Steve Jobs died the day before yesterday. May he live forever in our memories. He was a man who actually changed the world–who someone who shifted the course of history. He did it not by imposing his will, but by giving people great products that they wanted and needed–albeit products that they didn’t know that they didn’t have until he explained them in his signature way. He’s made our work lives more efficient, and our personal lives more aesthetic. And vice versa. He will be missed.
He was a many faceted character: an artist, a prophet, and a salesman.
ARTIST
Jobs imbued the often-drab world of computing with a beauty, a light that has yet to be seen in other companies of today. He speaks in interviews about calligraphy giving him the aesthetic base to add fonts to the Apple GUI. He disparages Microsoft for poor product development and has this to say, “Proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting and beautiful books. If it weren’t for mac they would never have that in their products.”
Jobs’ return to apple brought back a renaissance in technology design that will have lasting impressions.
PROPHET
“Carrying around these non-connected computers, or computers with tons of state in them is Byzantine by comparison…”
In 1997, Steve Jobs answered the question of a young Harry Potter looking gentleman regarding insights about the future of home computing. He then begins to outline a luxurious lifestyle that may sound familiar to some:
“Because we were using NFS, were able to take all of our personal data…off of our local machines and put them on a server. And the software made that completely transparent, and because the server had a lot of RAM on it, in some cases it was actually faster to get stuff from the server than it was to get stuff off your local hard disk because in some cases it would be cached in the RAM of the server if it was in popular use. But what was really remarkable was that the organization could hire a professional person to back up that server every night, and could afford to spend a little bit more on that server so maybe it had redundant disk drives, redundant power supplies. In the last seven years, you know how many times I have lost personal data? Zero.
He is of course talking about cloud computing, which is remarkable considering that Apple is finally rolling out its iCloud service to do the exact things Jobs is talking about here, 14 years ago.
“I have computers at Apple, at Pixar at NeXT and at home. I walk up to any of them and log-in as myself, it goes over the network, find my home directory on the server and I’ve got my stuff wherever I am.”
The computers are iPods, iPhones, iPads and Macs but the sentiment is the same. Jobs long lens sees far into the future and this type of thought leadership was an invaluable asset to the company and led generations of tech-types to follow his every word.
SALESMAN
Jobs represented many things to many people, but to shareholders, he was an impeccable businessman. This demonstration of the first Apple Macintosh brought people to their feet in joy and admiration for the future of technology as it shone through the genius lens of Steve Jobs.
The Mac has since revolutionized the world. Nothing is done without its influence being felt.
One Response to “Steve Jobs: Artist, Prophet, Salesman”
I had no idea that he was behind Pixar, just found out not too long ago. It is amazing to think about all of the aspects that he was involved with in people’s lives, and they don’t even know it. A true visionary! RIP.