Steve Jobs: An American Innovator

Steve Jobs resigned from Apple on Wednesday. I have a great deal of admiration for the man. My family's first computer was an old Apple Macintosh. It was small, cute, and different.

I don't really remember it that much, but it was my first exposure to computers. During the time I grew up, Apple was always the underdog. Microsoft and its PC allies seemed to have a dominating presence in the personal computer market.

If you look at Apple now, as the greatest company in the world, you have to wonder how they got to where they were. The answer to everything is Steve Jobs. He's been a visionary, he's been an innovator, he's been The Man.

His resignation has been like a worldwide eulogy:

His departure leaves an empty feeling because he has brought us so much.

The history of Apple of a company is very much intertwined with the life of Steve Jobs at Apple. The New York Times had a chronology of Jobs's career at Apple.

Obviously, one of the key moments for Apple was when Steve Jobs returned to the company after a ten year hiatus:

When Steve returned, Apple just took over the world. Those iMacs were fantastic and cool. I owned a special edition Graphite G3 iMac. I actually still have it in my room, even though I haven't used it in forever. I remember the first thing I did was watch the free "A Bug's Life" DVD that came with the computer, probably related to Steve's ownership of Pixar at the time.

The Wall Street Journal has him pegged:

His story isn't just the story of a person, but the combination of time, place and person, spawning a career in industrial design of awesome proportions. Mr. Jobs founded two pivotal companies in American history. Both happened to be named Apple. One was the Apple of the Macintosh, the other was the Apple of the iPhone.

We'll return to that article in a second, but his return's significance to the company is incomparable. You can see it in the stock price:
Over the last ten years, he has brought us a plethora of technological advancements with iPod and iTunes, the new mac computers and laptops and more recently the iPhone and iPad. These increased the influence of the company by diversifying its products in music as well as mobile devices. The iPod was the first of these new devices that really changed the game:

It throws up endless interesting juxtapositions: just now my iPod came up with Nick Cave, Judy Collins, Kasabian, Elvis Costello, Booker T, the Beatles, PJ Harvey, Arcade Fire and the Carpenters. It’s not perfect (why is it so determined to team Nick Lowe with Led Zeppelin?), but if you don’t like one of its choices you can just press fast-forward. Thanks to shuffle, you can create a radio station of a kind that died out when the broadcasters allowed niche playlisting to become a tyranny. And it doesn’t have any chit-chat or jingles or adverts. The music really is the thing.

Other companies came out with their own devices but the iPod was the iPod and iTunes was iTunes. He made it easy. You could get iTunes on any computer and it was a simple way of keeping track of your music. It linked to the iTunes Store as well as to your iPod when you downloaded new music. It just changed the music listening experience.


Jobs gave business an identity. He brought it to the 21st century:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work,” Jobs said in a 2005 Stanford University commencement speech, which has been much quoted in recent days. “And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

Here's the speech if you haven't seen it:
There are two other great Jobs speeches here.

He moved business forward. Technology is what drives innovation today. It is what makes our lives easier. Jobs has made a career of making products that people not only need, but are easy to use. I conceived the idea of the iPhone soon after the iPod, but I don't think I could have executed the product much better than Apple did.

That's been the story of Apple in recent year. I've questioned the need of some of their products, but the products they've brought forth have always been executed flawlessly. And people buy them like crazy. When I sit on the T and look around, everyone is on their iPads doing work or playing games. Apple has become a company that has a presence in every aspect of your life. That's a lot of what has made the company so great.

Going forward, it will be interesting to see how it goes. Jobs himself said that Apple will continue to innovate:

"I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it," he said in his announcement this week, perhaps his one concession to ordinary sentimentality, for it seems impossible that Apple, or any company, could anticipate another run like Apple's in the 10 years since the iPod's introduction.

Going forward without Jobs is a scary prospect. It is something that is now a reality. Changes will be made:

Rather than acting as mere advisers to one of the world's great visionary leaders, the board may have to take more control, be less deferential to the new CEO Tim Cook than it was to Jobs, and meet more often.

Jobs is going to be the new chairman on a board that lacked a chairman before. This means that while he is no longer the CEO and won't be in charge of day to day operations, he will still have a strong say in the direction of the company. Despite his health worries, it's a good sign.

It's a good sign for everyone, the shareholders, the customers, but most importantly as a sign of Jobs's health. Steve Jobs has contributed so much to the world. He is an inspiring story for any American as a self-made man, as an innovator, an entrepreneur, as a cancer survivor and battler, and as an American. In the years to come, Jobs will be immortalized for his deeds. I have to say, it's been a pleasure to read about all the things he's done for Apple.

While this may be goodbye from running Apple, I hope it's not a goodbye forever.

For now, I want to thank Mr. Jobs.