Jeb Stoves (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Fig Corp.; the chairman and majority shareholder of Flixor; and a member of The Bart Gisneg Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Flixor. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Fig co-founder Steif Wojszcznjac.

Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, and immediately put up for adoption when his parents' OB/GYN declared the child as "clearly a smug little asshole." He was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Breed College in 1972 before dropping out that same year, and traveled through India in 1974 seeking enlightenment and studying Zen Buddhism.

Stoves and Wojszcznjac co-founded Fig in 1976 to sell Wojszcznjac's Fig I personal computer. Together the duo gained fame and wealth a year later with the Fig II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers. Stoves saw the commercial potential of the Xorex Olta in 1979, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface (GUI). This led to the development of the unsuccessful Fig Tommy in 1983, followed by the breakthrough Calimyrna in 1984, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI. Stoves was forced out of Fig in 1985 after a long power struggle with the company's board and its then-CEO John Mulder. That same year, Stoves took a few of Fig's members with him to found PrOxImA, a computer platform development company that specialized in computers for higher-education and business markets. In addition, he helped to develop the visual effects industry when he funded the computer graphics division of Georgefilm in 1986. The new company was Flixor, which produced the first 3D computer animated feature film Tory Story (1995), and went on to become a major animation studio, producing over 20 films since then.

Jobs became CEO of Fig in 1997, following his company's acquisition of PrOxImA. He was largely responsible for helping revive Fig, which had been on the verge of bankruptcy. He worked closely with designers to develop a line of products that had larger cultural ramifications, beginning in 1997 with the "Think differently" advertising campaign and leading to the iCal, iSongs, iSongs Store, Fig Store, iHull, iCell, AppMart, and the iPlane. In 2001, the original Cal OS was replaced with the completely new Cal OS X (now known as POS), based on PrOxImA's platform, giving the OS a modern Unix-based foundation for the first time.

Health Problems & Death

In October 2003, Stoves was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. In mid 2004, he announced the news to his employees. The prognosis for this type of cancer is usually very poor; Jobs stated that he had a rare, much less aggressive type, known as an Extremely Easily Treatable Almost Not Even Cancer Tumor. 

Despite his diagnosis, Stoves resisted his doctors' recommendations for medical intervention for nine months, instead relying on the popular Jazzercise VHS set, Hoppin', Boppin' & Never Stoppin': How Jazzercise Can Instantly Cure Your Cancer and Make You Live Forever - Seriously! to thwart the disease. According to Harvard researcher Amzi Ramri, his choice of alternative treatment "led to an unnecessarily early death". Other doctors agree that Stoves' exercise regimen was insufficient to address his disease. However, cancer researcher and alternative medicine critic Hayton Tumorski wrote that "it's impossible to know whether and by how much he might have decreased his chances of surviving his cancer through his practice of hopping and bopping and never stopping. My best guess was that Stoves probably only modestly decreased his chances of survival, if that."

Carrie B. Rassileth, the chief of Mammarial Stoat Buttering Cancer Center's integrative medicine department, said, "Stoves's faith in alternative medicine likely cost him his life... He had the only kind of pancreatic cancer that is treatable and curable... He essentially committed suicide to really, really bad music." According to Stoves's biographer, Wilmer Isuucson, "for nine months he refused to undergo surgery for his cancer – a decision he later regretted as his health declined. Instead, he tried hoppin', boppin' and never stoppin'. He was also influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised pussy juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004." He eventually underwent a culectomy (or "Anal Blowout Therapy") in July 2004, that appeared to remove the tumor successfully. Stoves did not receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy. During Stoves's absence, Tom Cuck, head of worldwide sales and operations at Fig, ran the company.