Generally, a battle is a conceptual component in the hierarchy of combat in warfare between two or more armed forces, or combatants. In a battle, each combatant will seek to defeat the others, with defeat determined by the conditions of a military campaign. Battles generally are well defined in duration, area and force commitment.^[1]

Wars and military campaigns are guided by strategy, whereas battles take place on a level of planning and execution known as operational mobility.^[2] German strategist Carl von Clausewitz stated that "the employment of battles ... to achieve the object of war"^[3] was the essence of strategy.

The Battle of Waterloo by William Sadler II

Etymology[link]

The definition of a battle cannot be arrived at solely through the names of historical battles, many of which are misnomers. The word battle is a loanword in English from the Old French bataille, first attested in 1297, from Late Latin battualia, meaning "exercise of soldiers and gladiators in fighting and fencing", from Late Latin (taken from Germanic) battuere "beat", from which the English word battery is also derived via Middle English batri,^[4] and comes from the staged battles in the Colosseum in Rome that may have numbered 10,000 individuals.

Characteristics of battle[link]

The defining characteristic of the battle as a concept in the Theory of combat^[5] has been a dynamic one through the course of military history, changing with the changes in the organisation, employment and technology of military forces.

While the British military historian Sir John Keegan suggested an ideal definition of battle as "something which happens between two armies leading to the moral then physical disintegration of one or the other of them",^[6] the origins and outcomes of battles can rarely be summarized so neatly.

In general a battle during the 20th century was, and continues to be, defined by the combat between opposing forces representing major components of total forces committed to a military campaign, used to achieve specific military objectives, within a time-frame of less than a month.^[7] Where the duration of the battle is longer than a week, it is often for reasons of staff operational planning called an operation. Battles can be planned, encountered, or forced by one force on the other when the latter is unable to withdraw from combat.

A battle always has as its purpose the reaching of a mission goal by use of military force.^[8] A victory in the battle is achieved when one of the opposing sides forces the other to abandon its mission, or to surrender its forces, or routs the other, i.e., forces it to retreat or renders it militarily ineffective for further combat operations. However, a battle may end in a Pyrrhic victory, which ultimately favors the defeated party. If no resolution is reached in a battle, it can result in a stalemate. A conflict in which one side is unwilling to reach a decision by a direct battle using conventional military forces often becomes an insurgency.

Until the 19th century the majority of battles were of short duration, many lasting a part of a day. (The Battle of Nations (1813) and the Battle of Gettysburg (1863) were exceptional in lasting three days.) This was mainly due to the difficulty of supplying armies in the field, or conducting night operations. The means of prolonging a battle was typically by employment of siege warfare. Improvements in transportation and the sudden evolving of trench warfare, with its siege-like nature during World War I in the 20th century, lengthened the duration of battles to days and weeks.^[8] This created the requirement for unit rotation to prevent combat fatigue,^[9] with troops preferably not remaining in a combat area of operations for more than a month. Trench warfare had become largely obsolete in conflicts between advanced armies by the start of the Second World War.

The use of the term "battle" in military history has led to its misuse when referring to almost any scale of combat, notably by strategic forces involving hundreds of thousands of troops that may be engaged in either a single battle at one time (Battle of Leipzig) or multiple operations (Battle of Kursk). The space a battle occupies depends on the range of the weapons of the combatants. A "battle" in this broader sense may occupy a large piece of spacetime, as in the case of the Battle of Britain or the Battle of the Atlantic. Until the advent of artillery and aircraft, battles were fought with the two sides within sight, if not reach, of each other. The depth of the battlefield has also increased in modern warfare with inclusion of the supporting units in the rear areas; supply, artillery, medical personnel etc. often outnumber the front-line combat troops.

Battles are, on the whole, made up of a multitude of individual combats, skirmishes and small engagements within the context of which the combatants will usually only experience a small part of the events of the battle's entirety. To the infantryman, there may be little to distinguish between combat as part of a minor raid or as a major offensive, nor is it likely that he anticipates the future course of the battle; few of the British infantry who went over the top on the first day on the Somme, July 1, 1916, would have anticipated that they would be fighting the same battle in five months' time. Conversely, some of the Allied infantry who had just dealt a crushing defeat to the French at the Battle of Waterloo fully expected to have to fight again the next day.

