I can't comment on the personal - I never saw or met the man who founded Apple and then who, much more successfully still, brought it back from the brink to what we have today: a hugely successful, hugely wealthy and innovative powerhouse of worldwide tech that makes gadgets legions of people (and competitors)aspire to.
Steve Jobs had a vision to make the world of tech a more approachable place, and not just the domain of the technorati. He succeeded almost single-handedly, at least as far as that vision was concerned. For of course he was helped by notable designers, developers, engineers, accountants and managers, and in turn by their dedicated and inspired teams.
This has resulted in a use of computers that was incomprehensible in the 1970s and even well into the 1980s. It's breathtaking how far we've come, and when iPod, iPhone and iPad were added to the Macintosh Computer arsenal, Apple's devices made the world of tech an even more viable and pleasant - and effective - place to live in.
And I lay that fact squarely at the feet of Steve Jobs.
What everyone is wondering is: what happens to Apple now? I fervently hope that Jobs' guiding principles are adhered to - when he was away in the 1990s, Apple still made good devices but the Macintosh computers diversified to a ridiculous degree. The vision became too diffuse, and Apple's small market share slumped. But that all changed after Jobs came back and introduced the fist iMac, then OS X. The last five or six years have seen unimaginable growth for Apple.
Now the CEO is Tim Cook, who, at the iPhone 4S launch just days ago, Om Malik of GigaOm found "cool, calming and charming ... Cook was matter of fact, efficient and focused. Instead of lingering on features and new devices, he shared the stage with his team ..."
This augurs well.
My sincere condolences to Jobs' family, and his larger family at Apple, and to all those Apple fans to whom this news is simply the worst thing they could have imagined.
Steve Jobs was insanely great. No question. Apple might be a different place without him, but there is still a lot of brilliant stuff for Apple to make and do. We can keep the faith.
(You can email your thoughts to an Apple email address set up specially for people to share their thoughts: rememberingsteve@apple.com)
- Mark Webster mac-nz.com
