Walter Isaacson recounting a conversation with Steve Jobs about an Apple HDTV

“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

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Everyone else wanted Steve Jobs to move quickly against his tumor. His friends wanted him to get an operation. His wife wanted him to get an operation. But the Apple CEO, so used to swimming against the tide of popular opinion, insisted on trying alternative therapies for nine crucial months. Before he died, Jobs resolved to let the world know he deeply regretted the critical decision, biographer Walter Isaacson has told 60 Minutes. More »

Reuters:

Apple Inc plans to shutter U.S. retail stores for several hours on Wednesday so employees can take part in a company-wide celebration of co-founder Steve Jobs’ life.

Classy

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The groundbreaking work he did with Ken Thompson led to the operating system behind everything from set-top boxes to the iPhone, but who sings the praises of the late Dennis Ritchie?
It's funny how fickle fame can be. One week Steve Jobs dies and his death tops the news agendas in dozens of countries. Just over a week later, Dennis Ritchie dies and nobody – except for a few geeks – notices. And yet his work touched the lives of far more people than anything Steve Jobs ever did. In fact if you're reading this online then the chances are that the router which connects you to the internet is running a descendant of the software that Ritchie and his colleague Ken Thompson created in 1969.
The software in question is an operating system called Unix and the record of how it achieved its current unacknowledged dominance is one of the great untold stories of our time. It emerged from Bell Labs – the R&D facility of AT&T, the lightly regulated monopoly that ran the US telehone network for generations. Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson were two ferociously bright Bell programmers who had been assigned to work with MIT on the design of an impossibly complex multi-user operating system called Multics. In the end, the plug was pulled on the project, with the result that Bell Labs found itself with two pissed-off hackers on its books. Ritchie and Thompson badly needed a new operating system to provide an environment for their own programming, had hoped that Multics would provide it and had greatly enjoyed working on the project. Back in the lab they decided that they would just have to build the operating system themselves. So in a fantastic burst of creativity (and without asking anyone's permission) they wrote Unics (as a counterpart to Multics). Inevitably the 'cs' became 'x' and Unix was born.
Thus did AT&T find itself the astonished proprietor of a uniquely powerful and innovative operating system. The problem was that it couldn't sell it, because under the Consent Decree that gave it the telephone monopoly AT&T was not allowed to be in the computer business. So the researchers in Bell Labs did what geeks do – they gave it away to their peers in university research labs, under a licence that permitted the recipients to modify and improve it. In doing this Ritchie and Thompson unwittingly launched the academic discipline of computer science, because university departments were suddenly able to give their students software that was not only powerful (and malleable) but also free. The result was that virtually every computer science student in the world became a Unix geek in the course of his or her education. Unix was to computer science what the Bible is to divinity students. The difference was that geeks were free to modify and improve their bible – which is what Bill Joy and his fellow students at Berkeley did when they created their own version of Unix, codenamed BSD (for Berkeley Software Distribution) – of which more in a moment.
In due course, AT&T escaped the shackles of the Consent Decree and started to assert proprietary rights over Unix. This spurred an MIT programmer named Richard Stallman to embark on a project to change the world. He founded the free software movement, invented a clever way of using copyright law to preserve the freedom of programmers to modify software, and embarked on the GNU project to create a functional clone of Unix that would be free of proprietary constraints. (GNU stands for "Gnu's not Unix" which is the kind of recursive joke only programmers enjoy.) Stallman, who is one of the great figures of our time, built most of the software tools needed for his great project, but before he could write the kernel of the operating system a Finnish hacker named Linus Torvalds did it – and released it in 1991 as Linux.
The rest, as they say, is history. Linux became one of the greatest collaborative ventures the world has seen (second only to Wikipedia), in which geographically dispersed programmers collaborate over the internet to debug, improve, extend and enhance a complex operating system that is not only remarkably stable and reliable but is also free. Because it's free and malleable, every manufacturer in the world who needs a stable and flexible operating system to run an electronic device tends to use Linux – which is how your TV's set-top box and your broadband router and maybe also your smartphone comes to be a Linux box. The same goes for the millions of PCs that make up Google's server farms. In that sense, we are all now Linux (and, by inference, Unix) users.
The neatest twist of all, however, involves Apple. OS X – the operating system that now powers every Apple product – is actually built on the Berkeley distribution of Unix, so if you hack into your iPhone what you'll find is BSD 4.2. You could say, therefore, that what Apple really did was to give Unix a pretty face. I've often wondered what Dennis Ritchie would have made of that. Now that he's gone, we'll never know. What we do know, though, is that we owe him more than we realised.
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 Lexicalist calls itself a demographic dictionary of modern american english. What it does is analyse millions of words in online chatter on blogs, Twitter and other social networking sites and spews out information about who's using a certain word or keyword - breaking information down to age, gender and geography in the US (They also have a China version.)

So a Lexicalist report on Steve Jobs (screengrab below) shows that - in the US and on average - currently one (or more correctly two) in every 2563 words mentioned online is "Steve Jobs", with men aged upwards of 45 dominating mentions.