Battlespace[link]

Battlespace is a unified strategy to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including air, information, land, sea and space. It includes the environment, factors and conditions that must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission. This includes enemy and friendly armed forces; facilities; weather; terrain; and the electromagnetic spectrum within the operational areas and areas of interest.

Factors within battles[link]

Battles are decided by various factors. The number and quality of combatants and equipment, the skill of the commanders of each army, and the terrain advantages are among the most prominent factors. A unit may charge with high morale but less discipline and still emerge victorious. This tactic was effectively used by the early French Revolutionary Armies.

Weapons and armour can be a decisive factor. On many occasions armies have achieved victories largely owing to the employment of more advanced weapons than those of their opponents. An extreme example was in the Battle of Omdurman, in which a large army of Sudanese Mahdists armed in a traditional manner were destroyed by an Anglo-Egyptian force equipped with Maxim guns.

On some occasions, simple weapons employed in an unorthodox fashion have proven advantageous, as with the Swiss pikemen who gained many victories through their ability to transform a traditionally defensive weapon into an offensive one. Likewise, the Zulus in the early 19th century were victorious in battles against their rivals in part because they adopted a new kind of spear, the iklwa. Even so, forces with inferior weapons have still emerged victorious at times, for example in the Wars of Scottish Independence and in the First Italo–Ethiopian War. Discipline within the troops is often of greater importance; at the Battle of Alesia, the Romans were greatly outnumbered but won because of superior training.

Battles can also be determined by terrain. Capturing high ground, for example, has been the central strategy in innumerable battles. An army that holds the high ground forces the enemy to climb, and thus wear themselves down. Areas of dense vegetation, such as jungles and forest, act as force-multipliers, of benefit to inferior armies. Arguably, terrain is of less importance in modern warfare, due to the advent of aircraft, though terrain is still vital for camouflage, especially for guerrilla warfare.

Generals and commanders also play a decisive role during combat. Hannibal, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte were all skilled generals and, consequently, their armies were extremely successful. An army that can trust the commands of their leaders with conviction in its success invariably has a higher morale than an army that doubts its every move. The British in the naval Battle of Trafalgar, for example, owed its success to the reputation of celebrated admiral Lord Nelson.

Types of battle[link]

The Battle of Poltava between Russia and Sweden, by Denis Martens the Younger

Battles can be fought on land, sea and in the modern age, in the air. Naval battles have occurred since before the 5th century BC. Air battles have been far less common, due to their late conception, the most prominent being the Battle of Britain in 1940. However since the Second World War land or sea battles have come to rely on air support. Indeed, during the Battle of Midway, five aircraft carriers were sunk without either fleet coming into direct contact.

Battle Scene-Detail from Deccan miniature painting. c. 19th century.

There are numerous types of battles:

• A battle of encounter (or encounter battle) is a meeting engagement where the opposing sides collide in the field without either having prepared their attack or defence.

• A battle of attrition aims to inflict losses on an enemy that are less sustainable compared to one's own losses. These need not be greater numerical losses - if one side is much more numerous than the other than pursuing a strategy based on attrition can work even if casualties on both sides are about equal. Many battles of the Western Front in the First World War were intentionally (Verdun) or unintentionally (Somme) attrition battles.

• A battle of breakthrough aims to pierce the enemy's defences, thereby exposing the vulnerable flanks which can be turned.

• A battle of encirclement—the Kesselschlacht of the German Blitzkrieg—surrounds the enemy in a pocket.

• A battle of envelopment involves an attack on one or both flanks; the classic example being the double-envelopment of the Battle of Cannae.

• A battle of annihilation is one in which the defeated party is destroyed in the field, such as the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile.

Battles frequently do not fit one particular type perfectly, and are usually hybrids of different types listed above.

A decisive battle is one of particular importance; often by bringing hostilities to an end, such as the Battle of Hastings or the Battle of Hattin, or as a turning point in the fortunes of the belligerents, such as the Battle of Stalingrad. A decisive battle can have political as well as military impact, changing the balance of power or boundaries between countries. The concept of the decisive battle became popular with the publication in 1851 of Edward Creasy's The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. British military historians J.F.C. Fuller (The Decisive Battles of the Western World) and B.H. Liddell Hart (Decisive Wars of History), among many others, have written books in the style of Creasy's work.

