Open Thread – Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs
Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. 56 is too young, and cancer is too mean. But we wonder, as we do with all those who changed their world and left us too soon, what you might have done with another five years, or ten, or forty.
The world has lost a bright light, an innovator, an out-of-the box thinker, a technical artist, and a changer of society. He did more in his 56 years, and left a larger legacy than most humans do. Thanks for a job well done, and for furthering our imagination, our communication, and our sense of wonder at what is possible.
President Obama said it best:
“Brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it…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.”
And in the end, Jobs had even converted me.
~My awesome MacBook Air
Top 4 Steve Tweets
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1006/Tributes-to-Steve-Jobs-five-top-tweets/Why-Apple-leads-the-way-in-design-2009-.-risd.cc-d5MXSa-ThankYouSteve-johnmaeda-johnmaeda
a-hem… Steve was a visionary, but as Apple was growing..he had a rep as being a bit of a butthead on a personal level….. I had friends that worked at Apple ( I was at National Semi during the 80’s and 90’s… and yes, I had a vic-20, 🙂 ) and as the story in Silicon Valley goes – Steve had a tendency to walk around and ask people “so, what do YOU do here”.. if he didn’t like the answer, he walked them out the door right then and there ( imagine being in an elevator as the company boss asks you this question) … HR dept finally told him he had to quit doing that sort of thing; was spooking the employees… Silicon Valley was a GREAT place to work in the 80’s….inovative,exciting. People could go far based on their job performance and personal drive…. then the 90’s rolled in and factories started moving overseas or to other states….by the time the 00’s got here, manufacturing for IC’s took a dump… it’s pretty much software and R&D now, with just 2 or 3 manufacturing fabs left…
Quite a few years ago, I unplugged for eleven years, waiting for small computers to catch up to my level of usership (believe it or not, in the early days, many computers could not “think” as fast as I could type). In the interim, Steve Jobs revolutionized the personal computer world. I’ve owned Macs ever since (the first four I inherited when my friend the Computer Guru updated, the current one I bought myself), and have had an iPhone since February.
When I heard the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, I realized it was usually fatal within a year. Steve continued breathing for eight. He was truly a shining star.
I am sorry that Steve Jobs is dead, but pigs will fly before I buy an Apple product. I hate Apple’s business model. It caused Apple to almost fail back in the late 80s or early 90s, and will do so again.
We will miss you. I found myself surprisingly affected yesterday with this news, like when I heard about Princess Diana’s death. Sometimes you just don’t realize what a force in the world a single soul can be until they are gone (from here only).
I remember using a Mac for the first time and being amazed at how easy it was, as well as fun and really cool. At the time, home computers were flickering screens of white on green and you had to memorize a whole list of commands to operate them. If there hadn’t been a Mac with a mouse and icons to click, we’d might still have those ugly white on green screens typing in commands like “/open_file-XX.*”
He really did change our world. I don’t own anything by Apple, but they certainly set the bar for their competitors. One life ends, another begins. I just got word my daughter-in-law is scheduled for a c-section a week from today.
Oh, I wish her all the best. I had two c-sections and the thing that I learned that made it better is to start moving as soon as they let you. And every time you can get up and walk, do it. It makes the recovery better. I had a great night nurse with my first daughter and she showed me how to turn myself over without pulling things out of place. Made all the difference, especially with my second, as I started moving even sooner.
Steve, you wanted to change the world, and you did.
Well done
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Cartoons
mike from iowa has never seen a Mac,has never owned anything made by Apple,has no idea what an I-Phone or I-Pad or MP-3 player does. I knew of Steve Jobs only through news articles. Guess that makes me one of the minority. I will remember the date for its signifigance in my life. My numero uno nephew,Kurt,ended his Iowa late Summer vacash and winged his way back to Bonita Springs,Florida which in turn caused the Grifter to add another label to her untitled self-Quitter Redux. I don’t know how the death of an American Icon fits into the overall scheme,but I will remember this date.
My daughter’s first computer of choice was an Apple. With it came an iPod. She still has that computer but now uses something else because she and hubby are into gaming and graphic art. But now they both have iPhones and love them. I’ve never caught their enthusiasm. But I recognize all that Steve Jobs did to create and move forward the technology that so many of us can’t imagine living without.
I remember a funny conversation about PCs back in the 1976 time frame. My husband was an aero engineering student at KU. I was talking with one of his friends who was so excited about this article he’d read about PCs and how one day we would all have one. ???? I had no idea what he was talking about and even when he said a PC was a personal computer, I still was clueless. I had seen the computer in the computer science building on campus that students could use. And we were all going to have one in our own house? Yeah, right.
It is a good thing the world has people like Steve Jobs and people like my husband’s friend who get excited about new innovations. If it were left to me, I’d still be scratching things out with a stick in the sand.
Thank you, Steve Jobs, and rest in peace.
Unparalleled vision.
When Steve announced his retirement from Apple, WC knew Jobs’ health was failing. Apple was Jobs’ life. Only impending death could have made him leave. With hindsight, every aspect of Tuesday’s iPhone presentation was colored by senior management’s knowledge of Jobs’ condition.
Perhaps not since Henry Ford has a single man so transformed American culture through technology. A brilliant, intense, intensely private, difficult, charismatic, perfectionist genius. He has his handpicked successors in place; we can only hope they will be insanely great, too.
There will be an authorized biography out in November, the first one in which he gave his cooperation. Watch for it.
RIP Steve. WC’s thoughts are with your family.
well you just knew it was gonna happen. doggone shame.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/westboro-baptist-church-steve-jobs-funeral_n_998032.html
I would certainly hope that there are people in the area who will show up to make a barrier so this horrible group cannot get any where near his funeral. Who was the motorcycle gang that did that for a veteran’s funeral?
They are shameful.
and she’s tweeting this from her iphone, the irony. Margie, God didn’t create the iphone, Steve did. Bugger off Margie.
Thank goodness for people like Steve Jobs who think outside the box and move our world forward. Not satisfied to accept “the way we’ve always done things,” I am thankful that these people exist. Steve Jobs will be missed.
Thank you, AKM, for a lovely tribute (and yes, the MacBook Air is awesome). And thank you, Steve – truly the Thomas Edison of our time.
So Sad!!!!
Touching.