Steve Jobs's black turtlenecks helped make him the world's most recognizable CEO. But the Apple co-founder wouldn't have worn them if his employees had accepted the nylon jacket he proposed as a corporate uniform instead. Before he died, Jobs himself explained his sartorial signature to biographer Walter Isaacson, in an interview published for the first time below. More »

Jean-Louis Gassée, who was an Apple executive for nearly 10 years, on how Jobs made computers more personal and elegant
"Humour is the politeness of despair", an approximate, Google-ish translation of "l'humour est la politesse du désespoir", a saying attributed to noted post-WW2 Left Bank jazzman, writer, and engineer, Boris Vian, So, let's start with the reverent, despairing humour of Chris Calloway in Wired magazine's memorial to Steve Jobs:
"Heaven got a major upgrade today…"
Yes, I can see the dear leader in his new abode. Having climbed his last mountain, he summons Saint Peter and utters the words that he has heard throughout his life: "You're doing it all wrong."
"Look at the name above the door, the typeface sucks, the kerning is off. The furniture is out of style – get something cleaner, fresher. And the stairs … We need something airier … I don't know, glass? Come to think of it, one of the founding partners of the architecture firm that designed the Apple Store moved in here a few months ago. Bernard Cywinski; look him up get to work."
…and then it's Saint Peter's turn to mourn Steve's untimely demise, and his own lost tranquility.
[Update: I just found this picture of the New Yorker's upcoming 17 October cover. Obviously, this is before Steve starts to take matters into his own hands.]

Back in our Valley of Tears, this Onion article provides just the right amount of serious thought wrapped in knowing derision. I can't resist but quote the entire piece, it's too good and, in a way, it's a consolation:
Last American who knew what the fuck he was doing diesSteve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Computer and the only American in the country who had any clue what the fuck he was doing, died Wednesday at the age of 56. "We haven't just lost a great innovator, leader, and businessman, we've literally lost the only person in this country who actually had his shit together and knew what the hell was going on," a statement from President Barack Obama read in part, adding that Jobs will be remembered both for the life-changing products he created and for the fact that he was able to sit down, think clearly, and execute his ideas—attributes he shared with no other US citizen. "This is a dark time for our country, because the reality is none of the 300 million or so Americans who remain can actually get anything done or make things happen. Those days are over." Obama added that if anyone could fill the void left by Jobs it would probably be himself, but said that at this point he honestly doesn't have the slightest notion what he's doing any more.
The real Barack Obama didn't disappoint. Rising above the official encomiums, he offered a well-worded and, I believe, heartfelt homage [emphasis mine]:
"Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs.Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.
By building one of the planet's most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity.
By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun.
And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike.
Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.
The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve's wife Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him."
Just the right words, neither too many nor too few.
Praise for Steve has been plentiful, personal, and often insightful. But we also have the dissenters. Some of them are merely laughable: One unhinged dissenter, a Baptist church leader named Margie Phelps, promised to picket Steve's funeral for "teaching his neighbours to sin." Her call to arms was tweeted from an iPhone.
We have Free Software Foundation's Richard Stallman in a sadly tasteless post:
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
As Chicago mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.
You can read an excellent, balanced retort here.
Most irksome of all is Steve Jobs Wasn't God, Hamilton Nolan's heartless and crude opinion at Gawker.com. Commenters chimed in and piled on, disputing Jobs' accomplishments, ascribing them to others, condemning him for lapses of judgment in his early adulthood. This earned Nolan, who claims to have never owned an Apple product, a stinging rebuke from the Macalope. It's well worth reading, as are all his weekly posts.
I side with the Macalope, but let's not forget that the objectors play a useful role in reminding us that we shouldn't canonise Steve. He was a genius, with an ''insane'' drive that took him and his company to the pinnacle – and brought us with them – but he was no saint. The undeniable, manic drive admits a dark side. If you want the works of art, you've got to accept the real artist. As I wrote in my late August tribute (Steve: Who's Going to Protect Us From Cheap and Mediocre Now?), Steve learned to ride the animal inside him and matured as a result.
So, indeed, Steve wasn't God, but let's give him his due. To those, such as Nolan, who belittle Steve's achievements because he didn't solve world hunger, invent a vaccine, or fight for civil rights, I'll say this: computers are one of mankind's most important inventions, right behind the written word, symbolic language. Steve saw computers as an extension of mind and body. His unique contribution has been, time and again, to make computers more personal and more elegant, to make Apple stand at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.
That's what I've always loved about Apple: I remember how happy I felt when I joined the company more than 30 years ago and found it had commissioned a Ray Bradbury poem for the (unfortunately short-lived) Apple magazine. I only remember the title, "Ode to the quick computer"; and the last verse, "So cowards, what are you afraid of?"
The dissenters are entitled to their views and they have a right to broadcast them. But to the rest Of us, their postures show a deep failure of empathy for the many ways in which Steve touched so many lives, in an ever-expanding number of ways. The drive for beauty and elegance, for enchantment even, is profound. It's what makes us human, it's what Apple came to represent, and that's why so many of us mourn Steve's demise.
As Jon Stewart lucidly explained, there's another reason for the outpouring: we feel cheated. Ford and Edison died old, they had enough time to give society all they were meant to give. With Steve, we're tragically robbed of what he could have accomplished with more time.
[Update: I just found this beautiful 17 October New Yorker article by Nicholson Baker where he writes:
"Everyone who cares about music and art and movies and heroic comebacks and rich rewards and being able to carry several kinds of infinity around in your shirt pocket is taken aback by this sudden huge vacuuming-out of a titanic presence from our lives."]
I bow to the happy family man he became, to the grand master of high tech, to the once dishevelled hippie who became the manager extraordinaire of one of the world's best-run companies and, last but not least, the editor-in-chief of a large group of engineers and artists.
I leave you with a nice tweet quoting Dr Seuss…