The differences among land battles throughout history[link]

There is an obvious difference in the way battles have been fought throughout time. Early battles were probably fought between rival hunting bands as disorganized mobs. However, during the Battle of Megiddo, the first reliably documented battle in the fifteenth century BC, actual discipline was instilled in both armies. However, during the many wars of the Roman Empire, barbarians continued using mob tactics.

As the Age of Enlightenment dawned, armies began to fight in highly disciplined lines. Each would follow the orders from their officers and fight as a single unit instead of individuals. Each army was successively divided into regiments, battalions, companies, and platoons. These armies would march, line up, and fire in divisions.

Native Americans, on the other hand, did not fight in lines, utilizing instead guerrilla tactics. American colonists and European forces continued using disciplined lines, continuing into the American Civil War.

A new style, during World War I, known as trench warfare, developed nearly half a century later. This also led to radio for communication between battalions. Chemical warfare also emerged with the use of poisonous gas during World War I.

By World War II, the use of the smaller divisions, platoons and companies, became much more important as precise operations became vital. Instead of the locked trench warfare of World War I, during World War II, a dynamic network of battles developed where small groups encountered other platoons. As a result, elite squads became much more recognized and distinguishable.

Maneuver warfare also developed with an astonishing pace with the advent of the tank, replacing the archaic cannons of the Enlightenment Age. Artillery has since gradually replaced the use of frontal troops. Modern battles now continue to resemble that of World War II, though prominent innovations have been added. Indirect combat through the use of aircraft and missiles now comprise of a large portion of wars in place of battles, where battles are now mostly reserved for capturing cities^{[citation needed]}.

The evolution of naval warfare[link]

The Battle of Scheveningen of 1653: episode from the First Anglo-Dutch War.

One significant difference of modern naval battles as opposed to earlier forms of combat is the use of marines, which introduced amphibious warfare. Today, a marine is actually an infantry regiment that sometimes fights solely on land and is no longer tied to the navy. A good example of an old naval battle is the Battle of Salamis.

Most ancient naval battles were fought by fast ships using the battering ram to sink opposing fleets or steer close enough for boarding in hand-to-hand combat. Troops were often actually used to storm enemy ships as used by Romans and pirates. This tactic was usually used by civilizations that could not beat the enemy with ranged weaponry.

Another invention in the late Middle Ages was the use of Greek fire by the Byzantines, which was used to set enemy fleets on fire. Empty demolition ships utilized the tactic to crash into opposing ships and set it afire with an explosion. After the invention of cannons, naval warfare became useful as support units for land warfare.

During the 19th century, the development of mines led to a new type of naval warfare. The ironclad, first used in the American Civil War, resistant to cannons, soon made the wooden ship obsolete. The invention of military submarines, during World War I, brought naval warfare to both above and below the surface. With the development of military aircraft during World War II, battles were fought in the sky as well as below the ocean. Aircraft carriers have since become the central unit in naval warfare, acting as a mobile base for lethal aircraft.

Aerial battles throughout history[link]

Although the use of aircraft has for the most part always been used as a supplement to land or naval engagements, since their first major military use in World War I aircraft have increasingly taken on larger roles in warfare. During World War I, the primary use was for reconnaissance, and small-scale bombardment.

Aircraft began becoming much more prominent in the Spanish Civil War and especially World War II. Aircraft design began specializing, primarily into two types: bombers, which carried explosive payloads to bomb land targets or ships; and fighter-interceptors, which were used to either intercept incoming aircraft or to escort and protect bombers (engagements between fighter aircraft were known as dog fights). Some of the more notable aerial battles in this period include the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Midway.

Another important use of aircraft came with the development of the helicopter, which first became heavily used during the Vietnam War, and still continues to be widely used today to transport and augment ground forces.

Today, direct engagements between aircraft are rare - the most modern fighter-interceptors carry much more extensive bombing payloads, and are used to bomb precision land targets, rather than to fight other aircraft. Anti-aircraft batteries are used much more extensively to defend against incoming aircraft than interceptors. Despite this, aircraft today are much more extensively used as the primary tools for both army and navy, as evidenced by the prominent use of helicopters to transport and support troops, the use of aerial bombardment as the "first strike" in many engagements, and the replacement of the battleship with the aircraft carrier as the center of most modern navies.

