“He was there at the birth of the personal computer. He has had his second coming. He has healed one very sick company. And along the way he has changed the way we think about music and movies, telephones and computers,” Brian Caulfield reports for Forbes.
“To call what Apple co-founder Steven Paul Jobs hath wrought a religion, of course, is easy. There are the adoring masses. There are the rituals of new product introductions. There are the signs and symbols: The famous Wired cover bearing an Apple logo enmeshed in thorns above the exhortation ‘Pray’ comes to mind,” Caulfield reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs designed that cover for Wired, who knew?
Caulfield continues, “And there is Jobs himself: the billionaire in a black mock turtleneck, the miracle worker in New Balance running shoes.”
MacDailyNews Take: Amen, brother! Tell it like it is!
Caulfield continues, “Jobs launched the personal computer industry as we know it with the Macintosh. He returned to Apple to lead a thunderous revival. He remade movies at Pixar. He led the creation of the iPod and the iPhone. ‘He’ll certainly be in the history books, and I would not be surprised if he is featured more prominently than Bill Gates,’ says Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Company who, like McNamee, has followed Jobs’ career from the start.”
“After all, it was Jobs, not Gates, who made the computer personal–first with the original Apple he built with Steve Wozniak, and later with the Macintosh, which popularized the graphical user interface Gates would later rebuild Microsoft around,” Caulfield reports. “And unlike Gates, Jobs has remade not just computers, but movies, music and the telephone.”
“Jobs has simply hustled his way into the middle of more of the most important technological moments of the past 25 years than anyone else,” Caulfield reports. “‘He’ll be for beginning of the 21st century what Thomas Edison was to the beginning of the 20th,’ says veteran technology investor Roger McNamee. ‘Edison was an inventor in an era of inventors, and Jobs is a product person in an era of products.'”
“It’s a comparison that fits Jobs as snugly as his signature shoes, putting his accomplishments in a very American context. After all, Jobs didn’t invent the things that define the digital age any more than Edison invented electric light,” Caulfield reports. “What the two men did was (rather lucratively) weave new technologies into systems that made them useful to the rest of us. Apple’s iTunes software is to digital music what Edison’s Pearl Street electric station was to the light bulb: the infrastructure that turned a technological artifact into a business.”
Caulfield reports, “We can’t know when the Jobs tale will end. Edison’s story, however, tells us something. In the final few months of his life, Edison oversaw the construction of the electric train system between Hoboken and Dover, N.J. When the first train left the station, in 1931, Edison was at the throttle. He stayed there all the way to the end.”
Full article, plus a link to “In Pictures: 10 Great Steve Jobs Moments,” here.
MacDailyNews Take: Only Steve Jobs would figure out a way to get to see how the world will react to his passing while relaxing in front of his Mac in Palo Alto.
Did Gates ever make a computer?
And we know where Bill got his “DOS” from too.
Steve is a visionary, one who sees concepts and ideas as much more than single entities but ones where woven together right can make brilliant products.
Bill was a schill who happened to be the cheapest buy for IBM. He turned out to b e a rich b!tch by piggybacking on the works of others and selling it for less.
History tends to favor the thinkers and innovators not, as in Gates case… the opportunist greedy carpet baggers.
@grh
Nope.
@Megame
Yep. They did a good sales pitch into getting that little gem and convincing the poor sap that he got a super deal put of it. Kinda like a sleezy used car salesman technique.
Yeah! Bill Gates was just an accident! He just got lucky with all that selling of the Windows operating system to most of the business world.
I hate Microsoft products and don’t disagree that Jobs is special too but come on people. Enough with the human worship already.
Aren’t the polar bears in trouble? Don’t you have a more important religion to focus on?
Bill Gates isn’t really the devil and Steve Jobs isn’t God.
I think they’re both worth studying.
Of course, such activity should be done from a Mac.
I was just saying the other day that Jobs is the Edison of our time.
I hope that Jobs is around for decades to come. I personally would love to see what he comes up with.
Steve Jobs probably isn’t God, but I am pretty sure he is in DIRECT contact with God!
The bite out of an Apple is an interesting logo….a bite out of the forbidden fruit….the tree of knowledge…hey we got kicked out of the garden of eden…too bad..we know right from wrong…lets see how far we can take this thing they call knowledge. Apple IS a religion with a wonderful view of the world.
