R K Laxman

Even at 90, he sketches, but with a little prodding from his wife

“Everyday I make him sketch something as daily practice, and he is improving a lot,” she said like a proud mother praising her son at his birthday party. Only, this was R.K. Laxman’s wife, Kamala Laxman, who spoke at his 90th birthday celebrations at their home in Pune.

Mr. Laxman, India’s most loved cartoonist and creator of the Common Man, turned 90 on Monday. Surrounded by close family, the man who gave the country more than four decades worth of laughs and chuckles had a tearful moment while cutting his birthday cake.

“He usually likes to have a quiet birthday, but today he agreed for a big celebration on my persuasion,” Mrs. Laxman said. More than 100 people had gathered on Monday afternoon to wish him: friends, family members and artists.

The gathering was ripe with anecdotes which reflected Mr. Laxman’s love for life and sharp observations. Usha Laxman, his daughter-in-law spoke of his wish to make her draw, which he later realised was not fruitful. “However, he is happy that his granddaughter is an artist like him,” she stated.

Among the people present to meet Mr. Laxman were senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani and Symbiosis International University Founder S.B. Mujumdar. Several cartoonists from the city presented their caricatures to him.

Mr. Laxman suffered a stroke in 2010, which severely affected his speaking ability, and has limited his hand movements. While he is recovering, Mrs. Laxman makes sure he does what he loves most: listening to music and going on long drives. Sketching is not left far behind: it is because of his passion and Mrs. Laxman’s persistent efforts that Mr. Laxman continues to sketch even today.

The Hindu had the opportunity to peek into the maestro’s latest sketchbook, and it was seen that the common man still rules Mr. Laxman’s world. A sketch drawn on October 3 shows the iconic Common Man upset with Lord Ganesha and turning away from him, perhaps an indication of the tough times that the common man has to endure and a complaint to the Lord of success for not doing enough. “His observations are still as sharp as ever. I make sure he reads the newspaper, and listens to news,” Mrs. Laxman said.

“He does not do any political sketches anymore, but I am sure he would have loved to comment on the anti corruption movement,” Mrs. Laxman had told this correspondent in an earlier interview.

Bilingual Babies

Hearing Bilingual: How Babies Sort Out Language

By PERRI KLASS, M.D.

Once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer “language confusion,” which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language. Upscale schools market themselves with promises of deep immersion in Spanish — or Mandarin — for everyone, starting in kindergarten or even before.

Yet while many parents recognize the utility of a second language, families bringing up children in non-English-speaking households, or trying to juggle two languages at home, are often desperate for information. And while the study of bilingual development has refuted those early fears about confusion and delay, there aren’t many research-based guidelines about the very early years and the best strategies for producing a happily bilingual child.

But there is more and more research to draw on, reaching back to infancy and even to the womb. As the relatively new science of bilingualism pushes back to the origins of speech and language, scientists are teasing out the earliest differences between brains exposed to one language and brains exposed to two.

Researchers have found ways to analyze infant behavior — where babies turn their gazes, how long they pay attention — to help figure out infant perceptions of sounds and words and languages, of what is familiar and what is unfamiliar to them. Now, analyzing the neurologic activity of babies’ brains as they hear language, and then comparing those early responses with the words that those children learn as they get older, is helping explain not just how the early brain listens to language, but how listening shapes the early brain.

Recently, researchers at the University of Washington used measures of electrical brain responses to compare so-called monolingual infants, from homes in which one language was spoken, to bilingual infants exposed to two languages. Of course, since the subjects of the study, adorable in their infant-size EEG caps, ranged from 6 months to 12 months of age, they weren’t producing many words in any language.

Still, the researchers found that at 6 months, the monolingual infants could discriminate between phonetic sounds, whether they were uttered in the language they were used to hearing or in another language not spoken in their homes. By 10 to 12 months, however, monolingual babies were no longer detecting sounds in the second language, only in the language they usually heard.

The researchers suggested that this represents a process of “neural commitment,” in which the infant brain wires itself to understand one language and its sounds.

In contrast, the bilingual infants followed a different developmental trajectory. At 6 to 9 months, they did not detect differences in phonetic sounds in either language, but when they were older — 10 to 12 months — they were able to discriminate sounds in both.

“What the study demonstrates is that the variability in bilingual babies’ experience keeps them open,” said Dr. Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington and one of the authors of the study. “They do not show the perceptual narrowing as soon as monolingual babies do. It’s another piece of evidence that what you experience shapes the brain.”

The learning of language — and the effects on the brain of the language we hear — may begin even earlier than 6 months of age.

