This is a television blog, so at first glance it might not make sense to eulogize Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs. However, the mere fact that this is a blog and you’re reading this website on a computer or handheld device — possibly on one designed by Jobs — warrants mention of his passing. He was an absolute giant in making our world what it is. Over the last 30 years, he was the key force behind the Macintosh computer, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and oh yeah he also ran Pixar, so thank him for all the Toy Story movies plus Up and Wall-E and Finding Nemo. Steve Jobs made me cry more in the last decade than all of my friends who died in Iraq.
If you’ve never seen it, watch Jobs’s 2005 commencement speech at Stanford above. The college dropout talks about his life as an adopted child, taking a calligraphy class that would shape the way every person in the first world uses a computer, being fired from the company he founded (and later saved), perseverance (“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick”), and — most poignantly — the way looming death shaped his life.
No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new … Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
Jobs ran a business the way all businesses should be run: he hired the most talented people he could find, then he pushed them to their limits to create better work. That’s how innovation happens, and it’s how Steve Jobs changed the world. His death is a profound loss — an old that had no new to replace it.
[Essential reading: Wired's long but awesome obituary]
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At the risk of repeating myself (again!)…
Next week’s South Park: “DEY TERK STEVE JERBS!”
Would it be disrespectful to ask for another Corgi “In Memoriam” video, only this time in Quicktime format?
My Mac friends are all Wozniak guys. Well, Wozniak shaped guys at least.
Right about now, St. Peter is saying “STILL no Flash on the iPad? What the fuck?”
R.I.P. T.O.R.N., Stevie J.
Steve Jobs made me cry more in the last decade than all of my friends who died in Iraq.
Jesus. But the most amazing thing is that we loved him for it.
Cancer sucks don’t get me wrong. But he’s also the reason we have these IHipster douche bags who don’t feel their life is complete because Steve told them that they have to have this new product, even though its pretty much exactly the same product they bought 10 months ago, but since version X has a new bell and two whistles their old product is now obsolete. He was the worlds most popular infomercial salesman.
“Jobs ran a business the way all businesses should be run:”
…by manufacturing procucts in China by underpaid children.
Really Johnny, didn’t the whole Apple products=hipster thing run it’s course in the middle of the decade?
I don’t get it. They didn’t invent the mp3 payer. They just came out with the iPod which was the first Hard drive player to gain mass appeal. They didn’t come up with anything regarding cell phones. All they did was strip it down to the lowest common denominator. The iPad was an enlarged iphone. And as for Pixar…well Pixar is the tits. Plus he seems to get credit while all the work is performed inside a lab by engineers who are completely passed over while people marvel at Jobs’ genius. He was truly great at what he did but I don’t think what he did is worthy of the deification. On a final note it is always sad when someone goes too soon.
Should I just call them ISnobs instead of IHipsters? I’m ok with either term.
iPlot
To the user “Huh”…how soon you forget that as recently as summer of 2007 the coolest cell phone available was the Motorola RAZR. It could text, make calls, take godawful VGA photos, and that’s about it. You could browse “the web” if you didn’t mind waiting 12 minutes for a mangled page of just text to load. THIS WAS 4 YEARS AGO! Then Apple released the iPhone and changed everything. Now we all have computers with touch screen in our pockets, be it an Apple or an Android device. If you want to see something funny, Google and read about what Android looked like before Apple released the iPhone, it certainly wasn’t going to be anything like it is today. It feels like ages ago but this was all only 4 years ago. Whether you like Apple devices or not if you can’t see what huge impact he had you’re just purposely trying not to see it.
He revolutionized buying technology you don’t completely control after purchase and compiling personal data from said devices for corporate use. guy was an ass.
the next time I watch porn on my iPod while quietly wailing away at myself in the privacy of my locked bathroom, I shall think of you Mr. Jobs. No Wait, that’s not what I meant. I mean….aww fuck it.
don’t forget fred…
[www.nytimes.com]
Wow, seriously people? Guy’s dead, how about you suppress your rage at the world and your miserable existence for 24 hours?
What did John Scully have to say…?
He helped kill the first proper company I worked for (Power Computing) but it was fun while it lasted. Still, I’ve been a fan of the technology and OS since then (though curiously, I don’t own any Apple products. Simply don’t need them). He was the Zen answer to Frank Sinatra, and he will be missed
“Plus he seems to get credit while all the work is performed inside a lab by engineers who are completely passed over while people marvel at Jobs’ ”
Really? How’d Apple do without him?
Bobman wins the thread.
I’f you’re stupid enough to think that Jobs didn’t really do anything that important, read the obituary nytimes put out last night [www.nytimes.com]
But the i-centipad hasn’t even come out yet. DAMN YOU JOBS!!!!
All these Apple execs were sitting around their boardroom on Monday discussing the iPhone 4s release.
Exec 1: There are a number of upgrades in the 4s when you compare it to the iPhone 4. Right?
Exec 2: Uh, I guess.
Exec 3: Well, should we wait to release it until we make some concrete changes?
Exec 2: No way, it will still make billions and it’s not like the disappointment is going to KILL anyone.
On a serious note, Apple rocks! I’ve always been a mac person and will continue to be one. The company wouldn’t have done what it’s done – revolutionize the computing, communications and music industries – without the wisdom and foresight of this great man. All of the Apple employees I know constantly tell me how involved he was with every decision that was made company wide. It must have been incredibly hard for him to walk away, and we now know just how dire his health had gotten at the end. To stay on a job that long when your life is at risk takes both serious passion and serious balls.
He also outlived The Zune, by one day.
Look it up.
@Deezy, in 2007 HTC had phones out that could had cameras with resolution superior to the iphone, 3G which the iphone didn’t have until a subsequent model. You want to talk about waiting to view web pages…how are you waiting longer with a faster connection? So before the iphone smartphones, or computers in your pocket as you called them, existed. They just didn’t have the hype. The iphone’s main benefit was the developer support for the apps.
He also was an asshole that ended Apple’s corporate matching of charity donations and never publicly gave away any of his bajillion dollars. Even Bill Gates bought a heart and gave away a shit ton of money.
Fuck that guy.
“Steve Jobs made me cry more in the last decade than all of my friends who died in Iraq.”
I don’t understand this at all. You don’t know Steve Jobs…When I get deployed next year(maybe idk) and any my friends die I’m not gonna give a shit about some dude I don’t know.
Whatever.
Pixar, Pheonix. Those bastards are better at pulling our strings than we are able to make sense of our own weird, disconnected lives.