7 Things You Didn’t Know About Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs, not the first but perhaps the most anticipated film yet based on the co-founder of tech giant Apple, hits theaters Friday at midnight. Renowned film critic Peter Travers wrote in his review for Rolling Stone that the newest big-screen interpretation of the late Steve Jobs is "acted to perfection," adding that actor Michael Fassbender "rips through" Jobs' "volcanic" character in the movie.
That ferocity is what led Jobs to co-found the multi-billion dollar tech giant Apple and own the esteemed animation company Pixar from 1986 until 2006.
Those are well-known facts about the famous businessman. What's lesser known about the iconic tech giant is that he sold his car to help launch Apple and lived on his own in India at age 19.
Here are 7 lesser-known facts about Apple's founder.
1. Jobs was adopted. Jobs' biological father is a Syrian political science professor named Abdulfattah "John" Jandali who hesitated to reach out to Jobs later in life because he didn't want it to seem like he was after Jobs' fortune, ABC reports. Jandali and his partner felt they weren't ready for a kid when they had Jobs, but birthed and raised a girl a few years later, according to the Huffington Post.
2. College dropout: Jobs' biological parents required that their son's adoptive parents be college graduates. They settled for adoptive parents without college degrees who promised that Jobs would receive a college education. Paul and Clara Jobs, the adoptive parents, spent their life savings to keep that promise. Ironically, Jobs was a college dropout — but he got along fine.
3. He was once a fruitarian. Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he was on a "fruitarian" diet, a strictly fruit and nuts diet, when he decided on the name for his company, Apple. Ashton Kutcher said he was hospitalized while trying one of Jobs' fruitarian diets for the making of the 2013 movie, Jobs.
4. He was a calligrapher. After dropping out of Reed College in Oregon, Jobs audited courses including a calligraphy course which he later said, during his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University, was a vital skill applied to Apple products' typography and font.
5. That video game Breakout — Jobs made it. Before founding Apple, Jobs worked at the electronic entertainment company Atari where he and his friend, and later co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak developed the popular video game Breakout in 1976, which is still available to download for iPhone.
6. He sold his car for Apple. When Jobs and Wozniak first started building their first commercial product, Apple 1, in 1976, Jobs sold his Volkswagen van to fund the initiative, CNN reports.
7. A holy man shaved Jobs' head in India. Jobs spent some time living in New Delhi, India. In a 1985 interview with Playboy, Jobs said while he was at a religious festival there, a holy man urged him up a mountain where he proceeded to shave his head without warning. He was 19 years old.
"We get to the top of this mountain half an hour later and there's this little well and pond at the top of this mountain," Jobs told Playboy, "and he dunks my head in the water and pulls out a razor from his pocket and starts to shave my head. I'm completely stunned."