…and a newly unearthed version of the famous Crazy Ones video, this one narrated by Steve himself, instead of Richard Dreyfuss. Call me feeble-minded, but it moves me to tears. Weeks ago, right after Steve resigned as CEO, Adweek created a version of the famous commercial in which a picture of Steve, as a young man, is added to the end, a fitting inclusion in the procession.
Lastly, a reminder of Steve's mark on Apple, powerful because it's so simply elegant, the creation of a young Hong Kong designer named Jonathan Mak:

JLG@mondaynote.com
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The inspiring and brilliant Steve Jobs passed away on October 5 and, as expected, people around the world turned to the Internet to read more about this sad news. The interest was so high that “steve jobs” became the most searched phrase on the web that particular day according to Google Trends.

It was early morning here in India but when employees of some tech companies went to Google, looking for news around Steve Jobs, they faced an interesting problem – the corporate web filters blocked their searches. Here’s why:

Apparently, the word ‘Jobs’ was blocked by the corporate firewall to stop employees from searching for jobs in other companies. To discourage staff from finding employment at other companies, the word ‘Jobs’ has been blacklisted.

Ria Sharma says that, due to this keyword-based Internet filtering, employees of Mahindra Satyam, iGate, Cognizant and Genpact weren’t able to search Google or any of the other search engines for news related to Steve Jobs.

Luckily they must have had Internet on their mobile phones that didn’t necessarily have to pass through the corporate firewall.


This story, Some Indian Companies Blocked “Steve Jobs” Related Searches, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on October 10, 2011 under Censorship, Steve Jobs, Internet.

EXCLUSIVE: I’ve just learned that Sony Pictures is making a hefty deal to acquire feature rights to Steve Jobs, the upcoming authorized biography by former CNN chairman and Time Magazine managing editor Walter Isaacson. I’m hearing the deal is $1 million against $3 million and that Mark Gordon will be the biopic’s producer. But this will be an MG360 project, which is the movie production partnership between Gordon and Management 360. ICM reps both Isaacson and Gordon. Sony Pictures would not comment. The studio seems a good fit for the book, having boiled business books into compelling dramas with both the Oscar-nominated The Social Network and Moneyball. The Isaacson book was supposed to be published on November 21st by Simon & Schuster, but now the release date has moved up to October 24th, according to a spokeswoman for the publisher. This was the hottest about-to-be biopic in Hollywood. [Will Hollywood Book Biopic Of Steve Jobs?] The 448-page profile is based on over 40 interviews with the Apple co-founder and over 100 conversations with friends, family members, colleagues and competitors. And it’s a compelling story: the building of the world’s most valuable technology company by creating the devices that changed how people use electronics and revolutionized the computer, music, and mobile phone industries. Jobs gave his full cooperation but had not read it as of mid-August. At first titled iSteve: the Book Of Jobs, Isaacson had second thoughts about what was appropriate for the first biography to get Jobs’ blessing and cooperation. Even when it wasn’t even finished, it made it (briefly) into the top 50 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Isaacson eventually persuaded his publisher Simon & Schuster to go with the simple title of Steve Jobs. First planned for 2012, the book’s release date was moved up.

Jobs reportedly fought off a long list of would-be biographers over the years then chose Isaacson, who’s written about Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. Jobs himself said he had no skeletons in his closet, though there were things he’d done he wasn’t proud of. But he was touchy about his personal life, understandably. According to Fortune magazine, in the early 1980s Jobs invited Michael Moritz, then Time‘s Silicon Valley reporter, to chronicle the Mac’s creation for the book that became The Little Kingdom (1984). But when Moritz reported, in Time‘s 1983 Machine of the Year, a detail about Jobs’ family, access was abruptly cut off.

At the time of Jobs’ death, only one movie had ever chronicled his rise to tech titan: Pirates Of Silicon Valley, a semi-humorous docudrama about the two visionaries behind Microsoft and Apple based on the book Fire In The Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger & Michael Swaine. Shown on TNT in 1999, the telefilm starred Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates and Noah Wyle as Jobs. Reportedly, Jobs thought the ER actor did a fantastic job donning the turtleneck. And, during the Macworld NY in July 1999, Jobs had Wyle come out dressed like him to start the keynote. TNT re-aired Pirates back-to-back on Thursday night in tribute.

Twitter engineer Miguel Rios pays tribute to the man, the legend. Zoomed out you see the portrait of Steve Jobs. Zoom in, and you see public tweets tagged with #thankyousteve sent out over a four and a half hour period on the evening of October 5. Tweets are ordered by number of retweets, left to right and top to bottom.

See the full-sized version here.

Yeah, so, here's a counterpoint take on Steve Jobs' death, from Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, screamed to thousands of fans at a concert in Lima one year ago. I won't repeat what he said here, but it's pretty horrible and shocking. It happens at 2:10 in the video above. More »

Patna : Lalu Yadav is inspired. Or as former president Abdul Kalam would say, ignited.

The former Railways minister has decided to appeal to the Election Commission to allot `apple’ as the symbol for his Rashtriya Janata Dal instead of the `lantern’. Lalu decided to make the change when he learnt that someone called Steve Jobs, who made apple so world famous that everyone started buying it, had died.

