“There may never be another chief executive like him. Apple’s former CEO and co-founder transformed the world’s relationship with technology — forever,” Fortune reports.
“This year one of the world’s most important and transformative business and technology leaders passed away. Steve Jobs, the legendary and mercurial co-founder of Apple, died Wednesday, Oct. 5 at age 56,” Fortune reports. “In this story, Fortune looks back at how he changed the way we think about and use technology forever, putting his own stamp on everything from the personal computer to the music industry.”
10 ways Steve Jobs changed the world:
• Design
• Music
• The Personal Computer
• The Post-PC Era
• The Ads
• The iPhone
• The Ecosystem
• The Mac OS
• The Apple Retail Stores
• Apple Inc. – Ultimately, Jobs’ biggest contribution isn’t just a smartphone, a tablet or an operating system, but Apple itself, a 12,000-strong organization that was once on the brink of irrelevance. Since his return to the company in 1997, Jobs has rebuilt it into the most valuable technology company in the world, surpassing other heavyweights like Microsoft or HP. It may indeed be the greatest turnaround in business history. Nothing better exemplifies that in design or scale than Apple’s upcoming new headquarters, a 2.8-million square foot campus that will house 300,000 square feet of research facilities, a 1,000-seat auditorium, a power plant and underground parking. “I think we do have a shot at building the best office building in the world,” Jobs said, who arguably wouldn’t settle for anything but the best where any area of his company was concerned.
Read more in the full article here.
There will never be another Titan like him. Oh how I savored every single presentation, every interview, every snippet of his thinking! Been really busy but soon will have time to search Steve out in the astral world. Miss him.
cascadians, when you find him, please give him a wink from Jane! Oh, and do report back…
Pixar?
+1
Hear, hear!
Bull !!!
Henry Ford comes to mind as someone who changed the world by making transportation affordable for the masses.
There are other bigger names then Jobs and there will be others to come. Jobs did a lot but not in vital life changing areas. His contributions are centered around entertainment, an area that we can live without, not that we’d want to.
Yes, some of his work was in entertainment. Which is why, in some ways I really don’t care if Apple builds their TV. But more than dealing with entertainment, Apple does things ‘like they ought to be done. So in that regard, I welcome Apples’ ‘new’ TV – it will probably do things the way things ought to be done, quite an accomplishment in this world we live in. And by the way, I really love the products not for the entertainment I get (MDN is really my entertainment source) from them, but for the work it allows me to do. They are great products to get things done with.
Greg M,
So, you’re saying, that the personal computer isn’t that big of a deal? Without Steve Jobs tenaciousness to turn Apple into a company that sells personal computers (and therefore giving competitors something to emulate and copy), computing may have been relegated to just business and enterprise, the internet created just to keep business’ networked, and you probably would have never had the opportunity to make an idiotic post on this blog saying, “Steve jobs din’t really do nuthin’ that affected anybody’s life in any important way!”
Ford brought affordable transportation to the masses (and everyone copied him) and Steve Jobs brought personal computing to the masses (and everyone copied him). But you somehow think that they’re not in the same league. Wow!
So, which device did you write your post saying that Steve Jobs didn’t really do anything life changing, your Mac, your iPhone, or your iPad?
If you don’t think the affordable computer, with an easy to use GUI interface, wasn’t something in a vital, life changing area, I have just one question for you.
Is it hard to breath with your head up your ass?
Uh Greg, does the “M” perhaps stand for Münchausen?
I can’t tell if you’re really nuts or just faking it.
Henry Ford blew up railroad tracks so people would buy cars, you nitwit. Here’s a little friendly advice: Don’t advertise your ignorance in public forums. It makes you look like an idiot, in case you haven’t noticed.
Greg m
‘not in vital life changing areas’…
So we don’t NEED computers for science, hospitals and nearly everything else, but we need cars….
You have been on the xmas sherry already
I’m a scientist. We need computers badly. Eg with the advance in genomics we have seen in the last 10-15 years-we could have never done any of it w out computers. How would YOU assemble 200,000 reads into a 3b Bp sequence? By using a car?
How about in the category of inspiration to all humanity? My field has nothing to do with technology, but I seek daily to be as focused, experience-centered, excellence-driven and more as sJobs was. Some of his advice is actually helping me with staffing issues right now.
In fact, in this Christmas season it occurs to me that there’s yet another parallel between Christ and SJ: because he was as he was, so can we be, because we share fully in his humanity. And so, if we are willing, we can also share fully in his “divinity”.
Which recalls to me the official Apple portrait of the Apple gathering after his death. There was Steve in the background, huge, zen-like, legs crossed. And there at his left hand hanging in the sky like his minion was the moon. And all humanity there before him.
It’s not going too far, I think. He was no god, no Saint. He was completely human and therefore mortal. But his consciously chosen focus to be set on “divine things”, like beauty, perfection, & transformation toward the good, made him more, made him a living incarnation of a category of life – one into which we all can choose to enter or not.
Is one choice salvation and one not? Well ask yourself this: if you unite your being with mortal things that are passing away, are you not Mortal only? And if you unite yourself with divine things that will never pass away, are you not immortal?
It makes the category of “saint” actually much more clear. They show us the way of perfection – a way they didn’t create, but which they participate in fully.
So, well, maybe he was a saint after all. Not by his perfection, but by his desire and commitment to try.
I think you may be on to something, Nerd. Only in distant hindsight, through a lens of history, does the cloud of trivial, suffocating temporal bias recede enough to expose the essence of a person’s influence on all that comes after. I think some of us glimpse some of that already, and it’s not a person’s position on any ranked list that leads to canonization, but the total amount of caring generated by him, or her.
Baloney. Any time someone says something can “never” be done again, or something can “never” happen, or a record is “unbreakable,” or a ship is “unsinkable,” sure enough it happens. It may not happen right away, but it will happen.
If there could “never” be another CEO like Steve Jobs, then humanity is in a sorry state. It is in our very nature to push to new heights, to create new things, to beat old records, to try to achieve the “impossible.”
There will be another CEO who eclipses Jobs, or at least falls within those ranks. If for no other reason than people keep saying it can’t happen.
You’re technically correct, of course. But you can only turn the corner once. After which the world moves on, transformed. Jobs’ corner—the way we view technology—may turn up again down the road, but it will happen in the light of what happened here and now: I think that makes it different.
I want to be invited to one of your house parties.
Steve Jobs is gone, and humanity most definitely is in a sorry state. Only an idiot would respond to an article like this by insisting that Steve wasn’t all that great. Only a completely insensitive, bull-headed, ignorant person.
Ads? That one is stupid. Apple made iAds, that only some use, but I still ignore them like all others.
Ever heard of Mac vs PC?
And how did it change the world like the title suggests?
Of course there will never be another CEO like Steve Jobs, just as there will never be another human like Steve Jobs. God makes us each unique, with our own talents.
However, just as Steve stood on the shoulders of giants (Edison, Ford, DaVinci), so shall someone be inspired and guided by Steve’s example as an inventor, businessman, and creative force. And so, the world will benefit…
Jobs had the good fortune to be born in the proper time to suit his talents and passions. Those born before the technology has matured sufficiently to implement their dreams are doomed to frustration. Jobs took nascent technologies and helped them to evolve along the paths that he and his colleagues defined.
Will Never are pretty strong words.
It will be a while, but every generation or rather era has it’s innovator. Let’s see what happens in 50 years.
If iCloud is an indication of Apple’s future, they’re doomed!
Man, the Cube getting the shaft on yet another list!
😉