Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder, chairman and former chief executive of Apple Inc., has passed away.
A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, Steve Jobs’ impact on technology and how we use it exceeded everyone of his generation. Apple’s mysterious leader did more than reshape his entire industry: he transformed how we interact with technology. He made gadgets easy to use, beautiful to behold and essential to own. He made things we wanted, long before we even knew we wanted them. Jobs’ dedication to how people think, touch, feel and interact with machines dictated even the smallest detail of the computers Apple built and the software it wrote.
Jobs was born in San Francisco on Feb. 24, 1955, and adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, California. He was a techie from a young age, often sitting in on lectures at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto while attending Homestead High School in Los Altos. He eventually landed a summer job there, working alongside Steve Wozniak.
The two of them launched Apple in 1976. Their first project, the Apple I, wasn’t much to look at — just an assembled circuit board. Anyone who bought it had to add the case and keyboard. But it was enough for Jobs to convince Mike Markkula, a semi-retired Intel engineer and product marketing manager, that personal computing was the future. Markkula invested $250,000 in the fledgling enterprise becoming the Angel that launched Apple.
The Apple I begat the Apple II in 1977. It was the first successful mass-market computer, and easy to use, too. That would become a hallmark of Apple under Jobs.
Still, Apple was by any measure a success. By the time Jobs was 25 in 1980, he was worth more than $100 million. Not that it mattered to him.
“It wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money,†he once said.
At a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Jobs shared the philosophy that drove him.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,†Jobs said. “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.â€
If there was ever a person that inspired the entrepreneurs and techie dreamers of this world, Steve was that person. He came to epitomize success and the American dream. Steve Jobs did not make his fortune or establish his impact by getting in the middle of a group of transactions and capture commissions from the commerce created by others. Steve did not make his mark on the world by feeing people to death. Steve Jobs earned every dollar and accolade that he has now passed on to his children the old fashioned way, he out invented and out marketed everyone on the planet and he did it routinely. Steve preferred jeans and a turtleneck to Brioni suits and Nikes to Bruno Magli’s. He was real, he was one of us, he was my friend, and now he is gone. Rest in peace Steve, JJ
