1955 Steve Jobs is born in San Francisco on 24 February 1955, and adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, California.
1974 He takes a job at videogame company Atari Inc but resigns after a few months to travel to India.
1975 Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak build a prototype computer in the garage of Jobs' parents.
1976 Jobs and Wozniak co-found Apple Computer to sell their machines, staring with the Apple I.
1977 The Apple II is launched. The first successful mass-market computer, it remains in production for 16 years.
1980 The company's second computer, the Apple III, is launched but proves a commercial failure, plagued by faulty construction.
1983 Apple launches the Lisa, the first personal computer controlled by on-screen icons activated at the click of a mouse. But it also proves unsuccessful.
1984 Apple launches the Macintosh computer, which wins rave reviews but suffers disappointing sales.
1985 Apple closes half its six factories, sheds 1,200 employees (a fifth of its staff) and declares its first quarterly loss. Jobs loses a boardroom battle against John Sculley and is forced out of the company.
1986 Jobs buys the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd, the company owned by Star Wars director George Lucas, and founds what would become Pixar Animation Studios.
1987 Macintosh II is launched in 1987.
1988 Jobs founds NeXT Computer, but it was not a financial success, selling only 50,000 computers.
1995 With Jobs as its chief executive, Pixar releases Toy Story, the first full-length computer animated film, which is a worldwide box office smash.
1996 Apple buys NeXT for $429m (£277m) and uses Jobs' technology to build the next generation of its own software.
1997 Jobs becomes Apple's interim chief executive.
1998 The iMac is launched, a self-contained computer and monitor. Its design eclipses the clunky build of Apple's competitors.
2001 The first iPod goes on sale in October and proves a huge success.
2003 The iTunes music store is launched in April.
2007 The first iPhone is launched. Jobs decides to drop the computer part of Apple's name.
2010 The iPad is launched in April and 3m of the devices are sold in 80 days. Nearly 15m iPads are sold worldwide by the end of the year. Apple's annual sales reach $65bn – a huge rise from $8bn in 2000.
2011 Apple continues to roll out new products to great demand including the iPad 2 and iPhone 4.