Battle naming[link]

Battle of Gibraltar of 1607 by Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom.

Battles are usually named after some feature of the battlefield geography, such as the name of a town, forest or river, commonly prefixed "Battle of...". Occasionally battles are named after the date on which they took place, such as The Glorious First of June.

In the Middle Ages it was considered important to settle on a suitable name for a battle which could be used by the chroniclers. For example, after Henry V of England defeated a French army on October 25, 1415, he met with the senior French herald and they agreed to name the battle after the nearby castle and so it was called the Battle of Agincourt.

In other cases, the sides adopted different names for the same battle, such as the Battle of Gallipoli which is known in Turkey as the Battle of Çanakkale. During the American Civil War, the Union tended to name the battles after the nearest watercourse, such as the Battle of Wilsons Creek and the Battle of Stones River, whereas the Confederates favoured the nearby towns, as in the Battles of Chancellorsville and Murfreesboro. Occasionally both names for the same battle entered the popular culture, such as the battle of Antietam, which is also referred to as the battle of Sharpsburg.

Sometimes in desert warfare, there is no nearby town name to use; map coordinates gave the name to the Battle of 73 Easting in the First Gulf War.

Some place names have become synonymous with the battles that took place there, such as the Passchendaele, Pearl Harbor, the Alamo, Thermopylae, or Waterloo. Military operations, many of which result in battle, are given codenames, which are not necessarily meaningful or indicative of the type or the location of the battle. Operation Market Garden and Operation Rolling Thunder are examples of battles known by their military codenames.

When a battleground is the site of more than one battle in the same conflict, the instances are distinguished by ordinal number, such as the First and Second Battles of Bull Run. An extreme case are the twelve Battles of the Isonzo—First to Twelfth—between Italy and Austria-Hungary during the First World War.

Some battles are named for the convenience of military historians so that periods of combat can be neatly distinguished from one another. Following the First World War, the British Battles Nomenclature Committee was formed to decide on standard names for all battles and subsidiary actions. To the soldiers who did the fighting, the distinction was usually academic; a soldier fighting at Beaumont Hamel on November 13, 1916 was probably unaware he was taking part in what the committee would call the "Battle of the Ancre".

Many combats are too small to merit a name. Terms such as "action", "skirmish", "firefight", "raid" or "offensive patrol" are used to describe small-scale battle-like encounters. These combats often take place within the time and space of a battle and while they may have an objective, they are not necessarily "decisive". Sometimes the soldiers are unable to immediately gauge the significance of the combat; in the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, some British officers were in doubt as to whether the day's events merited the title of "battle" or would be passed off as merely an "action".^{[citation needed]}

The effects of a battle[link]

Battles affect the individuals who take part, as well as the political actors. Personal effects of battle range from mild psychological issues to permanent and crippling injuries. Some battle-survivors have nightmares about the conditions they encountered, or abnormal reactions to certain sights or sounds. Some suffer flashbacks. Physical effects of battle can include scars, amputations, lesions, loss of bodily functions, blindness, paralysis — and death.

Battles also affect politics. A decisive battle can cause the losing side to surrender, while a Pyrrhic Victory such as the Battle of Asculum can cause the winning side to reconsider its long-term goals. Battles in civil wars have often decided the fate of monarchs or political factions. Famous examples include the War of the Roses, as well as the Jacobite Uprisings. Battles also affect the commitment of one side or the other to the continuance of a war, for example the Battle of Incheon and the Battle of Hue during the Tet Offensive.

Gallery[link]

• 

  Illuminated single leaf, Battle Scene from the Baburnamah

See also[link]

• Military tactics
• Military strategy
• Naval battle
• Pitched battle
• Skirmisher
• War
• List of battles

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Battles

Sources[link]

