Apple’s visionary, Steve Jobs, has lost his long battle with cancer and has left us. It is bizarre to think that this man who invented gadgets could have such a profound effect on our lives. Some will miss Jobs more than others, especially those who are fond of the Apple brand.
But it is a mark of his genius and his charisma to see that the whole world has expressed sadness at his loss. Some have likened him to Edison, others to Einstein and others have likened him to celebrity TV hosts. But the truth is that Jobs was Jobs. He was like no other. When everyone else was talking about floppy disks and processors, he was thinking the unthinkable – millions of songs available at the touch of a button. Jobs thought about touchscreen technology when everyone else was still thinking keyboard and mouse.
Jobs thought about a smartphone that could connect to the internet and be used as a portable device to sync all your gadgets while everyone else was still thinking about SMS and trackballs. Jobs was a visionary, a man that dared to think what others didn’t dare to think.
As with all people of his calibre, we will not appreciate his legacy now, but later, in the future. When we all watch TV hooked up to our internet on a thin plastic sheet and take it for granted, we will think of Jobs.
When our smartphones can take orders for deliveries through a voice system, or can turn on our lights at home remotely, we will think of Steve Jobs. While Jobs was no doubt a highly intelligent ‘techie’, he also had the knack of knowing what we, the consumers wanted. He would take a base raw desire, turn it into a concept and actually bring it to life, in the form of technology.
Unlike many other inventors, Jobs did not dream up his own ideas from scratch and present them to the market. He listened, he talked and he found out exactly what we wanted, and that was his talent. But more than that, once he took to the stage to unveil a product, he was charming, funny, witty, clever and more. He did not need to sell the product to us, we had already sold it to him. He merely gave us what we wanted, and sometimes with a few more features than we bargained for.
Whether you like the Apple brand or not, it is indisputable fact; Steve Jobs pushed the technological envelope in the 27 years of his brilliant career. He created things which we thought were not possible, and he put them on the market at a price that was affordable. His inventions have changed the way we communicate, the way we relax and the way we work. He will surely go down as one of the greats and we will, perhaps, always wonder what could have been, if only he had lived a little longer. No doubt, others will rise and try to fill his shoes, but Jobs was one of a kind. He will be missed.