Man, was he so wrong

[Apple's] plunge has taken place so rapidly that it is tantamount to a snowball picking up speed and size as it hurtles down the mountain. Can anyone stop it? Maybe Steve Jobs can. But the odds aren’t good that he can do more than slow the fall, perhaps giving Apple a few more years before it is either gobbled up by a bigger company or finally runs out of customers.

The quote above was taken from Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders by Jim Carlton, published in 1997.

To be fair, the book is a good read on how Apple fell from grace and was almost rendered bankrupt.  It would make for a good companion read with Steve Job’s soon-to-be released biography.

My ode to Steve Jobs

People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true. And the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up being “successful” in the eyes of the society and the ones that didn’t, often times it’s the ones [who] were successful loved what they did, so they could persevere when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit because they’re sane, right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it? So it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of worrying constantly and if you don’t love it, you’re going to fail.

That’s a quote from Steve Jobs.  And I remember it because it rings so true.  There are many things that I am passionate about and the reason why I don’t give up is because I love doing it.

Many years from now people will ask what were you doing when you heard of Steve Jobs’s passing.  For me, I found it out via an SMS while doing the thing I love (running), through a device that was Steve Jobs’s creation (the iPhone), around the area where I work in a job that I wouldn’t be working in if it were not for Steve Jobs.

The last part is no exaggeration.   I was introduced to computers in the summer of 1980.  I took up a BASIC programming course in college and it allowed me to have some computer time.  From the moment I began typing in the rudimentary computer code, I fell in love.  I begged my mother to get me a personal computer.  She was coy and non-committal but eventually I was rewarded with an Apple IIe clone.  I think it was even branded as “Chico.” Ok, it wasn’t really an actual Apple computer, but it was damn close!

When I got the news of his passing, shivers went up my spine and I felt my hair stand on its end.  I felt I lost a family member and a good friend.  I felt both mournful and devastated by the loss and it was weird feeling so devastated for someone who you aren’t really on personal terms with.  But it was because he touched and changed my life.  I followed his career from the time the Apple II came out, the infamous 1984 commercial, the launch of the Macintosh (I remember tinkering around with one in my brother’s house), his ouster from Apple, his eventual return to the company he founded.  Not only was he able to bring a company back to life from the brink of death, he brought out amazing products that redefined the genre.  There were no touchscreen phones until the iPhone came out.   Tablets were a dead product until the iPad came out.  Now I use his devices to read news, to track my running, to keep in touch with friends, to see where I’ve been and where I can go.  That’s life-changing.

He is, without a doubt, a visionary.  We get so very few in history. And we should be so blessed to have one in our lifetimes.  A candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.  He has burned bright indeed.  I just wish the candle burned longer.

RIP Steve Jobs.