• Glantz, David M.; Vuono, Carl E. (1991). Soviet military operational art: In pursuit of deep battle. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-7146-4077-8. 
• Keegan, John (1976). The Face of Battle. Pimlico. ISBN 1-84413-748-1. 
• Dupuy, Trevor Nevitt (1992). Understanding war: History and Theory of combat. London: Leo Cooper. ISBN 0-85052-293-5. 
• von Clausewitz, Carl, Bemerkungen über die reine und angewandte Strategie des Herrn von Bülow oder Kritik der darin enthaltenen Ansichten, Verstreute kleine Schriften, Ed. Werner Hahlweg, (Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1979), 77.
• Tucker, T.G. (1976). Etymological dictionary of Latin. Chicago: Ares Publishers. ISBN 0-89005-172-0. 
• Richardson, F.M.; Hunt, Sir Peter (Forward) (1978). Fighting spirit: A study of psychological factors in war. London: Leo Cooper. ISBN 0-85052-236-6. 
• Great Britain Battles Nomenclature Committee (1919-1921) (1922, reprinted 1993). Official Names of the Battles and Other Engagements Fought by the Military Forces of the British Empire During the Great War, 1914-1919, and the Third Afghan War, 1919. The Naval & Military Press. ISBN 1-897632-06-1. 

Steve Jobs
Jobs holding a white iPhone 4 at Worldwide Developers Conference 2010
Born	Steven Paul Jobs (1955-02-24)February 24, 1955[1][2] San Francisco, California, U.S.[1][2]
Died	October 5, 2011(2011-10-05) (aged 56)[2] Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Pancreatic cancer
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Syrian, German[3]
Alma mater	Reed College (dropped out)
Occupation	Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc. Co-founder and CEO, Pixar Co-founder and CEO, NeXT Inc.
Years active	1974–2011
Board member of	The Walt Disney Company[4] Apple Inc.
Religion	Zen Buddhism
Spouse	Laurene Powell (1991–2011, his death)
Children	Lisa Brennan-Jobs Reed Erin Eve
Relatives	Mona Simpson (sister)
Signature

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)^[5][6] was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution^[7][8] and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.^[9]

After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off as Pixar.^[10] He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer. He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1 percent until its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company in 2006,^[11] making Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder at seven percent and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.^[12][13]

After difficulties developing a new Mac operating system, Apple purchased NeXT in 1996 in order to use NeXTSTEP as the basis for what became Mac OS X.^[14] As part of the deal Jobs was named Apple advisor. As Apple floundered, Jobs took control of the company and was named "interim CEO" in 1997, or as he jokingly referred to it, "iCEO". Under his leadership, Apple was saved from near bankruptcy, and became profitable by 1998.^[15][16] Over the next decade, Jobs oversaw the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and on the services side, the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store.^[17] The success of these products and services, providing several years of stable financial returns, propelled Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company in 2011.^[18] The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business history.^[19][20][21]

In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine tumor. Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone imbalance, underwent a liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively thinner as his health declined.^[22] On medical leave for most of 2011, Jobs resigned as Apple CEO in August that year and was elected Chairman of the Board. He died of respiratory arrest related to his metastatic tumor on October 5, 2011.

Jobs has received a number of honors and public recognition for his influence in the technology and music industries. He has widely been referred to as "legendary", a "futurist" or simply "visionary",^{[23][24][25][26]} and has been described as the "Father of the Digital Revolution",^[27] a "master of innovation",^[28][29] and a "design perfectionist".^[30][31]

Early life and education[link]

Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955 to two university students, Joanne Carole Schieble and Syrian-born Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (Arabic: عبدالفتاح جندلي‎), who were both unmarried at the time.^[32] Jandali, who was teaching in Wisconsin when Steve was born in 1955, said he had no choice but to put the baby up for adoption because his girlfriend's family objected to their relationship.^[33] The baby was adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs (1922–1993) and Clara Jobs (1924–1986), an Armenian-American^[3] whose maiden name was Hagopian.^[34] Later, when asked about his "adoptive parents," Jobs replied emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs "were my parents."^[35] He stated in his authorized biography that they "were my parents 1,000%."^[36] Unknown to him, his biological parents would subsequently marry (December 1955), have a second child Mona Simpson in 1957, and divorce in 1962.^[36]

The Jobs family moved from San Francisco to Mountain View, California when Steve was five years old.^[1][2] The parents later adopted a daughter, Patti. Paul was a machinist for a company that made lasers, and taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands.^[1] The father showed Steve how to work on electronics in the family garage, demonstrating to his son how to take apart and rebuild electronics such as radios and televisions. As a result, Steve became interested in and developed a hobby of technical tinkering.^[37]

Clara was an accountant^[35] who taught him to read before he went to school.^[1] Clara Jobs had been a payroll clerk for Varian Associates, one of the first high-tech firms in what became known as Silicon Valley.^[38]