“Now that symbol is empty. No title holder,” Lalu enlightened mediapersons at his home in Patna. “So we have decided to appeal to EC to give us the apple. And just like Steve gave jobs to many people, our slogan in Bihar will be to provide jobs for everybody.”

When a scribe tried explaining that Apple is the name of an American company that makes PCs, computer software and consumer electronics and Steve Jobs was its highly successful former CEO, he was shouted down by an irate Lalu.

“Tut tut tut. Chup chup. Tum bhajpa ke agent ho kya? Do not try to teach me. One computer company called some soft, has windows. So does that mean no one can have window or door as election symbol. No communal force in India can stop Lalu from having an apple,” said Lalu.

Admitting Rabri Devi is not in favour of applying for the apple, Lalu dismissed her as ignorant. “She told me she had heard the story of an apple that caused problems between first man and first woman and so does not want me to get apple. I told her yeh some videshi kahaani hai. I will pucca get the apple for the party.”

If and when the EC accepts the symbol change, Lalu says he has his slogans ready. “An apple a day to keep Nitish Kumar away and Apple khao, Nitish ko bhagao,” he guffaws.

 

(Image courtesy : www.chennaitvnews.com)

 

My first Apple product was, like most PC owners, an iPod but the real Apple experience was when I got my first Mac. In 2009. Yup, I was very late to the party. The iPhone followed soon after and then the iPads, the Apple TV, and even the AirPort Extreme. People often mistake my love for simplicity in design, be it architecture (my major in a previous life) or technology, as fanboyism. I wear that badge with honor. But I never bought Apple products because I was in love with Steve Jobs. Actually, before buying a Mac, I had never heard a single Jobs famed keynotes. You could say I was living in the anti-reality distortion field.
I bought and loved Apple products because they just work and Steve Jobs philosophy, as I later discovered, emphasized just that. Breaking the shackles of complexity from computers and making users feel at ease was his underlying design principle, be in in hardware with a single scroll wheel or in software with the simple yet robust Mac OS X. Although the cult of Mac is derided and mocked relentless on any web forum, the sense of community is strong even if its growing by the millions every year (23% market share compared to less than 5% ten years ago). I remember my sense of puzzlement when I first got my Mac. As an avid Windows tinkerer, I had to unlearn all that. I still remember Supremus’ advice which he in turn had received from his Mac-using colleague:
When I got my first mac, my colleague had told me that I would go through 3 phases. 1st would be when I would get find myself comparing everything to windows and find things annoying with mac (ex: 2 button mouse, no way to expand apps to occupy full screen real estate etc). 2nd phase would be when I’d gloat over the fancy gui and tastefully done aesthetics and how everything fits together in OS X. The 3rd stage he told me was when I’d start looking *beyond* the beautiful UI and start knowing how the operating system has been designed, and that is when I’d appreciate OS X fully.
I went through the stages exactly as he described and if you are a recent convert or are planning on becoming one, I ask you to keep this in mind (although some things like “expand apps to occupy full screen” are now better than in Windows). As Supremus describes, it is hard to explain and has to be experienced firsthand with an open mind. If you think that the Mac is a toy then you haven’t yet delved into the wonder of AppleScript and Terminal which I’m no expert by any means. I have been proven wrong enough times by a work colleague who whips up a tweak that does things I have not thought possible on a Mac or any other platform.
As John Gruber put it succinctly, that Steve Jobs greatest legacy is not any particular Apple product but it was Apple itself. The company that he founded is instilled with this philosophy of providing the best user experience there is. Things may not be as ‘open’ or convenient or even have the latest top-of-the-line specs but the whole is always going to be greater than the sum of its parts. I hope this philosophy remains strong at Apple for as long as it can and although the domineering presence of Steve Jobs isn’t around anymore, we can only hope that his lessons have seeped in deep enough. Like all things, Apple may eventually fade away and be replaced by yet another innovative company but all I can hope is, that company would be guided by the same principles that Steve Jobs proved were so pivotal in creating a lasting and wondrous consumer experience.
(...)Read the rest of May the Crazy One Live On… (19 words)
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© patrix for Nerve Endings Firing Away, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments Post tags: Apple, Business, Philosophy, Steve Jobs, Technology

Steve Jobs’s death has prompted Simon & Schuster to move up the publication date for his much-anticipated biography by Walter Issacson. The CBS-owned publishing unit has moved up the release date for “Steve Jobs” from Nov. 21 to Oct. 24. Not surprisingly, preorders for the book are skyrocketing, and the title now tops bestseller lists at both Amazon and Apple’s iTunes.

I’m sad that today I’m adding a slide to one of my live presentations, adding Steve Jobs to the list of famous people who died treating terminal diseases with woo rather than with medicine.

Seven or eight years ago, the news broke that Steve Jobs had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but considering it a private matter, he delayed in informing Apple’s board, and Apple’s board delayed in informing the shareholders. So what. The only delay that really mattered was that Steve, it turned out, had been treating his pancreatic cancer with a special diet [UPDATE] prescribed by the alternative medicine promoter Dr. Dean Ornish.

Most pancreatic cancers are aggressive and always terminal, but Steve was lucky (if you can call it that) and had a rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which is actually quite treatable with excellent survival rates — if caught soon enough. The median survival is about a decade, but it depends on how soon it’s removed surgically. Steve caught his very early, and should have expected to survive much longer than a decade. Unfortunately Steve relied on a diet instead of early surgery. There is no evidence that diet has any effect on islet cell carcinoma. As he dieted for nine months, the tumor progressed, and took him from the high end to the low end of the survival rate.

