If you think the man in the picture above looks familiar, there’s a good reason. His name is Abdulfattah John Jandali. He’s the biological father of Steve Jobs who put him up for adoption over fifty years ago, and to this day, he hasn’t spoken on the phone with his son to tell him he’s proud of him.
Born in Syria, Jandali is the president of a casino chain located in Reno Nevada. A self-proclaimed workaholic trying to avoid retirement, Jandali says that he is “overcome with guilt for his treatment of Jobs and only learned recently that the child he gave up for adoption” was the founder of Apple.
“I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t sadden me not to have been part of my son’s incredible journey,” Jandali said.
According to Jandali, he would have kept Jobs and raised him as his own son.
“I honestly do not know to this day if Steve is aware of the fact that had it been my choice, I would have loved to have kept him,” he said.
“I think after we got back together, Joanne [Steve’s biological mother] had second thoughts about adoption, but by then, there was nothing we could do about it.”
So now that he knows, will Jandali reach out to his brilliant, famous, powerful and sadly ill son?
No. According to Jandali, “I am not prepared, even if either of us was on our deathbeds, to pick up the phone to call him.
“Now I just live in hope that, before it is too late, he will reach out to me, because even to have just one coffee with him just once would make me a very happy man,” he said.
It’s very sad that he was separated from a son he wanted to keep for many years, but says “Syrian pride” prevents him from giving his son a call and telling him he’s proud of him. That seems sadly misguided to me.
At least he gives credit where credit is due when Jobs’ adoptive parents are concerned. “Let’s face it: they seem to have done an incredible job,” he says. I’ll say!
[via New York Post]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
100 responses to “This Casino Boss Is Steve Jobs’ Biological Father”
If you’re going to trash the man you could at least include the reason he won’t call Steve – he doesn’t want him to think he’s after his money. Oh, and this article implies he’s never been in contact with Steve whereas the original piece says he’s emailed him. I don’t like the sound of it all either, but c’mon COM, you have to do better than this.
only half the story reported here. Read the source.
What the hell is this, Soap Opera Digest? Good grief.
its not about “pride”, its the guilt!
As soon as you added your personal opinion this article changed from possibly relevant “news” to a TMZ/National Enquirer worthy piece of trash journalism. Why would the expectation be that the man contact the son he abandoned 50 years ago? Would you trash him if his son was an everyday Joe? Why is it OK to walk away from your child but not ok to continue to stay out of his life 50 years down the road?If anything, the man is a dick for what he did 50 years ago and should be applauded for trying to stay out of the picture today.
I find it interesting that the article only has a passing mention of “Steve’s sister, Mona” without elaborating on the fact that she’s acclaimed novelist Mona Simpson.
don’t judge other people so easy, dude.
are you guys making this up?
It’s not the Syrian pride the way you have described it, I should know since I’m Syrian. It’s the values we have been raised with by Syrian parents, where if we haven’t talked to a person over a long time and they are in a better position than us economically, we must refrain from doing so, otherwise the other person might think we are trying to use them for their money.
Brownlee, who are you to call Steve’s father a dick after you have posted the ill Steve Jobs photo days earlier? TMZ would be a perfect spot for your likes.
This site is seriously going downhill. How on earth is this relevant?
Jandali should be proud of his GENES? ‘Cause he never raised Jobs, now did he? Sheesh…
Also, he ONLY RECENTLY LEARNED that Steve Jobs was his biological son, so the fact that Jobs has been sick for YEARS is completely irrelevant! Mr. Brownlee, do the math and you can look in the mirror to see the “dick”…
This article is mean-spirited and cruel. I am embarrassed to have even read it.
Please, if this is going to be the quality of editorials for this site, just stop it. Go back to reporting (read: aggregating work from everyone else) tangible things and making simple “How To” guides. Unlike others who are whining about CoM’s recent downhill slide, I’m not hurling invectives because I want to make you cry. I want you to improve before you become utterly worthless. Seriously, stop with the low quality editorials.
how….’petty’….of you jack! *snickers*
Save this kinda crap for TMZ. Have some respect for people’s privacy.
Probably because he doesn’t know who “his……. ” is.
wow… they look so much alike…
Whatever happened to the Apple Rumour Community? It’s become less about speculating on Apple’s new and upcoming product releases and more about trashy Steve Jobs based tabloid news. It’s bad enough that you’ve begun included [Opinion] and [Rumour] in your titles, let alone this.
Whatever Jandali’s motives 50 years ago were, it was 50 years ago. It should be left for Jobs and Jandali to sort out privately and not for the rumour community to hurl abuse at this poor man for something he did half a century ago. Your portraying him as a heartless bastard with the help of half a story and if you included all of it you’d soon realise this man had no choice in what was done.
I’m ashamed to have read this article. I hope Jandali does reconcile with Jobs. Tabloids reporting on it though have just made it a whole lot harder.
I think you guys have a point that, in my initial reading of this interview, I was so overwhelmed with my dislike for the idea that”Syrian pride” would stop this guy from talking to his son that the post was worded too harshly. I’ve softened the tone to be more compassionate now that I’ve cooled down. Thanks for grounding me, guys.
I don’t think I’ve ever read an article that so totally manipulated the source material for its own gain. Really poor job.
EDIT: Glad to see it’s been edited to at least be slightly more reasonable.
anyone writing for playboy can have these types of judemental articles and news covers.Dude this is not playboy this is tech. Dont give your stupid opinions
Glad to see you’ve cleaned it up a bit.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his
point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in
it.” – Atticus Finch
You really “fried(e)” him there, Al! *snickers*
Does the universe really cares about what would make this incredibly selfish man’s happy?