Janet Werker, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, studies how babies perceive language and how that shapes their learning. Even in the womb, she said, babies are exposed to the rhythms and sounds of language, and newborns have been shown to prefer languages rhythmically similar to the one they’ve heard during fetal development.

In one recent study, Dr. Werker and her collaborators showed that babies born to bilingual mothers not only prefer both of those languages over others — but are also able to register that the two languages are different.

In addition to this ability to use rhythmic sound to discriminate between languages, Dr. Werker has studied other strategies that infants use as they grow, showing how their brains use different kinds of perception to learn languages, and also to keep them separate.

In a study of older infants shown silent videotapes of adults speaking, 4-month-olds could distinguish different languages visually by watching mouth and facial motions andresponded with interest when the language changed. By 8 months, though, the monolingual infants were no longer responding to the difference in languages in these silent movies, while the bilingual infants continued to be engaged.

“For a baby who’s growing up bilingual, it’s like, ‘Hey, this is important information,’ ” Dr. Werker said.

Over the past decade, Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, has shown that bilingual children develop crucial skills in addition to their double vocabularies, learning different ways to solve logic problems or to handle multitasking, skills that are often considered part of the brain’s so-called executive function.

These higher-level cognitive abilities are localized to the frontal and prefrontal cortex in the brain. “Overwhelmingly, children who are bilingual from early on have precocious development of executive function,” Dr. Bialystok said.

Dr. Kuhl calls bilingual babies “more cognitively flexible” than monolingual infants. Her research group is examining infant brains with an even newer imaging device, magnetoencephalography, or MEG, which combines an M.R.I. scan with a recording of magnetic field changes as the brain transmits information.

Dr. Kuhl describes the device as looking like a “hair dryer from Mars,” and she hopes that it will help explore the question of why babies learn language from people, but not from screens.

Previous research by her group showed that exposing English-language infants in Seattle to someone speaking to them in Mandarin helped those babies preserve the ability to discriminate Chinese language sounds, but when the same “dose” of Mandarin was delivered by a television program or an audiotape, the babies learned nothing.

“This special mapping that babies seem to do with language happens in a social setting,” Dr. Kuhl said. “They need to be face to face, interacting with other people. The brain is turned on in a unique way.”

JS no more!

A tribute to Jagjit Singh

A file photo of Ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh at a concert in Srinagar in December 2009 (PTI Photo).MUMBAI: Indian Ghazal King Jagjit Singh's way of celebrating his 70th year was unique - he was aiming to complete 70 concerts by the end of the year. The man who gave ghazals a new lease of life managed only 46 before breathing his last.

Singh, who learnt music under Pandit Chaganlal Sharma and then Ustad Jamaal Khan, rose to fame in the 1970s and 1980s with his lilting voice and refreshing style of rendering ghazals and devotional tracks. He was a Padma Bhushan awardee.

Born to a Sikh couple in Rajasthan February 8, 1941, Singh went on to pursue a post graduation in history from the Kurukshetra University in Haryana. He came to the country's entertainment capital, Mumbai in 1965, in search of work as a singer.

It was a struggle. Singing at small musical gatherings, house concerts and film parties in the hope of being noticed, became almost a daily routine for him. But he didn't lose hope.

In 1967, he met singer Chitra and following a courtship of two years, they tied the knot. Together they came up with several hit ghazal albums like ‘Ecstasies’, ‘A Sound Affair’, ‘Passions’ and ‘Beyond Time’ and were considered a formidable husband-wife singer duo.

They sang many successful duets until their only son, Vivek, died at the age of 21 in 1990. Chitra stopped singing. However, Singh continued his tryst with music - and for good.

In 1987, Singh recorded the first purely digital CD album by an Indian musician, ‘Beyond Time’.

He also sang for Bollywood films like ‘Arth’, ‘Saath Saath’ and ‘Premgeet’. He created a strong footing in films with songs like ‘Hontho se chhoo lo tum’ (‘Prem Geet’), ‘Tumko dekha toh yeh khayal aaya’ (‘Saath Saath’), ‘Jhuki jhuki si nazar’ (‘Arth’), ‘Hoshwalon ko’ (‘Sarfarosh’) and ‘Badi nazuk hai’ (‘Jogger's Park’).

Most of his non-film albums – ‘Hope’, ‘In Search’, ‘Insight’, ‘Mirage’, ‘Visions’, ‘Kahkashan’, ‘Love Is Blind’, ‘Chirag’, ‘Sajda’, ‘Marasim’, ‘Face To Face’, ‘Aaeena’ and ‘Cry For Cry’ - were successful too.

His concerts were a delight, especially when he broke into pleasant Punjabi numbers like ‘Saun da mahina’. His heavy voice used to turn joyful, leaving his listeners smiling ear to ear.

