary Triumph of the Nerds, the reaction to Jobs' famous firing from Apple by CEO John Sculley and the Apple Board of Directors was talked about by various people:
“ The grandiose plans of what Macintosh was gonna be was just so far out of whack with the truth of what the product was doing. And the truth of what the product was doing was not horrible, it was salvageable. But the gap between the two was just so unthinkable that somebody had to do something, and that somebody was John Sculley. ”

—Chris Espinosa
“ The board had to make a choice and I said look, it's Steve's company, I was brought in here to help. If you want him to run it, that's fine by me. But we gotta at least decide what we're gonna do and everybody's got to get behind it … and ultimately after the board talked with Steve and talked with me, the decision was that we would go forward with my plans and Steve left. ”

—John Sculley
“ What can I say? I hired the wrong guy. He destroyed everything I spent 10 years working for; starting with me, but that wasn't the saddest part. I would have gladly left Apple if Apple would have turned out like I wanted it to. ”

—Steve Jobs
“ People in the company had very mixed feelings about it, everyone had been terrorized by Steve Jobs at some point or another, and so there was a certain relief that the terrorist would be gone. And on the other hand I think there was incredible respect for Steve Jobs by the very same people, and we were all very worried what would happen to this company without the visionary, without the founder, without the charisma. ”

—Larry Tesler
“ He took it as a personal attack, started attacking Sculley, in which, you know, backed himself into a corner. Because he was sure that the board would support him and not Sculley … Apple never recovered from losing Steve; Steve was the heart and soul and driving force; it would be quite a different place today; they lost their soul. ”

—Andy Hertzfeld

Jobs has always aspired to position Apple and its products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in terms of innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept nicely at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007 by quoting ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky[38]:
“ There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will." ”

—Steve Jobs

Personal life

Jobs married Laurene Powell, nine years his junior, on March 18, 1991 and has had three children with her. He also had a daughter named Lisa Brennan-Jobs with Chris-Ann Brennan, whom he did not marry. Lisa (born May 17, 1978) is a journalist who wrote for The Harvard Crimson. Steve refused to believe that he was the father of Lisa.

In the unauthorized biography The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, author Alan Deutschman reports that Jobs once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed College, as saying she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan." In another unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez, but her age at the time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have children. Baez included a mention of Jobs in the acknowledgments of her 1987 memoir And A Voice To Sing With.

Steve Jobs is also a devoted Beatles fan. He has referenced them on more than one occasion at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. He also enjoys Bach and other classical music. When asked about his Business Model on 60 Minutes, he replied:

"My model for business is The Beatles; they were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check- they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people."

Jobs is not a vegetarian or vegan as is often claimed. Although he does not eat mammalian meat or fowl, he eats fish from time to time. This is known as pescetarianism.[39]

In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in The San Remo, an apartment building in New York City with a politically progressive reputation, where Demi Moore, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of Rita Hayworth, also had apartments. With the help of I.M. Pei, Jobs spent years renovating his apartment in the top two floors of the building's north tower, only to sell it almost two decades later to U2 frontman Bono. Jobs had never moved in.[40][41]

In 1984, Jobs purchased a 17,000 square foot, 14 bedroom Spanish Colonial mansion, designed by George Washington Smith in Woodside, California, also known as Jackling House. Jobs lived in the mansion for ten years, it was, reportedly, in an almost unfurnished state; he kept an old BMW motorcycle in the living room, and let Bill Clinton use it in 1998. He allowed the mansion to fall into a state of disrepair, planning to demolish the house and build a smaller home on the property; but he met with complaints from local preservationists over his plans. In June 2004, the Woodside Town Council gave Jobs approval to demolish the mansion, on the condition that he advertise the property for a year to see if someone would move it to another location and restore it. A number of people expressed interest, including several with experience in restoring old property, but no agreements to that effect were reached. Later that same year, a local preservationist group began seeking legal action to prevent demolition. In January 2007 Jobs was denied the right to demolish the property, by a court decision.[42]

Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting when Jobs first criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes." On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he owned then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."[43] In 2006, Steve Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's market cap rose above Dell's. The email read:
“ Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve."[44] ”

In 2005, Steve Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from the Apple retail stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.[45]

When Jobs spoke at the Stanford Commencement, he spoke frankly about his opinions on entrepreneurship, work, and life. He reflected on what kept him going through challenging times: "I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going is that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love." He continued to stress the importance of "finding something you love" and "following your own inner voice." (The full podcast of his speech can be downloaded for free from the iTunes music store, the video at YouTube.com and the text can be found here)

In May 2007, Jobs proposed Al Gore for President.[46]

Health concerns

In mid-2004, Jobs announced to his employees that he had been diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his pancreas.[47] The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very grim; Jobs, however, stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.[47] On July 31, 2004, Jobs underwent surgery that successfully removed the tumor, and did not require chemotherapy or radiation therapy.[47] During his absence, Timothy D. Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company.[47]

In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the keynote for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. His “thin, almost gaunt” appearance and unusually “listless” delivery,[48][49] together with his choice to delegate significant portions of his keynote to other presenters, inspired a flurry of media and internet speculation about his health.[50]

According to an Ars Technica journal report, WWDC attendees who saw Jobs in person said he “looked fine.”[51] Following the Keynote an Apple spokesperson said that "Steve's health is robust