Does the Universe really care what makes tnis selfish man happy? Is he going to wait until there is no more time to say he’s sorry?
why is this even relevant?
There you have it… Steve is a terrorist.
It’s a joke in case you weren’t sure.
My take on this is that the whole idea of “biological fathers” (and mothers) is over-rated.
So they share some genetics, so what?
I think Steve knows who his real family is and it isn’t this guy.
The idea that there is or should be some kind of a bond just because they share genetics is a fantasy.
C·O·M is starting to emulate San Francisco Chronicle, and that is NOT good.
I completely agree. Jobs isn’t this guy’s “son.” He’s the son of the people who raised him. Our culture befuddles me, sometimes.
I am seriously losing interest in reading Cult of Mac due to articles like this one. The author paraphrased the New York Post, didn’t add any value, and actually did a poor job at that. The only attribution to the source is a tiny link at the end of the blog post that will go unnoticed by most readers, while choosing a prose that appears as if you interviewed the guy yourself. I can’t believe you get paid for this, but then again I wouldn’t be surprised if you graduated by simply paraphrasing Wikipedia.
Grounded you? Someone should have fired you! Your last paragraph is spot on – “At least he gives credit where credit is due…”, you should apply this logic to your articles as well.
Oh, and don’t be a coward and bury your apology in the comments. Add an UPDATE to the blog article, indicating that you goofed, stating your full apology.
On some level I agree with you. However, I still appreciate the article simply because I read Cult of Mac and not the New York Post. Nor do I like to hop around in my morning news reading — I read Cult of Mac, Macintouch, Macworld, among others.
What I am really thankful for is the good grammar and lack of misspellings in this article. Most other articles here are filled with those heinous crimes against the English language, and it frustrates me to no end. So long as they keep the language in good English and don’t say something too idiotic, I am for the most part satisfied.
John Brownlee…once again…posted a fuckshit article…why haven’t you left yet?
How is this in anyway relevant? Seriously poor form.
Deleting Cult of Mac bookmark… now.
Why would you have to bounce around? Haven’t you heard of RSS readers, and apps like Flipboard, Pulse, and Zite for the iPad. Try ’em out!
Paraphrase fail. Opinion pieces like this are ruining Cult of Mac. Really craptastic.
We all get into a habit of doing something, whether that be the time we awake in the morning, what we eat, what we wear, or how we browse. Some people bounce while others prefer to dwell in the same places they have for a long time. Overall, I like Cult of Mac. I just don’t like bad writing and I hate it when authors allow bad punctuation and grammar in their writing.
This article may have been a rehash of another article, and I certainly don’t give the author any brownie points (or should I say “Brownlee points”) for reposting the work of another. But again, because I come here each day, it is an article that I myself would not have found had it not been reposted here. So I am more thankful than upset about it.
With that said, I agree it would be nice if authors here at Cult of Mac could add a little something to the original article, making the read here a bit more worthwhile. Mr. Brownlee should have done something journalistically proactive and closed the article with something like this:
“I telephoned Mr. Jandali with the aim of getting him to reconsider his stance on phoning his son. He refused. I then told the Casino mogul that he was already an subpar father for having given his multi-billion dollar son away in the first place, so he ought to stop his continued apathy, ignore whatever Syrian cultural barriers are stopping him, take the bull by its horns, do the right thing, and telephone his son, Steve Jobs. Mr. Jandali laughed at my request. I ended the call by informing Mr. Jandali that, ‘It’s a good thing you did give Steve away. Had he grown up in your shadow, Apple would not exist and Steve’s greatest achievements would be the iPot, iPayoff and Maxbet Air’.”
Wow, change the tone much? It’s amazing that you can take an original interview with the guy and paraphrase it to make him sound like a dick, all the time pretending that you actually interviewed the guy yourself. I agree with the throngs Mr Brownlee, you need to go back to journalist school and leave the real reporting to the New York Post.
Tough crowd. I thought the post was interesting.
But one thing. Jandali says he has too much pride to contact Jobs but he doesn’t have too much pride to tell all this personal stuff to the NY Post? That makes zero sense and makes me wonder if Jandali isn’t just a grifter.
so steve’s originality is from syria. i am proud to be syrian :)
hahaha eat a dick fag
Just imagine what could have happened if Steve had not been put for
adoption, and had not landed on the Job’s care, they were a heaven sent, maybe a Divine plan???
Ah yes that makes sense there @36d71fe97c39e239eb80e0d0eff1e448:disqus thanks for giving us some cultural insight :)
Mr Jandali fully acknowledges this @prof_peabody:disqus . He’s sent him an email wishing him happy birthday under his own name rather than ‘dad’ out of respect to Mr and Mrs Jobs.
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It is so strange that this Casino boss Is Steve Jobs’ Biological father. Steve Job’s is a Apple founder. He also told his son that his proud on him.
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If Steve Jobs was raised by his biological father, he would have become a casino guy , NOT the innovator of APPLE
Real parents are not those who give birth but those who raise the child.
I agree with that on some level, but unfortunately it’s not the complete answer. If it was, no adopted child who loves their adopted parents would go seeking their biological parents! Fact is we humans are curious. And the fact that DNA and hereditary traits have an impact on our physical health gets our curiosity going even more.