I-conic Steve Jobs
I switched on my Mac laptop as usual in the morning. The website of Apple computers filled my screen before directing me to Google. An intense picture of Steve Jobs, (1955-2011) the legendary co founder of Apple filled the screen. The wordless obituary had an elegiac elegance to it. In death, as in life, Steve Jobs loomed large.
The proverbial lump in the throat choked me. I had not known Steve Jobs personally. I am no IT entrepreneur or gizmo freak. I am a recent Mac user, having started using one only three months back. Until then I was largely ignorant of Steve Jobs. Yet the news of his death created a void in me. It felt as if a close relative or a dear friend had passed away. And strangely, I was not the only one who felt such an aching loss.
A senior journalist remarked that a friend of his had called him up to tell him of Job’s death. He then asked, “ Will they declare a holiday tomorrow?” Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook were clogged with obituaries and caused IT professionals to fear a breakdown.
What was the mystique of Steve Jobs, hailed as the world’s greatest inventor after Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci and branded as the “Michelangelo of our times?” An online chain mail declared, “Three apples have changed the world—Adam’s, Newton’s and Steve Jobs.”
The son of adoptive parents and later a college drop out, Steve Jobs went on to become one of the most admired innovators whose repertoire included personal computers, mobile communications, music, movies, and modern culture. The tech visionary who co-founded Apple Computers in a garage in 1976, he had the courage to dream and do things differently.
A highly quotable person, one of my favorite Steve Job quotes is his address to Stanford University students in 2005. He told them that as “Time is limited, don’t waste it by living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the result of some one else’s thinking. He encouraged students to “listen to their own inner voice” and not muffle it with the “noise of other’s opinions.” Most important, he urged them to have the “courage to follow your own heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
I can never forget the joy and excitement when I bought my Mac laptop and desktop. At first a hesitant user, I was soon amazed by its user friendliness simplicity, and elegance—a classic instance of form and function being complementary. The spare minimalist form of Apple products are said to be influenced by Job’s life long practice of Zen Buddhism. Steve Jobs is that he blended technology with humanism. There is a little bit of Steve Jobs in every Mac product—his inspiration and his lasting legacy.