Why did he do this? Well, outsiders like us can’t know; but many who avoid medical treatment in favor of unproven alternatives do so because they’ve been given bad information, without the tools or expertise to discriminate good from bad. Steve was exposed to such bad information, as are we all.

Eventually it became clear to all involved that his alternative therapy wasn’t working, and from then on, by all accounts, Steve aggressively threw money at the best that medical science could offer. But it was too late. He had a Whipple procedure. He had a liver transplant. And then he died, all too young.

My whole family loves Apple devices. Steve made our lives better, and I think I can say that pragmatically and without any Apple heroin in my veins. Not only that, he created my profession.

His lifelong friend Bill Gates tweeted:

For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely. b-gat.es/qHXDsU

I saw another tweet today from @DamonLindelof that I thought was beautifully worded:

Steve Jobs. On behalf of every dreamer sitting in his or her garage who is crazy enough to try to change the world, you will be missed.

We can’t say for sure that Steve would still be alive and making lives better were it not for the alternative therapy, but the statistics suggest it very strongly. If you insist on unproven therapies, fine; but also try the proven ones while you’re at it. Nobody likes to either write or read a post such as this one.

For a more expert response to this post, see Dr. David Gorski’s critique at Science Based Medicine.

Relentless focus and the purpose of an operating system boiled down to four words: Matt Drance, Pete Warden, Chuq von Rospach and others recall the experience
Flat structureApple's really efficient and very impersonal when it comes to making decisions [about killing a product]. There is never any illusion about what the company's focus is and that comes from the top, that came from people like Steve and Scott [Forstall, head of iPhone software], formerly [software chief] Bertrand [Serlet], Tim Cook, everybody, they know what Apple is supposed to be doing and the other side of that is they know what Apple is doing, they actually know what's going on in their back yards.
Apple is a very flat organisation, there's not that many layers, and they're just all really involved. There were either five or six layers between me and Steve – my boss was [marketing chief] Phil Schiller. I mean, these executives, they're sending emails very late at night, sometimes after midnight. Apple is the biggest startup in the world, people work day in and day out because they believe in what they're doing. I was at the bottom of the [organisational] chart, I didn't have people under me, but I still – every time I worked on my slides or I worked on a demo or whatever – I would ask myself, I'd say if I had to show this to Steve, what would he say? And, as long as people keep asking themselves that question, and I believe that they will, then Apple's going to be fine.- Matt Drance worked as developer evangelist at Apple from May 2001 to July 2009 and now runs Bookhouse Software
Steve was everywhereIn my years as an engineer at Apple I only saw Steve in the hallways, we never talked and I never presented to him. Even so, he completely dominated my work. I was building a fairly niche product for professional video editors, but despite our relative lack of significance the team still had to give him quarterly demos. Looking back, it's hard to imagine how many of those sort of meetings he must have done across the company. He was hands-on in a way I've never seen anywhere else, and it must have been exhausting and time-consuming for him.
These were nail-biting occasions for us. We'd wait in our office to hear the verdict while the designer presented behind closed doors. Several times he never even got as far as showing off the features we'd been slaving over because Steve would immediately focus on a bad visual element in the interface. Whether it was an ugly button, a mis-aligned font, or a control panel with too many buttons, we'd never recover. All our work under the hood meant nothing, he had seen enough and we'd failed.
At first I found this intensely frustrating. It felt like nit-picking over unimportant details. Couldn't he see past the cosmetic issues to the impressive code we'd been writing? We were solving hard problems, so what if there were a few rough edges? It took me time to realise how effective his method was. Because we knew any surface sloppiness would negate everything else we did, the user experience became the true top priority. We began to think about how Steve would see any changes we were considering, he would constantly come up in discussions.
Our lives would have been so much easier if we could have just cut some corners, in ways that would have been seen as perfectly reasonable at any other company. Knowing he had an absolute veto and would use it if he saw the experience being threatened forced us to do better. By being both unreasonable and right, he taught us to create products to delight people, not just satisfy them.- Pete Warden worked at Apple from July 2003 to July 2008. He now runs OpenHeatMap and is CTO at Jetpac
What if Steve had never existed?Try to imagine today's society if Steve didn't exist. Can you? The Apple II. the Macintosh. The mouse. Making computers accessible to non-technical people in general. Reinventing the music industry with iPod and iTunes, over the express wishes of the industry. Beginning a similar reinvention of film and video. Revitalising animation with Pixar. Reinventing the personal communication industry with the iPhone. And most recently the iPad. He was a fundamental part of so many societal changes, any one of which would make most people's careers.
I am who I am today because of Steve, through the companies and the products and the technologies he fostered; more importantly, because of the people he brought in and mentored who turned into people that mentored me. Because of the thinking and attitudes he promoted and inoculated that became key parts of what I've become. I'm the person I am because of Steve and what he did, the opportunities he created, and the attitudes and expectations he baked into those around him.
I almost ran over Steve once outside of Infinite Loop 1 as I was coming in for a meeting and he popped into the street without really looking, [iPod division chief] Jon Rubinstein and [iTunes chief] Eddy Cue in tow. He almost returned the favour once as he drove in to work as I was in the same crosswalk.
Steve could be a tough and very intimidating person, but as much as he demanded of others, he demanded more of himself. He was involved in one of my projects at Apple, and I used to watch the team scramble as Steve reviewed ad copy hours before a launch and mark up changes. He was that involved in the details, and he was always right.
Now Steve has left us, but his memory and his legacy live on, and they will continue to drive and shape the world we live in for years to come. Nobody can replace Steve Jobs – he was unique. Each of us can choose to do something to fill a small part of the void he's left. If we do, we will help fulfil the legacy he started in trying to make the world better for all of us. I am a better person for having lived under his influence, and I can never pay that back, but I can try to carry that forward in his memory. - Chuq von Rospach worked at Apple for 17 years, from 1989 to September 2009; he now works at Hewlett-Packard
Relentless requirement to meet the highest of standards – and everyday magic"It's all true." Those words compelled me to accept a job offer at Apple. And, it was all true. Steve's Apple had the most talented people in the world, the subtle chaos necessary to develop new ideas, and the relentless requirement to always meet his highest of standards. Steve Jobs has been described as "brilliant" and "mean" in the same breath. Brilliant because of his insight and vision, mean because he would let you know if your ideas weren't insightful or visionary.
Feature reviews were always stressful. Would Steve like the idea? Would a stray pixel distract the course of the meeting? Would it be axed on the spot? If it were, you might go back to sulk at your desk, but you'd always realise that his reasoning was right. This stress is how Apple ticked; the quest to make the world a better place doesn't happen by coddling egos or releasing mediocre products. The culture of excellence and attention to detail was rooted at the top.
In my time at Apple, I saw Steve's true gift was he could bring complete focus to a product, seemingly off-the-cuff. Lion started as many engineering-brainstormed ideas glommed together to form an incoherent product. The pieces were great, the sum was unknown. After months of development, it underwent first review by Steve. Like a dog being yanked back on its leash, Steve stated that Lion (Mac OSX 10.7, released earlier this year) needed to bring the iPad "back to the Mac". In a split second it all became clear. Hundreds of engineers now had a common goal to work for, all due to Steve's ability to distil down what would be millions of lines of code into four words. This is not an isolated story but a common occurrence. This was the everyday magic of Steve Jobs, which the world lost today.
Former staff member (anonymous at their request)
Steve JobsAppleCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

