Source: John Sculley, Odyssey; IsaacsonVerified 2026-07-11
Before Apple, Jobs took an Atari job to design the arcade game Breakout and brought in his friend Steve Wozniak, agreeing to split the pay. Wozniak built it in a few days; Jobs told him it paid $700 and handed him $350 — while reportedly keeping a bonus of around $5,000. Wozniak only learned the truth years later.
From his return in 1997 until his death in 2011, Steve Jobs drew a salary of exactly $1 a year from Apple — his fortune was in stock. The $1-salary move was later copied by Google’s founders and by Mark Zuckerberg.
Apple’s 1983 Lisa computer was officially said to stand for “Local Integrated Software Architecture.” Years later Jobs admitted the real story to his biographer: it was named after his daughter, Lisa.