“ALMOST everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” – Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address
The whole world mourns the passing of one of the most iconic and brilliant minds of the tech industry.
Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs: the brains behind Apple Inc. and of the indispensable gadgets and gizmos we now call iPhones, iPads and iPods, died on Wednesday, October 5 reportedly from a seven-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.
The shocking news came a day after the iPhone 4S was launched, which was met tepidly by those who’ve been anticipating and speculating on the unveiling of the iPhone 5 since September.
It was disappointment times two, with the announcement delivered by Tim Cook, sans Steve Jobs’ usual charisma and “trademark theatrics.”
Jobs started battling a rare type of pancreatic cancer in 2004 and discreetly underwent a liver transplant in 2009. In January, he took another leave of absence – the third time since he started having issues about his health. He resigned as CEO in August and bestowed his position to his handpicked successor, Cook.
Jobs was a wunderkind in his own right — at age 21, together with a high school friend, he started Apple in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976. A decade later, he was expelled from the company but came back to its rescue in 1997. His return brought Apple to new heights, becoming the most valuable technology company in the world, valued at $351 billion.
Banking on Apple’s “countercultural sensibility and minimalist design ethic,” Jobs launched one sensational gadget after another, despite an impending recession and his own deteriorating health.
“Under Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand didn’t exist,” he leveraged a cult-like following to create it.
“When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda — ‘one more thing’ — before introducing its latest ambitious idea,” said the Associated Press.
Inasmuch as Steve Jobs was tight-lipped about Apple’s next big thing, he was just as reticent about his personal life. However, what little details the public knew about him spoke volumes.
He was born in 1955 to grad student Joanne Simpson and Syrian Abdulfattah Jandali, but was given up for adoption by his biological mother to working class-couple Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, CA.
In his Stanford University commencement address in 2005, he quipped: “All of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.”
“It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.”
Perhaps, it was this vague sense of self which fueled his passion to make a name for himself. And that, he did and more.
In a statement, Apple’s board said, “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”
No one has made a bitten apple more enticing than Jobs. But one bite of that Apple is never enough, as much as our pursuit of knowledge never ceases.
The Apple logo goes beyond branding. It is the legacy of Steve Jobs’ undying philosophy — symbolizing humanity’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” And above all, THINK DIFFERENT — “because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Weekend Oct 8-11, 2011 Sec A pg.12)