That picture pretty much says it all. During the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event on Tuesday, I kept noticing that seat. “Reserved.” It was weird that the camera kept panning to that shot of the front row in Town Hall.
The room was packed tight with journalists, but there was that one seat left empty in the front row next to all of the other Apple executives. Steve’s seat.
I don’t know for sure if that seat was left empty for Steve or not, but I can only imagine that it had to have been. In a way, that reserved seat summarizes the core of who Apple is as a company and group of people.
Apple’s tribute page to Steve Jobs says that, “his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.” During Tuesday’s keynote, I kept wondering why the team of presenters seemed so subdued — especially Tim Cook and Phil Schiller.
I couldn’t put my finger on it then, but looking back, it’s obvious that Cook and the rest of the executive team knew that their dear friend and leader was on the verge of death. But there were still products to be announced, and as they say, “the show must go on.”
So, Cook, Forstall, Cue, and Schiller all gave us an Apple event filled with news on the state of Apple, iCloud, iOS 5, the iPod, and the iPhone 4S. Whether you like the 4S or not, you can’t deny that Apple delivered on Tuesday. Apple delivered without Steve.
But that reserved seat still says something. It says that there will always be a place for Steve at Apple. It says that, although Steve may be gone for good now, his impact and influence will always be appreciated and cherished by the company he invested relentlessly in for so many years. His spirit lives on through his products and the people he raised up to lead Apple into the future.
There will always be a seat reserved for you, Steve.
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Steve Jobs’s influence touched people around the world. We’ve heard from many of them tonight, but that’s just a small sampling. Please feel free to use this forum to let us know what the Apple co-founder meant to you.

We’ll start out by including thoughts some of you have left on other posts on this site tonight, and then we’re going to open up the comments section. Please do remember our comments guidelines. (Refresher course: “Civility is the rule.”)

humanity does not get measured by sales of ipads, ipods, iphones. the world has lost a man. a great man
– Tablet Cases

Tonight I shut down the entire companies computers and we take a moment of silence to rembember a truely remarkable american. We will miss you Steve, you are an inspiration to us all
– Rogueknight

The very fact I saw this sad news on my iPad 2 first says a lot on how much Jobs has changed the world. He will truly be remembered not only as a one of the greatest business leaders in American history, but also one who had a huge impact on the motion picture industry through Pixar with its multiple Oscar wins.
Alas, gone too soon. :-(
– RaymondC

A tremor has been felt in the Universe.
– Fast Fred

I can proudly tell future generations that I lived during “Steve Jobs years” and how he impacted our lives and has permanently changed the future. He was the greatest mind in the last 50 years.
– Super Tino

Most of my life has been entwined with Apple — since the start of high school in 1980 and as the core of my working life over the years through selling and servicing. He was only 11 years older than me and I still feel so young. A real shame. His legacy lives on in so much we take for granted everyday.
– Todd Dixon

iSad
– Sybill

I almost feel like I’ve lost a brother.
– jethrObama

Steve Jobs’ passing reminds us reminds to make the most of our lives while we’re here.A brilliant innovator, but also a kind soul who — together with his family — greeted neighborhood kids with warmth and graciousness every Halloween.
– Joel Zand

heartbreaking. as i roll my iPhone in my hand, i feel a personal loss. … Till last breath you innovated. Hats off to you!
– Shirish Kumar

