RIP Steve Jobs - 1955-2011

Eric Hoffert · CTO at Thwapr
Our insanely great hero lives on. Thank you Steve for everything you've done. And as Chairman of Apple, I bet we'll still see more of your great ideas and influence...anyway, worth repeating a few of Steve's inspiring quotes from his Stanford commencement speech: "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. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it." Also - "Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition". And "You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." Plus ""If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?". Lessons from Steve? Make it count. Go for it. Dream big. Do great things.

Eric Hoffert · CTO at Thwapr
Another great quote about the value of starting over - building from the ground up again as a newcomer with a fresh perspective... "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

Eric Hoffert · CTO at Thwapr
Time for bed. Before bedtime more from Steve..."We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."

Eric Hoffert · CTO at Thwapr
Love this one: "Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."


Erik Sieb · Quebec, Quebec
Dear Mister Jobs,

I bought my first iMac with the money I got by selling a domain name ($2000.)

Since then, I have learned photoshop on a Mac, master Keynote on a Mac, create movies on a Mac. Thanks to those invaluable tools, I was able to project my creativity and my ideas in ways I’ve never thought possible. A few years ago, I designed an app and asked one of my best friend to program it MagCover (even though he never programmed an app before). Since then, my friend makes a living by programming apps. He made a career out of it!
...See More

Gabriel Rancourt
Thanks Erik Sieb and Steve !

Krist Sieb · Co-Owner at Expoze.tv
best damm comment ever!
Reply · Like · August 25 at 6:53am
yhoowarrior (signed in using Yahoo)
photoshop, powerpoint, and premiere on PC are better than those.


Stephen Antonucci
Pretty arrogant write up of Apple and Jobs. Can't say I am surprised as it is TechCrunch!

David Basulto · Executive Editor at ArchDaily
Third paragraph, Apple without capital A? - The Jobs inside me :)

David Basulto · Executive Editor at ArchDaily
Sorry, 3rd from the bottom

Mike Scott · Problem Solver at Anvil Labs
Please proof read your comment before posting, kthxbai.

Juan Pablo De Mola
Please, no more posts about Jobs. The man is not dead.

Jacqueline Ogilvie · Surgeon at Goverment employee
Why not?

Paul Mac
Why not? The story is about him! If you don't like him or Apple, then stop reading about them.


Tommy Payne · Top Commenter · San Francisco, California
one read of the letter to the board and you'd know how serious this latest turn might be for him. little respect?


Simon Foster · CEO at Agency Division
In 1999 I was down on my luck. I had built and lost a production company for Quentin Tarrentino, lost my wife and was homeless, living in a back packers hostel. Late one evening at this hostel I snuck into the managers office of the hostal and using my hotmail account I emailed Steve Jobs a marketing idea about how to me Apple was the producer of 'communication' tools, and how the human race has grown through these tools to communicate and also had it's greatest failures (war, religion, politics etc) through our failure to communicate. Anyway, long story short, the next day I received a ton of emails from Apple department heads saying Steve wants me to cone to Cupertino to meet him for an interview. I spent two days at Apple meeting all the dept heads, and it changed my life. I didn't end up working at Apple but that validation of my foolish entreprenierial approach to reaching out as high as possible to share my ideas gave me some badly needed confidence to continue my entrepreneurial path in life. I now run an advertising agency and in large part need to thank Steve Jobs for my own mini business second wind in business. My story is certainly not unique, and Steve Jobs impact on people, artists and entreprenuers has been far more reaching than even he could have imagined. Thanks Steve!

Craig McKenna
That's a really great story!

Patrick Donnelly
Simon, Thank you again for sharing your story. It is incredibly inspirational!

Michael Faella · Creative Director at Agency Division
Right on man!

Habibullah Khan · Top Commenter · Cisco Systems
You don't get Steve Jobs if you think he is about innovation. This was the single greatest successful risk taker of the last one hundred years of all industry.


Ihab Farhoud
It must be the Syrian in him :-)

Mujtaba Moyene · Lahore American School
The stock fell 6 percent in the first 5mins of the news coming out...

Fares Izzeddin · Sr. Enterprise Architect at Qatar Foundation
@Ihab.... he should have left me some


Chris Broadway Romero · Top Commenter · Fort Washington, Maryland
Those lamenting that these are "RIP" postings clearly don't understand that the focus of a man is something that he can eventually change, or turn off. The devices and software made by one of the biggest, most successful corporations in the world no longer have this man's focus. An irreplaceable loss is a close metaphor for death.

Robert Oschler · Top Commenter · Boise, Idaho
Jobs was, love him or hate him for it, a living testament to the ruthless pursuit of quality.

Dennis Espe · Top Commenter
Love him or hate him, this man's a genius! I still don't buy Apple products though, I only own one (iphone4) coz my telco gave it to me for free.

