STEVE JOBS - RIP

It is a very awkward feeling when you wake up to the news of the death of a person you admire. You want to tell yourself that this doesn’t seem to be true. You switch channels to confirm the veracity of the news. Today morning, something similar happened to me when I heard the news channels flashing the message ‘Steve Jobs dies’. I immediately tuned in to some of the international channels to see what people are saying across the world on such shocking news.

I discovered more about him than what I knew. Steve Jobs had 332 patents to his name so while we may know about only 10 - 12 of these, he had worked on a number of other ideas. Even the stair case design in the Apple headquarters was designed by Steve Jobs and he had a patent on that design. That was the genius that Steve Jobs was.

The first product of Steve Jobs that I experienced was the Ipod. This was years back but it made me marvel at the style and design of the product. It just changed the way we heard our music – no buttons, no CDs, cool earphones. I read about the man behind this product and discovered a lot about Steve Jobs. He had founded Apple along with Steve Wozniak. The Apple ads of 1984 clearly belong in the cult category. Steve was asked to leave the company that he had founded after a few years but that did not stop him in doing some amazing work with Pixar and no one could miss out on his caliber and hence Apple got him back to take charge.

With the launch of the iPhone, Steve Jobs changed the game and gave consumers an experience that they had not experienced before. No other company can claim to have a product for which people stay up through the night across the world to see the launch and then line up outside stores to be the first ones to get their hands on that product. When one thought that this is the best that is possible, Steve would surprise everyone by coming out with the next level of the iPhone and during his reign, Apple gave us iPhone 1, 2 , 3 and 4.

As if all of this was not enough, Steve Jobs amazed the world with the launch of iPad that made everyone sit and notice and a tablet revolution was born. Another product that caught my attention due to its sleek design and style and I also became one of the iPad owners.

Steve Jobs had said once ‘It is not the job of the consumer to know what he wants’ – a statement that would have been poo poohed by regular marketers but Steve was different and he proved his statement by giving products that consumers would never be able to ask for.

Some of his other famous quotes were:

• ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’
• "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”
• “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

The greatness of Steve Jobs comes across even when even rivals talk great things about him. Bill Gates tweeted– ‘Steve Jobs was a brilliant person and it was an insanely great honour to work with him’. Google has a link on their home page for Steve Jobs that takes you directly to the website of Apple, whose home page is a dedication to Steve Jobs.

While the online world is abuzz with tributes to Steve Jobs, I really thought that these two statements sum up the mood of all:

• ‘Steve Jobs logged into the world in 1955 and logged out in 2011 but human kind will never be able to delete him’
• ‘Some great people are remembered for a decade. A person like Steve Jobs will be remembered for centuries to come’ –  Rajiv Makhni

Steve Jobs was a man who was far away from thousands of us, a man we had never met personally but had heard and read so much about him that we always felt that we knew him personally as he understood what all of us wanted, he knew what it was to come out with a product that would make lives cool for people across the world.

Once again, I would like to thank Steve Jobs on behalf of each and every one who has been touched by his genius and I hope that your soul rests in peace as you have done outstanding work in this world, which lot of people will look upto and get inspired. 

RIP Steve