He had also collaborated with former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in two albums, ‘Nayi Disha’ (1999) and ‘Samvedna’ (2002). In his later years, Singh became disinterested in Bollywood music due to the money-mindedness of film producers.

But he remained connected to causes relating to the music industry. He was one of the frontrunners battling to get an equal percentage of royalty for singers and lyricist from songs.

What he couldn't battle was his illness. After being hospitalised for brain haemorrhage on September 23, he died Monday morning. But the voice in tracks that won him the tag of Indian Ghazal King will remain fresh for generations to come.

Ghazal singer Jagjit Singh passes away

Ghazal king Jagjit Singh, the soul-stirring voice behind Hazaron khwaishe aisi, Ye kaghaz ki kashti and Jhuki jhuki si nazar, died this morning over a fortnight after he suffered brain haemorrhage.

The 70-year-old singer, who alongwith his wife Chitra almost rediscovered the ghazal genre for common Indian in 70s and 80s, was admitted to the Lilavati hospital on September 23 and was in coma since then.

“Jagjit Singh passed away at 8.10 am after having a terrible hemorrhage,” said Dr Sudhir Nandgaonkar, hospital spokesperson, here.

The day he was admitted, he was supposed to perform at a concert at Shanmukhananda Hall, Matunga, in Mumbai but the programme was cancelled after he was taken ill.

Despite a surgery, his condition did not improve and he remained on life support.

Singh, a Padma Bhushan recipient, was born in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, on February 8, 1941.

After graduation, he shifted base to Mumbai, to explore career in the world of music. In the next decade and half, he earned nationwide fame as ghazal singer and music composer. He sang in several languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati, Nepali.

His personal life, though, was marked by a tragedy: His only son, Vivek, died in a car accident in 1990 when he was just 18.

Singers condole

The music world expressed grief on hearing the news of Jagjit Singh’s death. Fellow ghazal singer, Pankaj Udhas, described Jagjit as an “extremely versatile singer”. “I am devastated after hearing the tragic news,” Udhas said on phone from Pune.

Legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar said that Singh’s death was a big loss for the music industry. “I knew him well. I hoped he would come out of the coma. But the God willed otherwise.”

Stating that Jagjit brought ghazals into the mainstream, Lata said, “He worked very hard... sang from the heart. Listening to him, people got intoxicated.”

Asha Bhosale said hearing Jagjit’s ghazals brought peace to the mind. “Listening to him was a soothing experience. If one wanted to get away from everyday stress, the best way was to play a Jagjit Singh record.”

Asha described Sarakti Jaye Hai Rukh Se Nakab Ahista.. as her favourite Jagjit ghazal.

“I feel sad for his wife Chitra. She lost a son earlier, and now husband. She is very lonely now,” Asha said.

“Jagjit Singh’s death has caused an irreparable loss to the Hindi film and music industry,” said noted lyricist Javed Akhtar. He described Jagjit Singh as an extraordinary ghazal singer.

“I first heard him when I attended an event at IIT Kanpur named ‘Music Night by Jagjit and Chitra’ while in school. He was an icon. There is nothing I can say to console his wife (Chitra). All I can say is that he will never be forgotten. I pray to god to give her the strength to recover from the loss,” classical vocalist Shubha Mudgal said.

An emotional Usha Uttup recalled her time with Singh. “I can’t believe it. It was because of him that ordinary men could enjoy good Ghazal. We worked together in a jingle when I was just staring my career.

“He is the person who introduced the 12 string guitar and the bass guitar in ghazal singing, in a way no one could. I spoke to him recently. What a human being. It is a great loss.”

Prime Minister condoles

In his condolence message, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said by “making ghazals accessible to everyone, he gave joy and pleasure to millions of music lovers in India and abroad....he was blessed with a golden voice."

Jagjit Singh 1941-2011: Remarkable humility in how he approached his art and forthrightness in his beliefs set apart this singer who 'caressed' words.

A key figure in the re-emergence of the ghazal as a popular genre in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties of the last century, Jagjit Singh, who died in Mumbai on Monday, lent companionship and solace to a generation of middle class listeners who were looking beyond Bollywood for a musical remedy to the pressures of modern urban life.

The ghazal had been a staple of Hindi cinemas in the 1950s thanks to Talat Mehmood, Noor Jehan and others, but was edged out by the advent of western instrumentation and rhythms. Nor could it find a secure place in high culture: Hindustani classical music, which considers the khayal the pinnacle of vocal accomplishment, could embrace the thumri and even tappa as ‘light classical’ but not the ghazal. The use of difficult Urdu and sometimes Persian words was another barrier that a new generation of Indians schooled in Sanskritised Hindi found difficult to cross.

