Steve Jobs was laid to rest Friday at the Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, California. Jobs, 56, died Wednesday, October 5th at 3 pm of respiratory arrest. Not only was Jobs the co-founder of the iconic computer tech giant Apple, but a major figure throughout the history of the industry. We will always remember him for his most recent triumphs and "works of art", from the original iPod to the world's most sought after electronic device in human history - the iPhone. Jobs brought some old world class to the new world computer culture and an eye for detail that proved once and for all that even highly technical devices can be seen as sources of beauty with tasteful design - not just objects of utilitarian functionality. Along with establishing the benchmark for hardwired artisanship Jobs also taught a young Computer Age generation that it's cool to be a geek, whereas in the past, Techies such as myself would have been seen as math/science nerds with too much time on our hands. This has now been reserved solely for those of us who use Linux.
Instead of focusing on all the personal points in his very influential life, I'd like to focus on what he did for the industry and where that inspiration came from - his Legacy. We can all draw the conclusion that his drive probably stemmed from his adoption and a personal mission to prove himself along with his renewed inspiration from his own family later in life; or maybe it was from when he dropped out of college and he was sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Either way, Jobs found himself frequenting after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California where he was later hired an ended up working with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee while in high school. Following his graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester having taken a very influential calligraphy course. Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."After a year of impoverishment Jobs took a job as a technician at Atari with the primary intent of saving money for a spiritual retreat to India.
Shortly after this he took his trip to India with a friend and spent a lot of time with various gurus engaging the spiritual side of himself. He later returned to the states a Buddhist and reclaimed his role at Atari with a new found sense of "Karmic Dedication" you could say towards his passions. Jobs was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game Breakout. Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated from the preliminary product; however Jobs had little interest in, or knowledge of, circuit board design and so he made a deal with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if he could reduce the amount of chips. Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, shocking Atari who thought it impossible, but it was also a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce it on an assembly line. Jobs was given $700 despite the incredible efforts of Wozniak proving that no good deed goes undone. After this, in 1975, Jobs decided to Breakout! on his own hanging around with Wozniak and his "Homebrewed Club", a group dedicated to the design of Customized Personal Computers. It was here that Jobs told Wozniak that they would start a company to distribute Wozniak's "Apple" build - with, or without, his consent - and the rest is history.
Jobs would go on to command one of the most respectable tech companies in the world, twice. Because on May 24th, 1985 the board of directors and the then CEO John Sculley started to push Jobs out of the company. So, instead of leaving on the terms of someone else, he left on his own and started NeXt Computers with a starting capitol of $7mil. After a year Jobs was almost broke and looking for venture capitol when he attracted the interest of Ross Perot who invested heavily with him and allowed for the production of the first NeXt computer selling just shy of $10,000. The NeXt was technologically advanced with many new innovations like the Mach kernel, digital signal processing, and a built in Ethernet port (that handy thing we take for granted today). But the industries that the NeXt targeted found it economically unsound due to its high price point. Jobs struggled for a while and eventually started producing software only and gave up on hardware after his "Interpersonal Computer" project failed. But with a seamless magnesium casing Jobs pursuit of aesthetic perfection can be seen long before the aluminum-clad MacBook. Back in 1986 Jobs picked up a failing art studio division within Lucas Arts and renamed it Pixar. 1995 would bring Jobs some "New Hope" with Pixar and a newly signed contract with Disney to create several computer animated movies starting with "Toy Story" with which Jobs was credited as an executive producer. They would go on to create some of the most iconic childrens films of the late 90s - early 2000s; such as: Bugs Life (1998); Toy Story 2(1999); Monsters inc (2001); Finding Nemo (2003); The Incredibles (2004); Cars (2006); Ratatouille (2007); Wall-E (2008); Up (2009); and Toy Story 3 (2010). With Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 each receiving an Academy Award for Best Animated Picture, an award introduced in 2001. In 1996 NeXt began turning profits with its WebObjects software (which would later bring about MobileMe, the Mac App Store and many other big innovations) and Jobs charisma and charm began to captivate an industry with his influence, so much so, that in early 1997 Apple bought out NeXt for the sum $430,000,000 and hired Jobs back as CEO. Needless to say Perot received a large return on his money.
Back at the helm of his life's work Jobs wasted no time in setting trends and captivating audiences. Jobs first task was to get Apple back to profitability, so a number of projects were cut. Also, licensing agreements with hardware manufacturers were stiffened which made it too costly for them to reproduce hardware for Apple (and Apple like) products, which helped reduce Apple clones to a near halt. This was the start of Apple's propriety campaign which would culminate in a security chip that would limit Mac OS to only Mac Motherboards - unless your one of those geeky tech nerds who knows of certain bypasses. 2005 would make Jobs a 'virtual' billionaire with his sale of Pixar to Disney for 7% of the company's stock share making Jobs the largest share holder - instantly worth over $7.2bil at the time. This was all, of-course, around the time Jobs would realize his dreams of aesthetic perfection with the development of the iPod and iTunes digital music store.
Steve Jobs came into the Computer Culture as an open-minded, innovative, perfectionist with all the charisma and drive one could ask for, and by the grace of God he left the same way unlike so many others who get burnt out from society. But society never bothered Steve, it was always either Jobs way or the highway - and we all loved him for it.
~Mr. Fiebs
-Dedicated to the memory of Steven Paul Jobs, his wife, and four children.-
References:
Vivek Kaul (May 11, 2009). "What Steve Jobs did when he was fired from Apple".DNA Newspaper
The second coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman
"Icon: Steve Jobs" by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/05/apple-says-founder-steve-jobs-is-dead/
http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_jobs#Personal_life
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