Jobs's youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. At Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View, he was a prankster whose fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school—a proposal his parents declined.^[39]

Jobs then attended Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California.^[2] At Homestead, Jobs became friends with Bill Fernandez, a neighbor who shared the same interests in electronics. Fernandez introduced Jobs to another, older computer whiz kid, Stephen Wozniak (also known as "Woz"). In 1969 Woz started building a little computer board with Fernandez that they named “The Cream Soda Computer”, which they showed to Jobs; he seemed really interested.^[40] Jobs frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California, and was later hired there, working with Wozniak as a summer employee.^[41]

Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Reed was an expensive college which Paul and Clara could ill afford. They were spending much of their life savings on their son’s higher education.^[40] Jobs dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes, including a course on calligraphy.^[42] He continued auditing classes at Reed while sleeping on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.^[43] Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."^[43]

Early career[link]

This section may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (March 2012)

Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter, September 1976

In 1974, Jobs took a job as a technician at Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California.^[44] He traveled to India in mid-1974^[45] to visit Neem Karoli Baba^[46] at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed College friend (and, later, an early Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. When they got to the Neem Karoli ashram, it was almost deserted as Neem Karoli Baba had died in September 1973.^[44] Then they made a long trek up a dry riverbed to an ashram of Hariakhan Baba. In India, they spent a lot of time on bus rides from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh and back, then up to Himachal Pradesh and back.^[44]

After staying for seven months, Jobs left India^[47] and returned to the US ahead of Daniel Kottke.^[44] Jobs had changed his appearance; his head was shaved and he wore traditional Indian clothing.^[48][49] During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, later calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".^[50] He also became a serious practitioner of Zen Buddhism, engaged in lengthy meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest Sōtō Zen monastery in the US.^[51] He considered taking up monastic residence at Eihei-ji in Japan, and maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen.^[52] Jobs would later say that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.^[50]

Jobs then returned to Atari, and was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. At that time, Jobs had little specialized knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari engineers, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line.^{[further explanation needed]} According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.^[53] Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.^[54]

In the early 1970s, Jobs and Wozniak were drawn to technology like a magnet. Wozniak had designed a low-cost digital "blue box" to generate the necessary tones to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. Jobs decided that they could make money selling it. The clandestine sales of the illegal "blue boxes" went well, and perhaps planted the seed in Jobs's mind that electronics could be fun and profitable.^[55]

In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed their own business, which they named “Apple Computer Company” in remembrance of a happy summer Jobs had spent picking apples. At first they started off selling circuit boards, but eventually they produced a complete computer prototype.^[56] Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak in 1975.^[2] He greatly admired Edwin H. Land, the inventor of instant photography and founder of Polaroid Corporation, and would explicitly model his own career after that of Land's.^[57][58]

Career[link]

Apple Computer[link]

Home of Paul and Clara Jobs, on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California. Steve Jobs formed Apple Computer in its garage with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. Wayne stayed only a short time, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the primary co-founders of the company.

Jobs and Steve Wozniak met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. In 1976, Wozniak invented the Apple I computer. Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple computer in the garage of Jobs's parents in order to sell it.^[59] They received funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product-marketing manager and engineer Mike Markkula.^[60]

In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?"^[61]

In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa. One year later, Apple employee Jef Raskin invented the Macintosh.^[62][63]

The following year, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled "1984". At Apple's annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as "pandemonium".^[64]

Apple logo in 1977, created by Rob Janoff with the rainbow color theme used until 1998.

While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. Disappointing sales caused a deterioration in Jobs's working relationship with Sculley and it eventually became a power struggle between Jobs and Sculley.^[65] Jobs kept meetings running past midnight, sent out lengthy faxes, then called new meetings at 7:00 am.^[66]

Sculley learned that Jobs—believing Sculley to be "bad for Apple" and the wrong person to lead the company—had been attempting to organize a boardroom coup, and on May 24, 1985, called a board meeting to resolve the matter.^[65] Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties as head of the Macintosh division.^[67][68] Jobs resigned from Apple five months later^[65] and founded NeXT Inc. the same year.^[66][69]

In a speech Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, he said being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him; "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." And he added, "I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it."^[43][70][71]

NeXT Computer[link]

