Personal life
Jobs's birth parents met at the University of Wisconsin. Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, a Syrian Muslim,[101] taught there. Joanne Carole Schieble was his student; they were the same age because Jandali had "gotten his PhD really young." [102][103][104] Schieble had a career as a speech language pathologist. Jandali taught political science at the University of Nevada[disambiguation needed
]
in the 1960s, and then made his career in the food and beverage
industry, and since 2006, has been a vice president at a casino in Reno, Nevada.[105][106]
In December 1955, ten months after giving up their baby boy, Schieble
and Jandali married. In 1957, they had a daughter Mona together. They
divorced in 1962, and Jandali lost touch with his daughter.[107] Her mother remarried and had Mona take the surname of her stepfather, so she became known as Mona Simpson.[103]In the 1980s, Jobs found his birth mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson, who told him he had a biological sister, Mona Simpson. They met for the first time in 1985[107] and became close friends. The siblings kept their relationship secret until 1986, when Mona introduced him at a party for her first book.[16]
After deciding to search for their father, Simpson found Jandali managing a coffee shop. Without knowing who his son had become, Jandali told Mona that he had previously managed a popular restaurant in the Silicon Valley where "Even Steve Jobs used to eat there. Yeah, he was a great tipper." In a taped interview with his biographer Walter Isaacson, aired on 60 Minutes,[108] Jobs said: "When I was looking for my biological mother, obviously, you know, I was looking for my biological father at the same time, and I learned a little bit about him and I didn't like what I learned. I asked her to not tell him that we ever met...not tell him anything about me."[109] Jobs was in occasional touch with his mother Joanne Simpson,[99][110] who lives in a nursing home in Los Angeles.[103] When speaking about his biological parents, Jobs stated: "They were my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more."[17] Jandali stated in an interview with the The Sun in August 2011, that his efforts to contact Jobs were unsuccessful. Jandali mailed in his medical history after Jobs's pancreatic disorder was made public that year.[111][112][113]
In her eulogy to Jobs at his memorial service, Mona Simpson stated:
- I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I'd met my father, I tried to believe he'd changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people. Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.[107]
Jobs was also a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple occasions at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on 60 Minutes, he replied:
My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.[116]In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in The San Remo, an apartment building in New York City with a politically progressive reputation, where Demi Moore, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of Rita Hayworth, also had apartments. With the help of I.M. Pei, Jobs spent years renovating his apartment in the top two floors of the building's north tower, only to sell it almost two decades later to U2 singer Bono. Jobs never moved in.[117][118]
In 1984, Jobs purchased the Jackling House, a 17,000-square-foot (1,600 m2), 14-bedroom Spanish Colonial mansion designed by George Washington Smith in Woodside, California. Although it reportedly remained in an almost unfurnished state, Jobs lived in the mansion for almost ten years. According to reports, he kept a 1966 BMW R60/2 motorcycle in the living room, and let Bill Clinton use it in 1998. From the early 1990s, Jobs lived in a house in the Old Palo Alto neighborhood of Palo Alto. President Clinton dined with Jobs and 14 Silicon Valley CEOs there on August 7, 1996, at a meal catered by Greens Restaurant.[119][120] Clinton returned the favor and Jobs, who was a Democratic donor, slept in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House.[121]
Jobs allowed Jackling House to fall into a state of disrepair, planning to demolish the house and build a smaller home on the property; but he met with complaints from local preservationists over his plans. In June 2004, the Woodside Town Council gave Jobs approval to demolish the mansion, on the condition that he advertise the property for a year to see if someone would move it to another location and restore it. A number of people expressed interest, including several with experience in restoring old property, but no agreements to that effect were reached. Later that same year, a local preservationist group began seeking legal action to prevent demolition. In January 2007, Jobs was denied the right to demolish the property, by a court decision.[122] The court decision was overturned on appeal in March 2010, and the mansion was demolished beginning in February 2011.[123]
Jobs usually wore a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by Issey Miyake (that was sometimes reported to be made by St. Croix), Levi's 501 blue jeans, and New Balance 991 sneakers.[124][125] Jobs told Walter Isaacson "...he came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style." [126] He was a pescetarian.[127]
Jobs's car was a silver 2008 Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG, which does not display its license plates, as he took advantage of a California law which gives a maximum of six months for new vehicles to receive plates; Jobs leased a new identical SL every six months.[128][129]
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