Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955. Today would have been his 69th birthday, had the co-founder of Apple Inc. had not succumbed to complications from pancreatic cancer on October 5, 2011.
That day, the world lost a visionary genius, a brilliant showman, a focused perfectionist, and a charismatic disruptor all rolled into one.
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. – Steve Jobs
MacDailyNews Take: Every day, we miss you, Steve! Gone far too soon. Image how far along we’d be if Steve were still with us today.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
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 how 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. — Steve Jobs
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews by shopping The Apple Store at Amazon.
To see how Apple has changed, go to their homepage. Not one word about Steve. They have lost the vision, as they embrace DEI, and promote “equity”. It is not about the best of the best anymore.
100%; it is so unfortunate. I so miss the Steve Jobs Apple and the Steve Jobs Apple products.
Ideologues now reign. Focus divided.
Steve: “make great products that please.”
(we have customers with broad views…we act accordingly).
It’s pretty much here Steve. It’s reality. No longer a concept.
It’s “Entertainment Navigator Pro” now. Of course it’s up to the user as to how they use it, but knowledge acquisition or “the intersection of technology and the liberal arts” as Steve eloquently put it, is definitely not what Apple focuses on anymore.
Steve was our greatest loss in many years. When he died he took warp speed innovation with him. He pushed designers hard, but he got incredible results in his products. Never settled for good enough. Had to be amazingly great to be released.
With Steve’s passing, Apple has changed. Everyone knows it. A few try to deny it. But the change is real. Some think this change is good, while others strongly disagree.
So at the core, what is this change? It’s really quite simple. It’s a change in priorities. Under Steve’s leadership, Apple was almost singularly focused on empowering its customers to achieve greater productivity to impact their world for good. This was accomplished via innovation and “insanely” great products that “just worked”. The highest standards were set for employees, especially those in leadership. Having crossed the “Rubicon” into the rarified air of being a vice president of some aspect of Apple, only perfection was an acceptable standard of achievement. The end users experience with Apple products was the primary canon of measuring success. Finances, market share, and stock prices, while important, were not the measure of success.
Under Tim Cook, the narrative has been reversed. Finances, global market share, and stock prices are now the gold standard. It’s not that Cook and the present leadership team aren’t interested in building great products. Obviously, they are, but that’s not what keeps them awake at night. Financial, political, and social agendas are the leading agenda items, while great produces and end user experiences are more assumed more than intentional.
Is this change good, bad, or other? If you’re a products person (which Cook clearly isn’t) then the changes is horrendously bad. If you’re primarily an investment person, the change is exactly what was needed. If you’re an average daily user whose first Apple device was an iPhone, none of what was being written makes any sense and is meaningless prattle.