It was in this seemingly inhospitable cultural terrain that Jagjit Singh sought to carve out some space for himself. The irony, of course, was that the commercial success he and his wife, Chitra, met with their non-film albums helped revive the ghazal form in Hindi cinema too, with films like Arth, Saath-Saath and Prem Geet meeting a measure of success at the box-office as a result. Sarfarosh was a more recent hit where his voice struck a chord with viewers. Bollywood directors never stopped knocking on his door, often in the hope that his voice might rescue their otherwise forgettable ventures. And they were right. While movie goers remember ghazals like “Hothon se Chhoo lo tum” and “Badi nazuk hai ye manzil”, the stars on whom his vocals were picturised are not as easily remembered.

Urdu was not Jagjit’s mother tongue, and for a man whom the poet Gulzar praised for “caressing words”, he showed remarkable humility in seeking the right intonation whenever he was confronted with a fresh challenge. On such occasions, he would call up veteran lyricist-poet Nida Fazli and practice an unfamiliar or difficult Urdu expression over the phone. This mutual respect between Fazli and Jagjit meant that the former reserved some of his best lines for the latter. The popular ghazal “Hosh waalon ko khabar kya bekhudi kya cheez hai” from Sarfarosh was initially supposed to have been sung by Bhupendra, then Jaswinder. Ultimately, Fazli felt that only Jagjit could do justice to his words.

The writer could not be faulted for his choice. If he felt that only Jagjit could get the feeling of certain words right, Jagjit too, throughout his career, tried to keep the poetry he sang lucid and luminous. Though he sang the verses of almost everybody from Ghalib to Gulzar via Kaifi Azmi, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Qateel Shifai and the rest, Jagjit laid a lot of emphasis on simplicity of vocabulary. He was never in favour of profundity at the cost of clarity. “I ensure that first I understand the meaning of the ghazal and then expect the common man to appreciate it,” he once said.

Born in 1941 in Sriganganagar, Rajasthan, to Punjabi parents, he learnt music at the feet of Pandit Chhaganlal Sharma in the early years of his life, then under Ustad Jamaal Khan of the Sainia gharana. His grooming would eventually ensure that unlike other ghazal singers who attained popularity in the ‘80s only to fade away, Jagjit was not only able to ride a crest but guard against any trough.

Jagjit and Chitra also helped make the ghazal fashionable on stage, both in India and abroad, where the Pakistani diaspora, too, flocked to his concerts along with NRIs. Their personal life, however, was marked by a terrible tragedy when their only son, Vivek, who was 18 at the time, died in a car accident in 1990. Chitra would never give a public performance again, nor record with her husband other than a final album. From then on, Jagjit only sang by himself.

In his later years, he freely ranged away from ghazals to Krishna bhajans, Ram dhun, Shiv dhun, and shabads. Interestingly, many of his ghazal albums had English titles like ‘Ecstasies’, ‘Beyond Time’, ‘Hope’, etc. Never once did he think that the use of English would dilute the purity of his content. It was the same forthrightness in his belief that he displayed when he criticised the government for allowing Pakistani artistes to perform in India without any reciprocal response from Islamabad. Yet Jagjit proved that he could rise above political divisions by openly expressing his deep regard for Ghulam Ali, the legendary ghazal singer from across the border. For him the individual could not be equated with the State. Hours before the brain hemorrhage, which eventually took his life, he had expressed joy at getting a chance to perform with Ali. “Performing on the same stage with a legend like Ghulam Ali is an overwhelming feeling,” he had said. That performance was not to be, but in his little expression of joy at the prospect, Jagjit proved that modesty was not a rehearsed quote waiting for an occasion.

He is survived by his wife, Chitra Singh.

The Prime Minister said the ghazal maestro’s music legacy will continue to “enchant and entertain” the people.

SPB

Hitting a high note

S.P. Balasubrahmanyam talks to SUBHA J RAO about hosting music reality shows on television, his stint in films, and memorable moments from his impressively long musical journey

His dulcet voice has made people fall in love; broken hearts have sought refuge in his pathos-drenched numbers; the young have revelled in his zesty rendition. And, at 65, S.P. Balasubrahmanyam continues to hold people in a thrall.

Success sits lightly on the singer, credited with over 36,000 songs. Not for him fancy drinks and gourmet foods. He's a man who loves buttermilk and bananas — they kept him going when he was recording non-stop in his heydays.

Dubbing and acting beckoned. So did a career in television with shows that identified new talent. SPB hosts the hugely-popular Paadutha Theeyaga (ETV Telugu) and Edhe Thumbi Haaduvenu (ETV Kannada).

