It has been said that we are a product of our experiences and the people around us. On hearing this, your first thoughts may be about family, friends, teachers, fellow students, or colleagues in the work place. Today’s passing of Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and CEO, has shown me that the influence on our lives can be much further away than we think.
Way back in 1983, my junior high school received several Apple II computers and I attended one of their first computer classes. I recall some limited instruction on the Basic computer language and then free time on the machines without specific goals. This was in the day where all a computer had for storage was a 5-1/4” floppy drive – actually, these Apples had two, but I digress. What this time on these machines did, simple as they were by today’s standard, was setup my life to spin around computer technologies in one form or another.
With each visionary move by Steve Jobs, our world has changed, and other technologies have been pushed to innovate:
- The iPod forced the demise of the CD
- The thought of buying a single piece of music for 99¢ is still changing marketing sensibilities from ever increasing margins to massive volume for low, instant gratification-impulse buy pricing.
- The iPhone forced cellphone carriers to stop thinking like telecomm companies (something they’re still resisting but with less and less vigor every day) and start looking at even voice traffic as data.
- The iPad reintroduced the tablet concept at a time when wireless Internet access was showing up everywhere. Teaching us that timing is everything – remember the Newton before it was a PDA.
- Pixar has changed the way movies, animated or otherwise, are created and drastically increased our expectations when presenting alternate realities.
Steve Jobs’ products may not have always been the ultimate big player in any given product type. The personal computer became ubiquitous with just a small fraction of them being Apple products. NeXT computers set a stage for powerful workstation computers that NeXT ultimately did not survive. Even the revolutionary iPhone has found itself in a competition rich environment.
Myself, I’ve never really gravitated to the Apple products. After my parents bought the Apple II for home and it had run its course, I went to the “PC” world and the ability to meddle with individual components and never looked back. To this day, my last surviving (usable) desktop still contains the original floppy disk drive cable from that IBM PC from 1984. However, even with the IBM PC at home, in 1985, while in high school, I attended my first, true, programming course, on Apple computers, in 6502 assembler at the college I eventually graduated from in 1991.
What’s the takeaway here? Even if you start in a garage, corporate influence, and the influence of the individuals that run it, has far reaching implications. As a visionary, Steve Jobs appeared to want to create positive forward-moving technologies first with profits being the side benefit. The moments where that reversed, were the moments of downturn or missed opportunity for Apple. What this tells me, is putting the benefits of society ahead of profit margins can just as easily result in those profits and everyone comes out ahead.
There’s a noticeable hole created in the technology world today, but “nature abhors a vacuum” and I trust that someone will come along to fill the vacancy, and not necessarily in Apple. I also trust that they will not have the same vision as Steve Jobs, but will have vision non-the-less. Will Apple finish what Steve Jobs started? It’s very hard to say. Apple is a very large organization with lots of key players and, in the absence of its founder’s influence, may change culture and direction much as Microsoft is perceived to have done without Bill Gates’ day-to-day influence.
Steve Jobs will be missed, especially on those product launch days where the man in blue jeans and black turtleneck walking on stage has become synonymous with the start of a technology revolution. Rest in peace, Steve Jobs, with the knowledge that you’ve done good and plenty of it in your unfairly shortened life. Technologists everywhere are flying their proverbial flags at half-staff in your honor.
By Bruce Chase
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011.
Reposted with permission from Goodbye Steve Jobs at http://brucechase.info.