Things You May NOT Have Known About Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was a firm vegetarian. That meant no meats, poultry or dairy. He did on occasion eat fish. At one point in his early days, he was even a fruitarian. His favorite food was a raw carrot.

In 1972 Steve attended one semester at Reed College in Oregon. He promptly quit to hike across India, indulge in psychedelic drugs and shave his head. It was at this time he joined the Buddhists.

Steve was born to a Syrian Muslim and an unmarried graduate student, he was put up for adoption and found a home with middle-class couple Paul and Clara Jobs.

One of the first places Steve worked was the iconic game manufacturer Atari. He was a technician working alongside his future partner Steve Wozniak. Jobs supposedly split a bonus he received with Woz for a circuit board created for the game Breakout. But the design was so radical it couldn't be manufactured at the time. The story goes that Woz actually made the board, but neither have ever admitted to the truth.

He chose the name Apple for his company because he admired the Beatles’ Apple Records. A bad idea though, as it led to a legal battle between Apple Corp, owned by Beatles band members Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono. Fortunately the dispute was settled in February 2007. Now you can buy Beatles’ music on iTunes. Guess who won here?

Jobs was fired from the company he founded by the guy he hired to run it, former CEO at Pepsico; John Scully. They were rumored to be at odds almost immediately and Scully finally let him go after a slump in sales and other inner turmoil created tension between the two. Jobs said later that it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Mostly true. Jobs purchased a small division of Lucasfilm from Star Wars mogul George Lucas. It started out as a hardware maker, but after that took a nose-dive in profits, they eventually contracted with Disney to make short computer animated films and the rest is history. Jobs even helped in a hands on way during the making of Monsters, Inc.. Jobs personally oversaw the creation of the flowing hair on the lovable blue monster affectionately named 'Sully'. Jobs eventually sold the company for around 7 billion to Disney (with a litany of caveats to ensure Pixar's real genius; John Lassiter, would stay in creative control of the company he loved so feverishly.)

He holds 300 patents for Apple products including the GUI, Graphic User Interface, otherwise known as Your Desktop. His team created the concept of navigating thru your programs (the mouse) with a visual representation of each on a screen (icons).

After he was fired, he returned to triumphantly steer Apple out of the basement. With the money he scooped up from the PIXAR sale, he dove head first into development. He quickly killed several Apple products, including the Newton, Cyberdog and OpenDoc and forged ahead on pet projects like the iMac. The success of the iMac both artistically and profitably, fueled the creation of the device that literally changed the world- The iPod. Financial records indicate he did indeed only take a salary of $1 a year for his iCEO position. The iPod is only 10 years old.

In 2008, in an eerie premonition of Jobs’ death, the news organization Bloomberg released an article claiming that he had died, with blank spaces for his age and cause of death. The article was quickly retracted, but not in enough time to stem a tide of bloggers repeating the news. At the time Jobs had disappeared from public view, prompting speculation. He was actually recovering from what officials at Apple called 'a common bug'.