He continues to record — for films, for TV and for albums. Yet, the singer, who has a string of National Awards to his credit besides the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan, says he does not have a visiting card. “I've been postponing getting one for four decades now,” he smiles. But then, his voice is his calling card.

Excerpts from an interview with the singer

YOU'VE MADE A HUGE PLACE FOR YOURSELF ON TELEVISION.

I'm grateful to television. It has made me more accessible to the viewer. As for the shows, I'm merely passing on what I learnt from my seniors; they gave me a chance and corrected my mistakes. I believe a reality show related to music must nurture talent and put participants on the right path. It should not pit people against each other for the sake of TRPs. Luckily, my producers see sense in this format.

IS WINNING OR PARTICIPATING MORE IMPORTANT?

Participating. I always tell the kids they should be gracious in defeat. You can't stop the odd tear, but learn to acknowledge the winners with a smile. This is probably why many children who took part in the show a decade ago still come to the sets; they love the experience.

HOW WAS IT MAKING YOUR ACTING DEBUT UNDER K. BALACHANDER?

Once, after some friends and I put up a show in Madras, KB sir approached me for ‘Manadhil Urudhi Vendum'. I was convinced I would fare badly. The scene to be shot that day was one where I give up smoking. I improvised — lovingly held the cigarette, smelt it one last time and dropped it into the bin with amangalam. He loved it.

YOU'VE SUNG IN SO MANY LANGUAGES. HOW HAVE YOU MANAGED TO KEEP ITS NUANCES AND POETRY INTACT?

Composer M.S. Viswanathan first turned me down because my Tamil pronunciation was bad! But, practice worked magic. All languages are beautiful — their sounds are musical. Understanding the lyrics is vital to singing well. That way, you keep the faith of the person who gave you the song, and the faith of the listener.

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, YOU SAY YOU APPROACH EVERY SONG LIKE IT IS YOUR FIRST ONE.

I still prepare before every song. Once the final take is done, you can't correct mistakes. Even now, when I listen to my songs, I feel sad I did not do justice to some of them.

AT THE PEAK OF YOUR CAREER, YOU WERE OPERATED UPON FOR A NODULE IN YOUR VOCAL CHORDS. KNOWING THE RISK INVOLVED, IT MUST HAVE BEEN A DIFFICULT DECISION.

One day, I stood in front of the microphone and could not hold a note. This continued for 15 days. Songs kept piling up; I felt frustrated and suffocated. Then, I decided to go in for surgery, knowing I might lose my voice. Well-wishers including Lataji (Mangeshkar) counselled me against it. But, I wanted the trauma to end. Luckily for me, I resumed singing. And, was back in the dubbing theatre on the 62nd day!

YOU RULED THE CHARTS WITH YOUR HINDI NUMBERS TOO.

It all started with ‘Ek Duje Ke Liye'. Laxmikant-Pyarelal were a little hesitant to take me on board, but later declared I was the only playback singer around! Pancham, Naushadji… all of them are responsible for my success. So are my co-singers. Ashaji was such a dear. I still remember recording for ‘Teri Payal Mere Geet'. After I sang, Naushadji was silent before saying the take was perfect — those were the longest 30 seconds of my life.

IT'S BEEN SUCH A LONG JOURNEY IN MUSIC. ANY INTERESTING VIGNETTES?

When recording for ‘Chikku Bukku Rayile', A.R. Rahman would narrate how difficult it was to get his nephew to stand in once place and sing; the child would run all over the place with the microphone. Today, I've sung for the nephew too.

What a composer G.V. Prakash has turned out to be! He's a favourite. He gives importance to the lyrics. I feel blessed I've sustained my voice this long.

SJ no more!

Apple's Steve Jobs Is Dead

By YUKARI IWATANI KANE

Steven P. Jobs, the Apple Inc. chairman and co-founder who pioneered the personal computer industry and changed the way people think about technology, died Wednesday.

Associated Press

Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds up an Apple iPhone at the MacWorld Conference in San Francisco, in this Jan. 9, 2007 file photo.

"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

His family, in a separate statement, said Mr. Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family...We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief."

During his more than three decade-long career, Mr. Jobs transformed Silicon Valley as he helped turn the once sleepy expanse of fruit orchards into the technology industry's innovation center. In addition to laying the groundwork for the modern high-tech industry alongside other pioneers like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, Mr. Jobs proved the appeal of well-designed intuitive products over the sheer power of technology itself and shifted the way consumers interact with technology in an increasingly digital world.

Unlike those men, however, the most productive chapter in Mr. Jobs' career occurred near the end of his life, when a nearly unbroken string of innovative and wildly successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad fundamentally changed the PC, electronics and digital media industries. The way he marketed and sold those products through savvy advertising campaigns and its retail stores, in the meanwhile, helped turn the company into a pop culture icon.