I feel like I lost a family member. My heart hurts. Rest in peace Steve. Many of us love you, forever and ever.
– Appletini

The world loses one of its greatest champions of excellence. Good-bye, Steve.
– MichaelK

What an amazing Human Being he was… By reading his words you can tell in a minute the clarity and simplicity of his soul… like he said: “…Simple is harder…”
– peoc

Only Steve Jobs made us feel like he knew what we really needed to get it done and gave us that. Without the fluff and chrome.
– Perk

I never knew Steve Jobs. As a tech devotee, however, I always admired the beauty of the products he sold, regardless of my OS leanings.
That being said, I can’t help but feel grieved at Steve Jobs’ passing. I don’t grieve for his passing from this life and relief from his suffering, but I grieve for our loss. I hope that people like him will pick up scrappy little companies like Pixar and help them shine, and will put out products that are concerned with the user experience, rather than the specifications.
As I mentioned, I never knew the man, but I marvel at the simplicity of the iPod’s interface (especially in later click wheel iterations, like my 4th-gen iPod nano). I marvel at how easily my daughter uses our iPad to create and to play. I marvel at the clean design of my wife’s Macbook Air.
While my phone is Android and my desktop is a personally-built Windows machine, I have become an Apple fan, somewhere along the road. And I know Steve Jobs is a big reason for that.
Thanks again, and rest in peace, from one Steve to another.
– Steve Sleight

In a very real way, Steve Jobs brought my family — dispersed around the country, like so many families — back together. From the oldest to the youngest, we’re in touch again and closer than ever because of the dreams he made sure came true. We’re all thinking of him — and thanking him — tonight.
– joebsf

Too soon to be finished; so much more to be done. Too much genius to be wasted. Too sad for the world to have lost so much. Condolences to us all.
– Jennifer Pierce

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For many, the name Steve Jobs is synonymous with inspiration.

Throughout the years, he’s not only changed our lives with innovative products, but also with memorable words.

Among the ways people are commemorating Jobs’ passing is posting their favorite Jobs-isms. We took to Tumblr to track down what Jobs quotes have resonated most with the tech world. Check out the gallery below to be inspired.

Do you have a favorite Jobs quote? Share it in the comments below.





Jobs quote from 2005 Stanford commencement address. Posted by livinglauren.




Jobs quote from 2005 Stanford commencement address. Posted by heiids.




Jobs quote from 2005 Stanford commencement address. Posted by mondobarbie.




Quote from 2008 interview with Fortune. Posted by snapshotdiaries.




Jobs quote from 2005 Stanford commencement address. Posted by littleredheadgirl.




Jobs quote from 2005 Stanford commencement address. Posted by marleytothe.




Quote from 2003 New York Times article about the iPod. Posted by idiazsosa.




Origin of Jobs quote is uncertain. Writer and critic Phil Patton has said Jobs told him this when they met in 1981. Posted by nickslog.




Jobs quote from 2005 Stanford commencement address. Posted by blogsforjobs.




Jobs quote from 1993 Wall Street Journal interview. Posted by missambear.




Jobs quote from 1989 interview with Inc. magazine. Posted by mrborisduck.




Quote from 2008 60 Minutes interview. Posted by planetickets.




Quote from 1998 BusinessWeek interview. Posted by b-duarte.




Jobs quote from 1995 interview with the Smithsonian Institute. Posted by theaccidentalexecutive.




Jobs quote from 2005 Stanford commencement address. Posted by soupsoup.

More Coverage of Steve Jobs’s Death

NEWS:
Steve Jobs Has Died
Steve Jobs: 1955 – 2011
Steve Jobs Authorized Biography Release Date Bumped Up
Newspapers React to the Death of Steve Jobs [PICS]
Steve Jobs’s Other Amazing Companies: NeXT and Pixar
GALLERIES:

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011: The Web Remembers
15 Inspirational Steve Jobs Quotes
Mourners Create Impromptu Memorials for Steve Jobs at Apple Stores [PICS]
In Memoriam: Letters to Steve Jobs
VIDEOS:

Steve Jobs Remembered: 10 of His Most Magical Moments [VIDEO]
Steve Jobs’s 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech [VIDEO]
Steve Wozniak on Steve Jobs [VIDEOS]
CONDOLENCES :

Apple’s Board of Directors on Steve Jobs
Apple Pays Tribute to Steve Jobs
Jobs Family Statement: “Steve Died Peacefully”
Mark Zuckerberg Pays Tribute to Steve Jobs
Google Founders: Steve Jobs Was an Inspiration
Disney CEO: “Jobs Was Such an Original”
Bill Gates: “I Will Miss Steve Immensely”
President Obama on Steve Jobs: “The World Has Lost a Visionary”
Google’s Homepage Pays Tribute to Steve Jobs
OTHER:

RIP Steve Jobs: Share Your Condolences [OPEN THREAD]
Memories Of Steve Jobs: Interviews & Inspiration
Steve Jobs: Goodbye to an Icon

More About: apple, inspiration, quotes, steve jobs
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There I was, watching the Phillies-Cardinals game with Mike Montero at a pub near my apartment, feigning interest, all the time checking the Twitter feed, when I saw an alert from WSJ: Steve Jobs is dead. I will remember that very minute – bottom of the fifth, Game four. Suddenly, everything went out of focus. I could hear the blood pounding my head; tears welled up in my eyes.

