Earlier today we lost one of the giants of technology. Steve Jobs was one of most creative, demanding, brilliant, hard-driving, and innovative leaders in the entire industry. He has created new business areas, introduced new business models, brought companies back from the dead, and fundamentally changed how the world as a whole interacts with computers. He was a visionary of staggering proportions with an unusual gift in his ability to communicate a vision and also the drive to seek perfection in the execution of his ideas. We lost a giant today.
From Apple: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/05Statement-by-Apples-Board-of-Directors.html
–jrh
b: http://blog.mvdirona.com / http://perspectives.mvdirona.com
James, and Alan,
Great posts by both of you. Steve Jobs will be missed, but never forgotten.
Rahul
The dynamic duo of Jobs and that other chubby guy….what his name…Wozniak, ushered in the true PC era, even at an earlier juncture than the IBM PC. Here on the East Coast, we played with Altairs and other CP/ M machines, and a few early pioneers started PC companies – Kaypro, others. Steve Jobs and co also played with early PC’s and SBc’s, and he had a different result!
But Steve Jobs saw things. He saw and he created and created more than things, he created a culture and a standard of design and a great, formidable organization that wil perpetuate that collective vision of Jobs himself, Jon Ive, and many more who will bring who knows what to market. Do you recall in one of his last Keynotes, he mentioned the convergence of "liberal Arts and Computing". Just mind blowing.
This is to say nothing of his spectacular vindication in returning to Apple after John Scully and the Board sacked him – whereupon he founded Next, and returned triumphantly to reform Apple (with the Next technology in hand) into the great organization it is today. We have not seen one tenth of his ideas birthed yet.
I was as an early Apple developer in the OS9 days. Wow. A Mac IIFX cost upwards of $7,000 in high trim. And they sold. yes, they sold well. Moreover, consider that Steve Jobs accomplished his most seminal and transformative product creations – in the last 4 years of his life while beset by an illness that would, ultimately, take his life. Would that we could even approach such a legacy.