At the beginning of that phase, Mr. Jobs once described his philosophy as trying to make products that were at "the intersection of art and technology." In doing so, he turned Apple into the world's most valuable company.

Mr. Jobs was 56 years old. After exhibiting significant weight loss in mid-2008, he took a nearly six month medical leave of absence in 2009, during which he received a liver transplant. He took another medical leave of absence in mid-January without explanation before stepping down as chief executive in August.

Mr. Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene, and four children.

Although his achievements in technology alone were immense, Mr. Jobs played an equally groundbreaking role in entertainment. He turned Apple into the largest retailer of music and helped popularize computer-animated films as the financier and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which he later sold to Walt Disney Co. He was a key figure in changing the way people used the Internet and how they consumed music, TV shows, movies, books, disrupting industries in the process.

Mr. Jobs also pulled off one of the most remarkable comebacks in modern business history, returning to Apple after an 11-year absence during which he was largely written off as a has-been and then reviving the then-struggling company by introducing products such as the iMac all-in-one computer, iPod music player and iTunes digital music store.

The company produces $65.2 billion a year in revenue compared with $7.1 billion in its business year ending September 1997. Apple has become one of the world's premier designers of consumer-electronics devices, dropping the "computer" in its name in January 2007 to underscore its expansion beyond PCs.

Although Mr. Jobs officially handed over the reins of the company to long-time deputy Tim Cook in August, his death nevertheless raises a high-stakes question for Apple of how the company—which has been in the vanguard of technological creativity for most of the past decade—will sustain its success without his vision and guidance. Other icons of American capitalism, including Walt Disney, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., experienced some transitional woes but eventually managed to thrive after their charismatic founders passed on.

But few companies of that stature have shown such an acute dependence on their founder, or lost the founder at the peak of his career. Several years after Mr. Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, the company began a steady decline that saw it drift to the margins of the computer industry. That slide was reversed only after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997.

Mr. Jobs also leaves behind innumerable tales about his mercurial management style, such as his habit of calling employees or their ideas "dumb" when he didn't like something. He was even more combative against foes like Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. When Adobe Systems Inc. waged a campaign against Apple for not supporting Adobe's Flash video format on its iPhones and iPads in April 2010, Mr. Jobs wrote a 1,600 word essay about why the software was outdated and inadequate for mobile devices.

The CEO maintained uncompromising standards about the company's hardware and software, demanding "insanely great" aesthetics and ease of use from the moment a consumer walked into one of Apple's stylish stores. His attention to the smallest details in the development and design process were instrumental in shaping some of the most distinctive features of Apple's products, while his meticulously planned onstage demonstrations helped fuel excitement that was unmatched by his peers.

At event after event to introduce new Apple products, Mr. Jobs often puckishly proclaimed "There is one more thing" before revealing the most significant news at the very end of a speech. He enforced strict secrecy among Apple employees, a strategy that he believed heightened anticipation for upcoming Apple products.

Mr. Jobs, the adopted son of a family in Palo Alto, Calif., was born on Feb. 24, 1955. A college dropout, he established his reputation early on as a tech innovator when at 21 years old, he and friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Inc. in the Jobs family garage in 1976. Mr. Jobs chose the name, in part, because he was a Beatles fan and admired the group's Apple records label, according to the book "Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders" by Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Carlton.

The pair came out with the Apple II in 1977, a groundbreaking computer that was relatively affordable and designed for the mass market consumer rather than for hobbyists. The product went on to become one of the first commercially successful personal computers, making the company $117 million in annual sales by the time of Apple's initial public offering in 1980. The IPO instantly made Mr. Jobs a multimillionaire.

Not all of Mr. Jobs's early ideas paid off. Apple's Apple III and Lisa computers that debuted in 1980 and 1983 were flops. But the distinctive all-in-one Macintosh--foreshadowed in a ground-breaking TV ad inspired by George Orwell's novel "1984" that famously only aired once -- would set the standard for the design of modern computer operating systems, in which users point and click on icons with a mouse rather than typing in commands.

Even then, Mr. Jobs was a stickler about design details. Bruce Tognazzini, a former user-interface expert at Apple who joined the company in 1978, once said that Mr. Jobs was adamant than the keyboard not include "up", "down," "right" and "left" keys that allow users to move the cursor around their computer screens.

Mr. Jobs's pursuit for aesthetic beauty sometimes bordered on the extreme. George Crow, an Apple engineer in the 1980s and again from 1998 to 2005, recalls how Mr. Jobs wanted to make even the inside of computers beautiful. On the original Macintosh PC, Mr. Crow says Mr. Jobs wanted the internal wiring to be in the colors of Apple's early rainbow logo. Mr. Crow says he eventually convinced Mr. Jobs it was an unnecessary expense.

