With all of the tributes to Steve Jobs written in the past day, it’s clear that Steve was a remarkable individual due to his vision, and his ability to turn that vision into game-changing products.
With every bold person whose short life we honor, it is interesting to consider how the world would have been different if that person had never lived. Take your pick: Franklin, Edison, Ford, Einstein, the Wright brothers, Berners-Lee, etc., etc. They have all enriched our lives in many ways. What makes Steve Jobs stand out in such rarified company? It’s Steve’s impact on so many products over one-third of a century.
Apple was founded in 1976 and popularized the graphical user interface and low-cost, easy-to-use computing. But Steve had second, third, and fourth acts to come. He has at least six and as many as 10 major game-changing products to his credit. What makes his inventions unique is that they revolutionized existing products against hulking competition.
He battled Microsoft for the desktop. He took on Sony for the MP3 player. And unbelievably, in 2007 he had the courage to take on Nokia, RIM and Palm with the bold claim that he could create a better smartphone. And in his spare time, he revolutionized animation by turning a small graphics company into Pixar (which he sold to Disney for $7.2 billion).
I had the pleasure of meeting Steve six or seven times over the past 20 years. Most memorably, Steve spoke at an SIIA event while he was CEO of NeXT. He spoke about the great product he was working on—the NeXT computer, and then told the audience of 600 or so that he wanted to give everyone the greatest product his company had produced so far—and promptly distributed 600 colorful NeXT T-Shirts. I still have mine!
Steve will be missed by the thousands of people who got to know him, and the millions who use Apple’s products every day. His legacy lives on at Apple, and at thousands of companies he inspired to “think different.”