Steve Jobs was a person.
Steven Paul Jobs ( [ ˈdʒɒbz ] February 24 , 1955 -- October 5 , 2011 ) was an American entrepreneur , businessman , inventor , and industrial designer . Jobs was born in San Francisco to Syrian parents who had to put him up for adoption at birth ; he was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s . After leaving Apple , Jobs took a few of its members with him to found NeXT , a computer platform development company specializing in state-of-the-art computers for higher-education and business markets . In addition , Jobs helped to initiate the development of the visual effects industry when he funded the spinout of the computer graphics division of George Lucas 's Lucasfilm in 1986 .