Many ideas in the Macintosh came from a visit in 1979 to Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research, where Mr. Jobs saw a machine called the Xerox Alto that had a crude graphical user interface and a mouse. The episode underscored his recurring role as a refiner and popularizer of existing inventions.

"Picasso had a saying, 'Good artists copy. Great artists steal,'" Mr. Jobs said in a PBS documentary on the computer industry from the mid-1990s. "I've been shameless about stealing great ideas."

Even in his appearance, Mr. Jobs seemed to cultivate an image more like that of an artist than a corporate executive. In public, he rarely deviated from an outfit consisting of Levis jeans, a black mock turtleneck and New Balance running shoes.

As Apple expanded, Mr. Jobs decided to bring in a more experienced manager to lead the company. He recruited John Sculley from Pepsi Co. to be Apple CEO in 1983, famously overcoming Mr. Sculley's initial reluctance by asking the executive if he just wanted to sell "sugar water to kids" or help change the world.

After Apple fell into a subsequent slump, a leadership struggle led its board's decision to back Mr. Sculley and fire Mr. Jobs two years later at the age of 30. "What can I say – I hired the wrong guy," Mr. Jobs brooded in the same PBS documentary. "He destroyed everything I had spent ten years working for."

Mr. Jobs then created NeXT Inc., a closely watched startup that in 1988 introduced a distinctive black desktop computer with advanced software that was initially targeted at the academic computing market. But the machine was hobbled by its exorbitant price tag and some key design decisions, including its use of an optical disk drive and a Motorola Inc. microprocessor at a time when Intel Corp. chips and floppy drives had become the norm.

NeXT eventually stopped selling hardware and failed to make money as a software company. But its operating system would become a foundation for OS X, the software backbone of today's Macs, after Apple purchased NeXT for $400 million in December 1996.

In 1986, using part of his fortune from Apple, Mr. Jobs paid filmmaker George Lucas $10 million to acquire the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. The company he formed out of those assets, Pixar Animation Studios, first sold hardware, then software, and later turned to feature films. Pixar went on to create a string of computer-animated hits, from "Toy Story" to 2008's "Wall-E." Mr. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in January 2006 in a $7.4 billion deal that gave him a Disney board seat and made him the entertainment company's largest shareholder.

Meanwhile, Apple began foundering. Computers using Intel chips and Microsoft software grew to dominate the market, a trend that accelerated after Microsoft's Windows emulated many elements of the Mac's visual interface.

Apple, by contrast, had to finance both hardware and software development internally. Fewer developers of application programs created products to make the Macintosh more useful. Apple would eventually decide to license its operating system to other hardware companies, but it was too late to reverse the swing to Windows-based machines.

By 1997, Apple had racked up nearly $2 billion in losses in two years, its shares were at record lows and it was on its third CEO--Gil Amelio--in four years. Eight months after the deal to buy NeXT in December 1996, Mr. Amelio was ousted and Mr. Jobs appointed interim CEO, a title that became permanent in January 2000. One former Apple employee recalls Mr. Jobs joking soon after he returned that "the lunatics have taken over the asylum and we can do anything we want."

Mr. Jobs, who was given a salary of $1 a year along with options to Apple stock, made a series of changes that started paying off quickly. He ended the nascent software licensing program that created Mac clones, killed the struggling Newton handheld computer and trimmed a confusing array of Mac models to a handful of systems focused on the consumer market.

In May 1998, he introduced the iMac, an unusual one-piece computer that sported a colorful casing in translucent turquoise and gray. The popular machine--which sent competitors scrambling to improve their own designs—was embodied by a bold ad campaign that featured the phrase "Think Different," with the picture of one of Mr. Jobs's heroes, such as Albert Einstein and Muppets creator Jim Henson.

While shareholders cheered the changes, Mr. Jobs flexed his power on Apple's Cupertino, Calif., campus. Within months of taking over, he had replaced four of the five top executive positions with former NeXT underlings. He issued emails forbidding employees on the famously laid-back campus to bring pets to the office, smoke even in parking lots, and threatening to fire anyone caught leaking company documents.

One personal assistant became a target when he failed to arrange the installation of a high-speed digital data line to Mr. Jobs's office fast enough to suit the interim CEO. The worker said Mr. Jobs fired him for the delay, but rescinded the firing the next day after he had cooled down. (The worker ended up resigning soon afterwards).

Apple had some stumbles during Mr. Jobs's second coming, including a cube-shaped Macintosh that failed to catch on and was scrapped in 2001. The failure was one reason that Apple posted a quarterly loss and warned it would miss estimates several times in 2000 and 2001.

