Steve Jobs and his legacy

Today, Steve Jobs sent out a resignation letter to his board of directors. The news suddenly spiked all over the news channels, blogs, Twitter, etc. My first reaction to the news was, “Really? Steve Jobs is just into his early 50s. I know he has health problems, and he’s been through a liver transplant and fought through a rare pancreatic cancer, but should a great visionary like him resign now? I don’t get it.

It took me a moment to absorb the information and digest it. It is kind of sad and disheartening, like an end to an era. Steve Jobs is a role model to me. He’s “the” entrepreneur of our generation, and we’re lucky to have been young during Steve Jobs’ most active years. He is the sort of visionary rarely seen or heard of. What grips me the most about SJ is his long-term vision and his underlying philosophy to “make lives easier.”

You can clearly get a glimpse of his personality by using any of the narrow range of products offered by Apple. And the way Apple launches and markets a product is beautiful to observe. The entire process followed by Apple is the defining marketing and innovation example of the 21st century. The way Steve Jobs brings himself in front of the press during a product launch and explains the features of the latest iPhone “himself,” the CEO of the company, is something no one ever did before. He’s a dictator, and he only trusts himself. And that is clearly visible in all of his products. We all know how uptight Apple is about keeping the iPhone strictly pegged “only to iTunes.” This just proves his dictatorship.

Another reason why I adore Steve Jobs:

The phenomenon of “competition” doesn’t exist in the Apple Dictionary. They never compete with anyone. They just “create” a new market, and then a thousand suitors follow to compete with them. The iPhone has been with us for some time now, and although many big-time cell phone manufacturers have tried to compete with it, none have succeeded. Hell, they haven’t even come close. Steve Jobs has been progressively redefining innovation and changing the way people work, play, listen to music, etc. It’s long-term thinking, a long-term focused vision.

When Steve Jobs announced the iPad, I was sort of skeptical about the new Apple product. At first, it just seemed like a bigger iPhone’ but then, with time, I got the gist of it. The iPad wasn’t designed to just surf the web or play games or watch movies, etc. The iPad was designed for a long-term vision, and who knows what it might have been in Steve Jobs’ mind in 1983? The iPad was designed to be a part of every stage of human life. It was designed with the vision that people would enter their homes through iPads and use their appliances through it. You go to a restaurant, and you order food using an iPad. Flights won’t have those “In-Flight Entertainment” systems anymore. They’ll have iPads. These are just some minute uses I’ve mentioned that the iPad could have. The point is not that. The point is that Steve built it with a dream.

But eh, I wasn’t all the big Apple fanboy I’m sounding like right now, I’ll tell you a story. I purchased an iPod Touch some time back and transferred some family photos onto it to show it to my grandma. She’s 78, and she knows two hoots about computers, let alone even the most basic Nokia mobile phone. Just after I flipped through the Photos folder and swiped through the different pics, my grandma asked me to hand over the device, and she started browsing photos by herself. That really touched me. This is what Steve Jobs was yearning for. “Ease of Use. And for Everyone.’ Now whenever my grandma wants to reminisce with some pictures of the birth of a cousin, etc., she picks up the iPod herself, and starts viewing with her own pleasure, zooming in and zooming out. And no one taught her that. That’s Steve Jobs for you, and that’s what made me truly believe in Steve Jobs.

I still find it hard to justify why Steve Jobs quit this early. He’s still going to be active as a Chairman, and he’ll still have some say in product development, but it won’t be the same thing. His health could be a reason why he’s quitting, as we all know that he’s had a troubled past regarding his health. In that case, I wish him all the best for his health.

Dear Steve Jobs

Thank you for showing the world what innovation is.

Cheers!