Tirso Mena · New York, New York
you suck

Sai Gaddam · Boston, Massachusetts
The em dash flurry here is making it hard to see things.

Diane Capri
As a late convert to all things Apple after 20+ years in the business/PC world, I've become completely committed. Apple products work. They're easy to learn, easy to use, and perhaps most important: they are delight-full. Here's hoping Apple can keep up the legacy.

Lynn Sholes · Miami Palmetto High School
couldn't agree more!!

Mike Lamprinos · University of Macedonia
Guys, HE IS NOT DEAD! Stop acting like he is.

John Scott · Top Commenter · Kishwaukee College
So the guy could sell ice cubes to Eskimo. So what does that make Apple? Just another gadget company with great marketing? Steve Jobs is probably the best electronics salesman around. But Apple's products also backed up that salesmanship. Will Apple lose some of its marketing power? Yes.

Chris Cardinal · Top Commenter · Arizona State University
Huh? You entirely missed the point of this article. Steve Jobs's perfectionism was what forced Apple to deliver a superior product, superior ecosystem, and superior brand at every stage of the game for the last 8 or so years. He's great at selling, but when what you're selling is amazing because of your relentless pursuit for amazing, that's the easy part. What they'll lose isn't just marketing power. It's the soul of the company, demanding perfection, demanding what others thought couldn't be done, and demanding they do it right. (I'm as far from an Apple fanboy as you can get, but I'll gladly admit to the special quality their products have.)

Paul Mac
You did miss the point, but I doubt Apple will truly suffer. It might short term as transitions happen, but not in the long run.

John Scott · Top Commenter · Kishwaukee College
I do not know how you can ignore the Steve Jobs effect? Apple was at the point of collapse before he came back? Obviously Apple never made crap. The fact remains Steve Jobs created Apple in a sense of his image of perfection. But his marketing genius was what put Apple products in consumers minds as being a gotta have. My point was since Steve was so much a hands on in development,inspiration,design and selling. I think Apple will miss that involvement.
Reply · Like · August 25 at 2:54pm
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Shawn Goldman · University of Dayton School of Law
"But there was nothing the slightest bit inevitable about a company whose digital products are perceived as so distinctive they attract dominant market shares despite premium prices." Basically this statement is only currently true about the ipod, which has something like a 75% marketshare. The iphone had a dominant market share because there was really no true competition in the consumer smartphone market for awhile(Blackberries were seen as enterprise solutions not consumer products, in fact for a long time companies wouldn't support iphones). Did Apple innovate? Do they charge a premium? Yes and Yes, but they don't have dominant market shares in any market they are in anymore besides ipods(and who the heck needs a sole mp3 player these days?) iphone market share of all cell phones 5%, of smart phones 17.25%. Apple computers m...See More

Hadrien Raffalli · Paris, France
iPad: uber dominant market share in an uber fast growing market (already bigger than the macs)
iTunes: no 1 music seller in the world
AppStore: ...

If you see it through Apple's eyes ("no 1 portable device company in the world"), and you add the Eco-system ... I don't see so many competitors around to contest a dominant position on many markets they are in.

Dean Blackburn · Top Commenter
Actually, I think he was just talking "market profit share", for which apple dominates in pretty much every market it is serious in (so, everything but AppleTV and enterprise).

Jerry Weinstein · Emerson College
Saul,
My takeaway on Jobs: Innovation and Originality are not synonymous. And that's OK.

Synthesizing ideas, bringing forth the iPod when the pressure was for a PDA; 10 years ago announcing that the personal computer would be a "hub," when as you point out Saul, his competitors saw their products as commodities.

...See More

Max Woolf · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University
What in memoriam articles will tech bloggers write when, God forbid, Steve Jobs dies? These well-written retrospectives seems like a hard act to follow.

Bruno Wong · Toronto, Ontario
http://allstevejobs.tumblr.com/

Girish Bhat · Bangalore, India
Really gadget technology will be 20 years back...no one and no company can lead that...

Doug Crets · Top Commenter · Self Employed at Dbc media
What I love about Steve Jobs is that he has for his entire life put proof against the lie that you have to somehow fit other people's expectations in order to be successful. If you are a creative person, you can manage, you can create, you can lead, you can innovate and you can succeed. I like the guy's output and his leadership. Rare bird.

Simon Sant Cassia · Waiter at Ciappetti
Just about the reason why I hate the guy, but love what he did and how he did it.

Alionestop Maexy
Superb website..

[...]always a big fan Certainly nice website, thank you so much for writing the blogposts[...]…...

Thomas Im · Foothill High
I'm wondering if anyone proofread this. Because the writing level here is akin to that of some of my fellow high schoolers.

And that isn't a good thing.

Alex Lin · Pleasanton, California
I think he was high when he wrote it. Or he was trolling. The author used to write for the New York Times, so...