A NeXTstation with the original keyboard, mouse and the NeXT MegaPixel monitor

After leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT Computer in 1985, with $7 million. A year later, Jobs was running out of money, and with no product on the horizon, he appealed for venture capital. Eventually, he attracted the attention of billionaire Ross Perot who invested heavily in the company.^[72] NeXT workstations were first released in 1990, priced at $9,999. Like the Apple Lisa, the NeXT workstation was technologically advanced, but was largely dismissed as cost-prohibitive by the educational sector for which it was designed.^[73] The NeXT workstation was known for its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the financial, scientific, and academic community, highlighting its innovative, experimental new technologies, such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on a NeXT computer at CERN.^[74]

The revised, second-generation NeXTcube was released in 1990, also. Jobs touted it as the first "interpersonal" computer that would replace the personal computer. With its innovative NeXTMail multimedia email system, NeXTcube could share voice, image, graphics, and video in email for the first time. "Interpersonal computing is going to revolutionize human communications and groupwork", Jobs told reporters.^[75] Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by the development of and attention to NeXTcube's magnesium case.^[76] This put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel.^[77] The company reported its first profit of $1.03 million in 1994.^[72] In 1996, NeXT Software, Inc. released WebObjects, a framework for Web application development. After NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc. in 1997, WebObjects was used to build and run the Apple Store,^[77] MobileMe services, and the iTunes Store.

Pixar and Disney[link]

In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.^[78]

The first film produced by the partnership, Toy Story, with Jobs credited as executive producer,^[79] brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released in 1995. Over the next 15 years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company produced box-office hits A Bug's Life (1998); Toy Story 2 (1999); Monsters, Inc. (2001); Finding Nemo (2003); The Incredibles (2004); Cars (2006); Ratatouille (2007); WALL-E (2008); Up (2009); and Toy Story 3 (2010). Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.^[80]

Steve Jobs on computer graphics Steve Jobs on computer graphics. Interview excerpt from 1995.[81]

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,^[82] and in early 2004, Jobs announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films after its contract with Disney expired.

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 $7.4 billion. When the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest single shareholder with approximately seven percent of the company's stock.^[12] Jobs's holdings in Disney far exceeded those of Eisner, who holds 1.7 percent, and of Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who until his 2009 death held about one percent of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner — especially that he soured Disney's relationship with Pixar — accelerated Eisner's ousting. Jobs joined the company's board of directors upon completion of the merger and also helped oversee Disney and Pixar's combined animation businesses from a seat on a special six-person steering committee.^[83] Upon Jobs's death his shares in Disney were transferred to the Steven P. Jobs Trust led by Laurene Jobs.^[84]

Return to Apple[link]

Logo for the Think Different campaign designed by TBWA\Chiat\Day and initiated by Jobs after his return to Apple Computer in 1997.

In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $427 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996,^[85] bringing Jobs back to the company he co-founded. Jobs became de facto chief after then-CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997. He was formally named interim chief executive in September.^[86] In March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs terminated a number of projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs's summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company."^[87] Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.

With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance, the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the "interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO.^[88] Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title "iCEO".^[89]

Jobs on stage at Macworld Conference & Expo, San Francisco, January 11, 2005

The company subsequently branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. On June 29, 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also included the features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionized the mobile browsing scene. While stimulating innovation, Jobs also reminded his employees that "real artists ship".^[90]

Jobs was both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the "reality distortion field" and was particularly evident during his keynote speeches (colloquially known as "Stevenotes") at Macworld Expos and at Apple Worldwide Developers Conferences. In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the US by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple's Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April. A few weeks later, Apple announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the commencement speaker.^[43] The banner read "Steve, don't be a mini-player—recycle all e-waste".

