Steve Jobs is a person.
Steven Paul Jobs ( [ ˈdʒɒbz ] February 24 , 1955 -- October 5 , 2011 ) was an American entrepreneur , businessman , inventor , and industrial designer . Jobs and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak are widely recognized as pioneers of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s . 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 . Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2003 and died on October 5 , 2011 , of respiratory arrest related to the tumor .