Steve Jobs died. Eight years of fighting cancer and finally getting defeated. A great guy he was. A complete loner. Never believed in competing, never believed in excellence. Because to compete or to excel at something, you need someone else to compete with, or some existing standard to surpass, to be able to say I excelled at this or that. He created his own standards. He would later not like them. Then he created some other standards. He believed in innovation, in ideating, in sheer imagination. Never wasted his time on others' ideas. Used to quote Stewart Brand, "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
There is a difference between selling and getting bought. He never sold his products. People bought from him.He created the PC. In due course of time, posthumously, he will be credited with the honor of being the destroyer of the PC. He has already ensured that. Some day, not far off, we will not go to a computer owned by us to use it. The computer device (not the PC form) will move around with us. The laptop did that. Then the notebook. Now the iPad. But the villain is still the Windows. It still chains us to so many things at a time. Jobs was moving towards breaking that bind.
When you need to write with a pencil, you just pick up a pencil, not the whole penholder which may have a dozen pencils and a dozen pens and a dozen markers. When you need to correct your eyesight, you just wear your glasses, not wear a device which has attached to it glasses, and binoculars and magnifying glasses all together. When you need to eat with a spoon, you just hold a spoon, not the whole cutlery store. So when you simply want to email, you would have a small device which just helps you send email and nothing more. For now, you have it in a smartphone that is a mobilephone. When you want to look up a website, you would simply want to have a website that quickly allows you to surf through to that website, and nothing more. Remember that Casio calculator which still survives? Only with inflation, the eight digit device has become 12 digit. Like the proverbial cockroach, it has still survived over years. Because it has a specific function and it fulfills well and you can afford to have one in your office, one in your home, one in your briefcase and one in your car. It's always there where you are. It's there because you don't want to remember what 12 into 27 is. There is a calculator in your computer and a smartphone, but you will still reach for that Casio calc on your desk. Someday when the Windows hegemony is broken, we will have about a fifty or hundred of small software which will help us write, categorize, analyze, listen to music, look up websites, purchase and sell things, communicate, and of course, compute, but all separately, all independently. The software will be unitised, the device will be adaptively unitised. And then there will be enough number of such devices lying all around, so wherever we go there will be a device to use, not go to a device to use it. Jobs was relentlessly working towards this.
He broke the software umbrella but he had yet to break the single device dependence or freedom from the hardware. Jobs was a great downsizer. From the ancient IBM room-filling machines, he made a PC, and from there he came down to iPhone. He was still looking for that freedom of doing one thing at a time, even though apparently it looked he was cramming many things into a single device. If cancer had not blown him away, Jobs may have finally made a hundred devices with specific functions. He created new ideas, he destroyed old ones. He could see with his eyes closed. He could hear with his ears plugged. Walking on the Times Square, he could touch the Eiffel Tower. He was one of a kind.
55 is no age to die. Cancer is so cruel. It does not distinguish between being a Jobs or someone else. It does not even tell you why Jobs died.
Adieu!
There is a difference between selling and getting bought. He never sold his products. People bought from him.He created the PC. In due course of time, posthumously, he will be credited with the honor of being the destroyer of the PC. He has already ensured that. Some day, not far off, we will not go to a computer owned by us to use it. The computer device (not the PC form) will move around with us. The laptop did that. Then the notebook. Now the iPad. But the villain is still the Windows. It still chains us to so many things at a time. Jobs was moving towards breaking that bind.
When you need to write with a pencil, you just pick up a pencil, not the whole penholder which may have a dozen pencils and a dozen pens and a dozen markers. When you need to correct your eyesight, you just wear your glasses, not wear a device which has attached to it glasses, and binoculars and magnifying glasses all together. When you need to eat with a spoon, you just hold a spoon, not the whole cutlery store. So when you simply want to email, you would have a small device which just helps you send email and nothing more. For now, you have it in a smartphone that is a mobilephone. When you want to look up a website, you would simply want to have a website that quickly allows you to surf through to that website, and nothing more. Remember that Casio calculator which still survives? Only with inflation, the eight digit device has become 12 digit. Like the proverbial cockroach, it has still survived over years. Because it has a specific function and it fulfills well and you can afford to have one in your office, one in your home, one in your briefcase and one in your car. It's always there where you are. It's there because you don't want to remember what 12 into 27 is. There is a calculator in your computer and a smartphone, but you will still reach for that Casio calc on your desk. Someday when the Windows hegemony is broken, we will have about a fifty or hundred of small software which will help us write, categorize, analyze, listen to music, look up websites, purchase and sell things, communicate, and of course, compute, but all separately, all independently. The software will be unitised, the device will be adaptively unitised. And then there will be enough number of such devices lying all around, so wherever we go there will be a device to use, not go to a device to use it. Jobs was relentlessly working towards this.
He broke the software umbrella but he had yet to break the single device dependence or freedom from the hardware. Jobs was a great downsizer. From the ancient IBM room-filling machines, he made a PC, and from there he came down to iPhone. He was still looking for that freedom of doing one thing at a time, even though apparently it looked he was cramming many things into a single device. If cancer had not blown him away, Jobs may have finally made a hundred devices with specific functions. He created new ideas, he destroyed old ones. He could see with his eyes closed. He could hear with his ears plugged. Walking on the Times Square, he could touch the Eiffel Tower. He was one of a kind.
55 is no age to die. Cancer is so cruel. It does not distinguish between being a Jobs or someone else. It does not even tell you why Jobs died.
Adieu!
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