….pssst….I am not religious…but Apple makes me wonder sometimes if I should be.
Best Wishes to Steve Jobs….
Steve Jobs has definitely made our collective lives across the globe not only more fun, but fulfilled.
Steve Jobs is the world greatest showman. Somehow (with or without intent), he has even managed to make his health situation into high drama and intrigue. And I certainly hope that the final act of this current Steve Jobs epic is his triumphant (second) return to Apple.
Steve Jobs is one of the most important visionaries of our time and yes, just like Thomas Edison, SJ never stopped creating and improving on existing ideas. Giving respect and adoration to such people is important for creation of our own humility and a recognition of the vast potential of what we as humans can achieve with this life that is so precious.
Hale to Steve Jobs!
May he live another day to create and transform our surroundings.
May he live another day to exemplify the capability we all have of transforming our surroundings for it’s betterment in this free market society.
@ rws
“Bill Gates isn’t really the devil and Steve Jobs isn’t God.”
What are you talkin’ about?!!
Of course Billie isn’t the devil, and of course Steve isn’t god. Billie is related to the devil and Steve is related to god.
I hope he will be alright. In my opinion, he is an exceptional man; the kind that forges the times and world that he lives in. History will most certainly see him as a giant . It would be very sad and “un-inspirational” to lose him at such a young age. Lets hope for the best.
Or maybe Steve Jobs is Nikola Tesla to Bill Gates’ Edison.
“By YUKARI IWATANI KANE
The sudden absence of Chief Executive Steve Jobs couldn’t come at a more challenging time for Apple Inc.”
WSJ
**********************************************
How this time could ever be more more challenging to Apple with its $25 billion in cash, no liabilities, and being the only growing computer seller nowadays?
When I had my first iPod my friend said why doyou need that. Then he bought one. Then one for his girlfriend. Then he beat me to the iPhone. He loves it all but still owns a pc.
Steve I drank the koolaid years ago, but new people are lining up everyday.
Great insight comparing Jobs to Edison. It emphasise the importance of those who have the vision to make existing inventions accessable to all of us. Actual inventors are vital but without those who are visionary enough to exploit that work most inventions will be mothballed. War, really isn’t a satisfactory alternative driver of innovation but does show precisely how important the likes of SJ is and how few of them there are.
Great economies like dominant companies (do I need to mention them) will stagnate without the likes of Jobs to push new ideas out of the lab, which is usually how new economies grow to replace them. The likes of Gates would allow, indeed create that sort of stagnation for he sees ‘buying’ a market as an alternative to innovation, a concept that only delays not prevent stagnation of an economy (even a dominant one) on the World stage.
Its only a shame that so many commentators fail, even after a century of examples to appreciate that point.
spyinthesky,
well put!
in my opinion i like apple and every product they do since the titanium,aluminum and white line,i like the concept of steve jobs and Jony Ive since the G3,and back to the theme,Steve its much bigger than Bill Gates?YES,no dout about it.
Steve is the bright light on Earth that makes it worth getting up in the morning and facing life in a world daily shorn of Nature’s majesty and collapsing into desperate escape into the little screens.
Without Steve and his delightful extremely useful widgets, the world will be inescapably harsh and hostile and barren.
I always felt that Gates looked in the mirror in the morning and said: “What can do to make ME look smart and great?”
Jobs looking in the mirror would say: “How can I change the world today?”
Gates is an excellent if nefarious salesman.
Jobs is a visionary.
Steve Jobs has definitely been a remarkable business man and marketer, inventor, creator, etc. We must not forget who was more of the brains as far as the technical know how.. whom was Steve Wozniak. Together made the perfect team and hopefully we may all see the downfall of Windows 😀
@Rancher… definitely hit the nail on the head with that one. One of the smartest business men alive is Bill Gates… someone who will do practically anything to sell their product no matter how high the level of suck really is 😀
@Cascadians
I really hope this is pure hyperbole.
Otherwise, please go outside your nerd cave and look at a bird, tree, or flower. If you find an iPod to to be a suitable replacement for “Nature’s majesty”, you have a serious problem.