It is perhaps the only time that I didn’t care for the news; I didn’t want to write that story. Why doesn’t the world realize that my Elvis is dead! I don’t care about news. I don’t care about a world that is a lot less exciting than it was when Steve was around. I don’t care what our readers might want to know. Can’t you see that my soul is being put through a meat grinder.

Every generation has its heroes. I was too provincial to love the Beatles and cry over John Lennon. I was too Indian to care much about Elvis. And I read about President Kennedy in books. But for me, Steve Jobs was all of those people. I don’t know why, how and where that happened but Jobs was my icon.

For many of us who live and die for technology and the change it represents, he was an example of what was possible, no matter how the chips were stacked against you. Jobs put life and soul into inanimate objects. Everyone saw steel, silicon and software; he saw an opportunity to paint his Mona Lisa. People saw a phone; Steve saw a transporter of love. People saw a tablet; he saw smiles and wide-eyed amazement. They made computers; he made time machines that brought us all together through a camera, screen and a connection.

Mac, iPod and iPhone — they are like Silicon Valley’s Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker and E.T. — magical, memorable and life-changing. And perhaps that is why I didn’t want to meet him, interview him or even talk to him. I had the opportunity on numerous occasions when I was attending Apple’s events, but I decided not to. To me, just the idea of Steve was powerful enough.

The idea of Steve led me to follow my heart, make tough choices, be brutally honest with myself (and sometimes annoying to people I love) and always remember that in the end, it is all about making your customers happy. There are simple ways to get along with everyone. There are easier ways to get things done. There are compromises. But to me Steve Jobs meant try harder, damn it, your customers (readers) expect better than that. Steve taught me to care about the little things, because in the end, little things matter.

Steve was my secret muse. Trust me –- he is a secret muse to many of us in the valley. Mark Zuckerberg. Jeff Bezos. Dave Morin. Jack Dorsey. We are all part of the tribe called Jobs. There is a whole generation of entrepreneurs who ask themselves this one question –- what will Steve do. Natch. What would have Steve done!

P.S. I wrote about Steve’s resignation as CEO of Apple earlier. It sums up a lot of my feelings – then and today.

 

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Apple's CEO always wanted to get something great to the customer without any obstacles – except that they should pay
Ten years is, of course, a long time in media. Ten years ago, if you wanted to download some music, your best bet was Napster or one of the filesharing systems such as LimeWire or KaZaA. There were legal services, but they were so dire they wouldn't pass much muster today: there was PressPlay and MusicNet (from rival groups of record companies), which required $15 a month subscriptions for low-quality streaming (when most people had dialup connections, not today's broadband). You couldn't burn to CD. They were stuffed with restrictive software to prevent you sharing the songs.
What happened? Steve Jobs happened, mainly. The hardware and design team at Apple came up with the iPod (initially intended to be a way to sell more Macintosh computers), and then followed the iTunes Music Store – a great way to tie people to Apple by selling music. In 2003 Jobs persuaded the music companies – which wouldn't license their songs to bigger names like Microsoft – to go with him because, he said, Apple was tiny (which it was, at the time). The risk if people did start sharing songs from the store was minimal, he argued. The record labels looked at Apple's tiny market share (a few per cent of the PC market) and reckoned they'd sell about a million songs a year, so they signed up.
Apple sold a million in the first week of the iTunes Music Store being open (and only in the US). It sold 3m within a month. It's never looked back.
Nowadays Apple sells TV shows, films, books, apps, as well as music. We take the explosion in available content for granted. But without Jobs, it's likely we wouldn't be here at all; his negotiating skill is the thing that Apple, and possibly the media industry, will miss the most, because he got them to open up to new delivery mechanisms.
Content companies have been reluctant to let their products move to new formats if they aren't the inventors, or at least midwives. Witness Blu-ray, a Sony idea which wraps up the content so you can't ever get it off the disc (at least in theory); or 3D films. Yet neither is quite living up to its promise, and part of that comes down to people wanting to be able to move the content around – on an iPod, iPhone, iPad or even a computer – in ways the content doesn't allow. Apps downloaded directly to your mobile? Carriers would never have allowed it five years ago. Flat-rate data plans? Ditto. But all good for content creators.
Jobs pried open many content companies' thinking, because his focus was always on getting something great to the customer with as few obstacles as possible. In that sense, he was like a corporate embodiment of the internet; except he thought people should pay for what they got. He always, always insisted you should pay for value, and that extended to content too. The App and Music Store remains one of the biggest generators of purely digital revenue in the world, and certainly the most diverse; while Google's Android might be the fastest-selling smartphone mobile OS, its Market generates pitiful revenues, and I haven't heard of anyone proclaiming their successes from selling music, films or books through Google's offerings.
Jobs's resignation might look like the end of an era, and for certain parts of the technology industry it is. For the content industries, it's also a loss: Jobs was a champion of getting customers who would pay you for your stuff. The fact that magazine apps like The Daily haven't set the world alight (yet?) isn't a failure of the iPad (which is selling 9m a quarter while still only 15 months old; at the same point in the iPod's life, just 219,000 were sold in the financial quarter, compared with the 22m – 100 times more – of its peak). It's more like a reflection of our times.
So if you're wondering how Jobs's departure affects the media world, consider that it's the loss of one of the biggest boosters of paid-for content the business ever had. Who's going to replace that?
Steve JobsAppleComputingAppsDigital mediaMedia businessCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds