Steve Jobs Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
55 free Steve Jobs trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Steve Jobs trivia quiz follows the adopted son of a Mountain View machinist from a summer job at Hewlett-Packard and illegal blue boxes with Steve Wozniak, through a single semester at Reed College, seven months in India and a technician's job at Atari, to the founding of Apple in his parents' house in 1976. It then covers the Apple II, the Lisa named for his daughter, the 1984 Macintosh launch, the ouster in 1985, the NeXT and Pixar years, the return in 1997, and the run of iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad that made Apple the most valuable company in the world before his death in 2011. The easy questions are ones most people know: who he co-founded Apple with, which animation studio he bought, what he wore on stage. The medium ones cover his birth parents, his education, the Breakout bonus, the Super Bowl ad, John Sculley and Tim Cook. The hard ones dig into Ronald Wayne, Mike Markkula, the calligraphy class, the Whipple procedure, the Half Dome wedding cake and his last words. It suits a tech-history round, a business-school warm-up or anyone who has read the Isaacson biography. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 55 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01With whom did Jobs co-found Apple Computer Company in 1976?
Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I and offered it to his employer five times, only to be turned down, so he and Jobs started a business to sell it.
Q 02Which Apple ad campaign, launched after Jobs returned in 1997, saluted 'the crazy ones'?
Think Different
Think Different's TV ad was narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, though Jobs recorded his own version, which Apple played at its memorial for him in 2011.
Q 03What company did Jobs found in 1985 immediately after leaving Apple?
NeXT
Apple bought NeXT for over $400 million in 1997, bringing Jobs back.
Q 04In which city was Jobs born in February 1955?
San Francisco
San Francisco is where his birth mother, an unmarried University of Wisconsin student, travelled to give birth and arrange a closed adoption.
Q 05Abdulfattah Jandali, who fathered Jobs, was born to wealthy parents in which country?
Syria
Syria was Jandali's homeland; he met Jobs's mother at the University of Wisconsin, but her father opposed the relationship because Jandali was Muslim.
Q 06What did Paul and Clara Jobs promise Steve's birth mother in order to keep him?
To pay for his college tuition
To pay for his college tuition: his birth mother had wanted college graduates to adopt him, and neither Paul nor Clara Jobs had a degree.
Q 07Which company gave a young Jobs a summer job after he cold-called its co-founder asking for spare parts?
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard co-founder Bill Hewlett, whose number was in the phone book, gave him the parts and a summer job assembling frequency counters.
Q 08What illegal device did Jobs and his future co-founder build and sell before Apple?
Blue boxes for free calls
Blue boxes for free calls were sold for profit, and Jobs later said that without them 'there wouldn't have been an Apple'.
Q 09Which Portland, Oregon, school did Jobs attend for a single semester in 1972?
Reed College
Reed College is where he met Daniel Kottke, who later trekked through India with him and became one of Apple's first employees.
Q 10Which audited college course did Jobs credit for the Mac's typefaces and spaced fonts?
Calligraphy
Calligraphy gave the Mac its multiple typefaces, Jobs said, 'and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.'
Q 11Where did Jobs get free weekly meals while sleeping on friends' floors after dropping out?
A Hare Krishna temple
A Hare Krishna temple gave him free weekly meals, and he returned Coke bottles to scrape together food money.
Q 12Which video game company hired Jobs as a technician in 1974?
Atari
Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell called him 'difficult but valuable', and later turned down Jobs's offer of a third of Apple for $50,000.
Q 13Which tech founder did Jobs advise to visit the Indian ashram he'd visited in 1974?
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg made the trip in 2008 while Facebook was struggling; Jobs had arrived in 1974 to find guru Neem Karoli Baba already dead.
Q 21What did Time magazine name its 'Machine of the Year' for 1982?
The personal computer
The personal computer took the title in Time's January 1983 issue, which also reported Jobs disputing a paternity test that put the odds at 94.1 percent.
Q 22Which Pepsi executive did Jobs lure to Apple in 1983 with the 'selling sugared water' line?
John Sculley
John Sculley took the job; two years later, after Jobs tried to oust him, Apple's executives sided with Sculley and stripped Jobs of his duties.
Q 23Who directed Apple's famous '1984' Super Bowl commercial for the Macintosh?
Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott, fresh from Blade Runner, directed it, but Apple's board hated the ad so much that the company asked its agency to sell back the airtime.
Q 14Which branch of Buddhism did Jobs practise under the master Kobun Chino Otogawa?
Zen
Zen teacher Kōbun Chino Otogawa went on to preside over Jobs's 1991 wedding to Laurene Powell.
Q 15Which Pong-inspired arcade game did Bushnell ask Jobs to build with as few chips as possible?
Breakout
Breakout's chip-saving design earned a $5,000 bonus, which Jobs kept secret from his friend, paying him only a few hundred dollars.
Q 16Who was the third co-founder of Apple, who stayed only briefly?
Ronald Wayne
Ronald Wayne drafted Apple's partnership agreement, then sold his 10% stake back for $800 less than two weeks later.
Q 17What did Jobs sell to fund the first batch of Apple I boards?
His Volkswagen van
His Volkswagen van fetched $1,500, and a local store's order for 50 assembled computers soon put Apple in business.
Q 18Which semi-retired Intel manager provided Apple's early funding and brought in investor Arthur Rock?
Mike Markkula
Mike Markkula backed Apple's 1977 incorporation with his own money and a Bank of America credit line, and later served as its CEO.
Q 19Which Apple computer did Jobs want built with just two expansion slots before his co-founder insisted on eight?
Apple II
The Apple II got eight slots after a heated argument in which his partner told Jobs to 'go get himself another computer'.
Q 20Which 1983 Apple computer was named after Jobs's daughter, though the company claimed it was an acronym?
Lisa
Lisa's official cover story was 'Local Integrated Software Architecture', but Jobs later admitted the truth to his biographer.
Q 24Jobs called which ER star to praise his performance as Jobs in the 1999 TV film Pirates of Silicon Valley?
Noah Wyle
Noah Wyle got the call; Jobs thought the film 'mean-spirited' but said Wyle had done his homework on his mannerisms.
Q 25Which early Apple employee conceived the Macintosh project before Jobs took it over in 1981?
Jef Raskin
Jef Raskin named the project after his favourite apple, the McIntosh, and left the team after Jobs took it over.
Q 26Soon after returning in 1997, Jobs announced a $150 million investment in Apple from which longtime rival?
Microsoft
Microsoft also agreed to keep making Office for the Mac for five years and to settle its patent disputes with Apple.
Q 27Which billionaire invested heavily in Jobs's post-Apple computer company when it was running out of money?
Ross Perot
Ross Perot paid $20 million for 16% of the company after seeing it in a 1986 PBS documentary.
Q 28What did Tim Berners-Lee invent in 1990 on a computer from Jobs's post-Apple company?
The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web's first web server and browser ran on that machine, though its maker sold only about 50,000 computers in all.
Q 29What was the first feature film Pixar produced with Disney, with Jobs credited as executive producer?
Toy Story
Toy Story was the first entirely computer-animated feature film, and its success turned Pixar into a leading animation studio.
Q 30After Pixar's talks with Michael Eisner collapsed, which new Disney CEO bought Jobs's Pixar in 2006?
Bob Iger
Bob Iger closed the $7.4 billion all-stock deal, which made Jobs the largest individual shareholder in Disney.