But big hits followed. In 2001, Apple introduced a PowerBook laptop made from titanium, a metal more frequently found in fighter airplanes. The same year, it introduced the iPod, which transformed digital music players with features such as its smooth shape and DJ-like wheel for navigating through songs. As of Sept. 2010, Apple had sold more than 275 million iPod devices since its introduction, and it has more than 70% market share in the market for digital music players.

A key differentiator was the iTunes Music Store, opened in 2003. At the time, the music industry was largely sitting on the sidelines of the digital revolution, badly wounded by illegal downloads but unable to agree on an easy, inexpensive way to sell songs online. But Mr. Jobs helped convince major record labels to sell recordings for 99 cents each, along with antipiracy restrictions that most consumers found acceptable.

The store, which has sold more than ten billion songs, became the largest music retailer in the U.S. in 2008. It also became an incentive for consumers to buy iPods because, for much of its history, songs from the iTunes store could only be downloaded to Apple's music player and not devices made by other companies.

At the same time, Mr. Jobs was building a deep bench of executives. He recruited former Compaq Computer Corp. executive Tim Cook in the late 1990s to straighten Apple's operations and promoted him over time to chief operating officer. Ron Johnson, senior vice president of Apple retail, was hired from Target Corp. in 2000 to launch Apple's stores worldwide. Apple's lead industrial designer Jonathan Ive took charge of the physical look-and-feel of the company's products and is said to share in Mr. Jobs's sensibilities about design.

In 2004, Mr. Jobs had to lean on this bench when he disclosed that he had had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. Apple revealed the procedure in early August 2004, but a person familiar with the situation said Mr. Jobs first learned of the tumor during a routine abdominal scan nine months earlier. The board and Mr. Jobs said nothing to Apple shareholders as the Apple executive, during that time, dealt with the tumor through changes to his diet, the person said.

In June 2007, Mr. Jobs made another splash when Apple introduced the iPhone. The cellphone pushed the envelope in the mobile phone market with features that included a touch-screen interface, allowing tricks such as blowing up images by spreading a thumb and finger on the phone's surface.

Mr. Jobs was typically hands on in the creation of the iPhone. People familiar with the matter say the CEO was the one that made a decision to change the screen of the iPhone from plastic to glass after he unveiled the product at the Macworld trade show in 2007. The iPhone team scrambled to procure glass that would meet his exacting standards, so the devices could be manufactured in time for the launch, which took place just seven months later.

Despite skepticism about Apple's ability to enter an already-competitive market dominated by the likes of Research in Motion Ltd.'s Blackberry devices, Apple quickly became a force in the mobile phone market, selling 92 million iPhones as of December 2010. The product kicked into a higher gear earlier this year when Apple said it would begin selling iPhones through Verizon Wireless in addition to carrier AT&T.

Last year, Mr. Jobs also unveiled the iPad tablet computer to great fanfare, billing it as "magical and revolutionary". In the first nine months of the product's release, Apple sold 14.8 million iPads as consumers snapped them up to use as a casual multimedia device for activities such as emailing, watching video and reading. People who work closely with Mr. Jobs said the project was so important to him that he was intimately involved in its planning even while recovering from his 2009 liver transplant.

A major selling point for both the iPhone and iPad has been the App Store, which allows developers to easily make application programs that users can download for free or for a small fee; the store meanwhile has seen more than seven billion downloads as of the end of 2010.

One cloud to Mr. Jobs's reign came in 2006 when Apple also disclosed that an internal investigation had discovered that stock option grants to Apple executives between 1997 and 2002-- including to Mr. Jobs-- were improperly dated. Apple became the most high-profile technology company caught up in a broad series of options backdating scandals that helped inflate the profits executives made from their stock awards.

Apple later disclosed that Mr. Jobs helped select the favorable option dates, but denied that he did anything wrong since he didn't understand the accounting implications of his actions. Apple's investigation ended up blaming two ex-Apple executives – former general counsel Nancy Heinen and former chief financial officer Fred Anderson – for their role in the backdating. Both were later charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission. They ended up settling the charges. Mr. Jobs was never charged with any wrongdoing.

Those who knew Mr. Jobs say that one reason why he was able to keep innovating was because he didn't dwell on past accomplishments or legacy but kept looking ahead and demanded that employees do the same. Hitoshi Hokamura, a former Apple employee, recalls how an old Apple I that was displayed by the company cafeteria quietly disappeared after Mr. Jobs returned in the late 1990s.

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose," Mr. Jobs said in a commencement speech at Stanford University in June 2005, almost a year after he was diagnosed with cancer.