The Apple II. The iMac. The iPod. The computer-animated feature film. And now the iPhone. Steve Jobs is a guy who keeps coming up with things that we all want. So how does he do it?

Steve Jobs is the co-founder and the CEO of Apple. He was also the CEO of Pixar (the people who made Toy Story and Finding Nemo ) until it was bought by Disney. Today he is considered one of the most important and influential people in both the computer and entertainment industries.

The old 'starting a business in the garage' routine

Steve Jobs is one of those uber-geeks whose unusual ideas and way of doing business have contributed to the image we all have of the quirky computer technology entrepreneur. 

 He was an adopted child who grew up in the middle of Silicone Valley . Steve used to go to lectures at Hewlett Packard after school and got his first job as a technician for Atari computer games with his friend Stephan Wozniak .

 By the time Steve was 21, the two of them were working on making computers that Wozniak had designed. Like all good entrepreneurs, they worked out of the Jobs' family garage. On April fool's day 1976, they founded the Apple Computer Company and started selling their computers.

The Apple changed people's idea of a computer from a huge mass of vacuum tubes that was only used by big business and the government to a small box used by ordinary people.

A multimillionaire at 26

Steve helped to build Apple into a company with fantastic products and great profits. In 1980, the company went public and made Jobs and Wozniak both multi-millionaires. Steve was only 26 years old.

The Apple iPod is the most popular MP3 player in the world.

But things didn't always go well for Steve. A few years later, he was forced out of Apple by someone he had employed. He was really upset about this, but decided to start another computer company specialising in education. His work there contributed to the development of the World Wide Web.

Steve also discovered a small animation company that needed help, so he bought The Graphics Group - which was renamed Pixar. The first film they made - Toy Story - was a huge success. Since then, PIxar has made all of the biggest selling animated movies of all time, and has won 7 Oscars.

Ten years after he left Apple, Steve Jobs returned as their CEO, and he's still there today. Since then, Steve has helped Apple branch out of computers with the introduction of the iPod, ITunes and the iPhone. His work in developing stuff that looks cool and works well has earned him a devoted fan club. 

Steve was CEO of Pixar when it was sold to Disney for $7.4 billion!

Seeing and believing

While there's no doubt that Steve Jobs is a genuine computer nerd, his real skills are his ability to recognise what people want, and to convince them they want it. Steve's ability to sell ideas is so strong that people who know him joke he has a ‘reality distortion field'!

Seth Godin, a famous marketing guru, reckons that Steve can do this because for him, it's not about fame or money or power. It's all about solving problems. Steve Jobs finds something that is broken or missing and he goes in and fixes it or fills the gap.

That makes Steve Jobs a rifter. A rifter is someone who sees a rift in the continuum of life and jumps into it, betting everything on it and changing the world - as well as making a healthy profit!

The Apple changed the way people thought about computers

Most people do this by accident, so they only ever manage it once. But Steve's done it several times already, and with the launch of the iPhone, he might do it again.

How hip is this guy?

• Steve works at Apple for an annual salary of US$1. This has earned him a listing in Guinness World Records as the "Lowest Paid Chief Executive Officer."

In order to raise the money to start Apple, Steve sold his most valuable possession - his Volkswagen micro-bus.