That was just the start of his revival of the company. The “Think Different” advertising campaign got the world’s attention again, followed by the 1998 introduction of the colorful iMac desktop computer, which sold 1 million in a year. In 1999, the iBook appeared, a brightly colored, clam-shaped laptop that enabled wireless Web surfing.
Consumer releases came out in a rush. An overlooked technology called FireWire, a tool for quickly moving large amounts of data between digital devices, allowed the creation of iMovie, software that encouraged non-experts to make home videos. The iPod, an MP3-like player with room for thousands of songs, was introduced in October 2001 and has sold hundreds of millions of units. The iTunes application, which allowed consumers to legally buy and download music, started in April 2003 and revolutionized the digital music industry — more than 6 billion songs have been sold.
Mr. Jobs and Apple were suddenly cool again. The iPhone’s debut in 2007 generated a huge buzz, and it soon rolled over the competition from Palm Computing and BlackBerry, despite its higher cost. The iPad, a tablet-based computer introduced in January 2010, sold more than 10 million units its first year.
Although Mr. Jobs’s salary was $1 per year, his stock options made him rich. His fortune was estimated to be $5.4 billion by Forbes magazine in its 2008 survey of the richest people in the world.
But nothing came without controversy. Even as Apple’s stock was booming and its business thriving, Mr. Jobs faced scrutiny in a scandal about Apple’s backdating of stock options. Like many companies, Apple had given out stock options with effective dates chosen later, after it was known that the price was low on those dates, making the stock more valuable once it was sold. Mr. Jobs wasn’t the only employee who benefited, but the company said his options were approved at a special board meeting that never took place. The company was forced to restate its earnings, but a special company investigation concluded that Mr. Jobs had done nothing wrong.
Survivors include his wife since 1991, Laurene Powell; a daughter from a previous relationship, Lisa Brennan-Jobs; three children from his marriage, Eve Jobs, Erin Sienna Jobs and Reed Paul Jobs; and two sisters, Mona Simpson and Patti Jobs.
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