In 2006, he further expanded Apple's recycling programs to any US customer who buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and "environmentally friendly disposal" of their old systems.^[91]

Resignation[link]

In August 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, but remained with the company as chairman of the company's board.^[92][93] Hours after the announcement, Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares dropped five percent in after-hours trading.^[94] This relatively small drop, when considering the importance of Jobs to Apple, was associated with the fact that his health had been in the news for several years, and he had been on medical leave since January 2011.^[95] It was believed, according to Forbes, that the impact would be felt in a negative way beyond Apple, including at The Walt Disney Company where Jobs served as director.^[96] In after-hours trading on the day of the announcement, Walt Disney Co. (DIS) shares dropped 1.5 percent.^[97]

Business life[link]

Wealth[link]

Jobs earned only $1 a year as CEO of Apple,^[98] Jobs held 5.426 million Apple shares worth $2.1 billion, as well as 138 million shares in Disney (which he received in exchange for Disney's acquisition of Pixar) worth $4.4 billion.^[99][100] Jobs quipped that the $1 per annum he was paid by Apple was based on attending one meeting for 50 cents while the other 50 cents was based on his performance.^[101] Forbes estimated his net wealth at $8.3 billion in 2010, making him the 42nd wealthiest American.^[102]

Stock options backdating issue[link]

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference (D5) in 2007

In 2001, Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7.5 million shares of Apple with an exercise price of $18.30. It was alleged that the options had been backdated, and that the exercise price should have been $21.10. It was further alleged that Jobs had thereby incurred taxable income of $20,000,000 that he did not report, and that Apple overstated its earnings by that same amount. As a result, Jobs potentially faced a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. The case was the subject of active criminal and civil government investigations,^[103] though an independent internal Apple investigation completed on December 29, 2006, found that Jobs was unaware of these issues and that the options granted to him were returned without being exercised in 2003.^[104]

On July 1, 2008, a $7-billion class action suit was filed against several members of the Apple Board of Directors for revenue lost due to the alleged securities fraud.^[105][106]

Management style[link]

Jobs was a demanding perfectionist^[107][108] who always aspired to position his businesses and their products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky

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.^[109]

Steve Jobs announcing the transition to Intel processors in 2005.

Much was made of Jobs's aggressive and demanding personality. Fortune wrote that he was "considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs".^[110] Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in Michael Moritz's The Little Kingdom, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon. In 1993, Jobs made Fortune's list of America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his leadership of NeXT.

NeXT Cofounder Dan'l Lewin was quoted in Fortune as saying of that period, "The highs were unbelievable ... But the lows were unimaginable", to which Jobs's office replied that his personality had changed since then.^[111]

In 2005, Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.^[112] In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad."^[113] Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs "would have made an excellent king of France", alluding to Jobs's compelling and larger-than-life persona.^[114] Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the creative process of the filmmakers.^[115]

Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting in 1987 when Jobs first criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes".^[116] On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he ran then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."^[117] In 2006, Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's market capitalization 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.^[118]

Jobs was also a board member at Gap Inc. from 1999 to 2002.^[119]

Reality distortion field[link]

Apple's Bud Tribble coined the term "reality distortion field" in 1981, to describe Jobs's charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Macintosh project.^[120] Tribble claimed that the term came from Star Trek.^[120] Since then the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of Jobs's keynote speeches.^[121]

The RDF was said by Andy Hertzfeld to be Steve Jobs's ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything, using a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. Although the subject of criticism, Jobs's so-called reality distortion field was also recognized as creating a sense that the impossible was possible. Once the term became widely known, it was often used in the technology press to describe Jobs's sway over the public, particularly regarding new product announcements.^[122][123]

Inventions and designs[link]

His design sense was greatly influenced by the Buddhism which he experienced in India while on a seven-month spiritual journey.^[124] His sense of intuition was also influenced by the spiritual people with whom he studied.^[124]

As of October 9, 2011 (2011 -10-09)^[update], Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 342 United States patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages. Most of these are design patents (specific product designs) as opposed to utility patents (inventions).^[125][126] He has 43 issued US patents on inventions.^[127] The patent on the Mac OS X Dock user interface with "magnification" feature was issued the day before he died.^[128]

Applying his Triple F Model to Apple under Steve Jobs, Anand Kurian opines that Job's contribution in the area of pure ‘Function’ are less significant, but that his contribution in the areas of ‘Functionality’ and ‘Form’ are major and substantial.^[129]

Apple I Computer[link]

The first significant invention that Steve Jobs was involved in was the Apple I which came along in 1976. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who was at the time working for HP, scraped together some cash for printed circuit boards. Then they planned to sell the machine as a kit for $666.66. A store called the Byte Shop ordered 50 fully assembled devices, and sold them all.^[130] The Apple’s first computer was for hobbyists and engineers so it was made in small numbers.^[131]