by Elle Holgate
A genius is one who shoots at something no one else can see – and hits it. ~Anon
Men of genius are meteors destined to burn themselves out in lighting up their age. ~Napoleon
Bonaparte
Where-ever you stand on the Apple vs. Microsoft lifestyle choice debate, the recent news of Steve Job’s untimely death hit the industries of digital media, technology, advertising, music, design, software andfilm with as much impact and fanfare as the hysteria that new Apple product launches have become known for.
Reading through online newsfeeds in the days following his death it was clear, this wasn’t a man whose contribution was exclusive to one field or discipline but one that cross fertilized between different industries successfully. His vision, leadership, influence, and ultimately products, were and remain omnipresent in almost all aspects of modern industry, art and commerce. That the company he headed was started in the back of his garage and not taken seriously by industry insiders and only accounting for 1% of the computing industry for the last decades of the past millennium, just highlights the greatness of his achievements in a relatively very short time.
Along the way to greatness Jobs was savvy, creative, hungry, a little bit foolish, at times undeniably ruthless and always exceptional. He resourcefully grabbed the opportunities of the era in which he came of age, utilized and re-designed inventions that were under- developed and tapped some great minds that he met along the way. David Kokkte (later an integral early Apple employee) said in a recent interview; “Steve paid a lot of attention to those doing good work”, and Jobs-himself confirmed that “Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team.” He was an innovator, not an inventor and despite this, perhaps because of it, he goes down in history as an icon in a broad arena of human ideas, progress and creative brilliance.
To understand what drove Jobs in his c0-creation of Apple it has often been sited, even celebrated, that he was a college drop out, once traveled to India on a hippie pilgrimage and openly stated that his experimentation with psychedelics at that time was “one of the two or three most important things I’ve ever done in my life.” It may seem sensationalist to highlight this yet these early countercultural aspects of his life remained, if you look closely, fairly fundamental to his life’s work until the end.
Jobs and Kokkte traveled to India after reading seminal hippie tome ‘Be Here Now’ and gaining interest in Buddhism, which Jobs converted to with gusto. These idealistic hippie ideologies were then applied to Job’s and Wozniak’s vision for personal, and later home, computing as a creative empowerment for the ordinary individual and masses. You could liken their journey for spiritual enlightenment in India to their quest to reach the nirvana of what technology could be and the coming phenomenon of the information revolution: “between the iPhone and the Internet and Google, all the knowledge of the world is in your hand, that’s a miracle […] What someone can do with their iPhone is magic!“ Kokkte has said.
Perhaps it was this search for magic, knowledge, enlightenment and minimalist brilliance can be seen quite clearly at the heart of Job’s product design, which has set Apple apart in the tech industry. Only now are technology makers accepting that aesthetic and design are not only the superficial identity of the product but can, and should, be linked to its functionality and user experience.
“Steve was the marketing person [and] brought the design aspect to it.” Kokkte says of his experience of Apple’s early days.
Job’s designs set the bar for computing, portable mp3 players, smartphones and most recently tablets, with every product spawning a string of copycat designs running throughout the industry. Since the iPhone it is sometimes hard to see at first glance which smartphones are actually Apple following the adoption of the ‘i’ look of slick touch-screen interface and minimalist mini-tablet functionality. Or take the recent launch by Asus and Intel of the ‘Zenbook’ (reference to Buddhism or Macbook anyone?) it couldn’t be anymore Apple if it was sat in a basket of Pink Ladies. From the brushed chrome casing, the effort for slimness and the low easy keyboard. Even the interface seems to have been paired down in a minimalist style, as if to trick the eye that it might be the 11.6-inchMacBook Air. In my humble (and a few other’s) opinion the exterior of these copy cat products have never held the same level of ergonomic excellence within. So OK I’ll admit it, I’m an Apple fan kid. Sue me.
Job’s value for creativity, his single focus and the minimalist and high quality aesthetic he pioneered in technology design all were informed by a fearless experimental mindset, and has always added to his image as a maverick, cultural icon and a rebel of rock n roll proportions. Being fired from Apple only to re-emerge the victor only cemented this. As one aging rock star branded him last week, Job’s was in many ways; ‘The Bob Dylan of Machines…the Elvis of the hardware-software dialectic”, fitting as Rolling Stone prepares a commemorative issue for release. His presentations as CEO of Apple show a man playing to his audience with the swagger and deft touch of an artist on stage. Iconic, even down to his ever-present black turtleneck, his attire as recognizable, minimal and ergonomic as the casing for Apple products themselves.
Apple’s revolutionary insistence of integration amongst their products and harmony between different functions were always highlighted in the finished product, first most evident in the “plug and play” experience of an iPod and Mac. Integration this sophisticated just hadn’t been done before, and the sheer enjoyment of using a technological product, which was key to Job’s designs, took Apple to the next level. As the Harvard Business review wrote last week: “Apple existed to delight customers first”, all else fell into place around that, and it worked.
“His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me.” Larry Page of Google.
The designed synchronization between Apple products was criticized by some as a way of trapping people into picking only from the Apple tree, one of many criticisms aimed at Job’s and co throughout the years. Some felt Apple was creating a “walled garden approach to media on their devices” by taking a 30% cut from subscriptions and sales via their platforms. Many questioned this as just simply ‘greedy’ and an exploitation of their position as leaders. Jobs was, after all a hard-nosed business man for all his cool-credentials. However his contribution to e-commerce revenue is immeasurable; from the $2.5 Billion in revenue from apps over the last 3 years with 70% going to developers, to the way iTunes addressed the downloading deficit in the music industry.
Yet even for someone who doesn’t buy into Apple, Job’s involvement with Pixar makes him an important figure. Pixar, which was founded as an offshoot of LucasFilm to develop imaging technology, was bought by Jobs in 1986 after he was kicked out of Apple and then later acquired by Disney. Under Jobs as CEO Pixar became a technical and creative leader of CGI animated films, Pixar’s John Lasseter saying that Job’s vision guided them; “He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us did.”
When all is weighed up his loss cannot be overstated. He may not have ever imagined or set out to innovate and revolutionize across multiple industries (he was innately always most interested in technology, software, and design) but he brought something utterly new to this emerging industry and was never afraid to integrate, innovate and move things forward or to borrow from unexpected places to cultivate beauty in a once quite sterile landscape.
The greatest feat he achieved, on a personal level, was producing an operating system that I ‘got’, even enjoyed. iOS worked intuitively in a way I hadn’t experienced before with computing, which until that point I had loathed and rejected. iOS and the Apple products around it made computing and interacting with technology easy and encouraged me want to use it. For the first time I felt instilled the notion that great and creative things could be created on a computer and using modern technology. For a long-time technophobe and lover of the archaic and low-tech approach that was huge.
It is easy, in hindsight, to brand a person a genius. In death all accolades are heightened by finality however if ever a man deserves the title, I feel Job’s earned it. Genius doesn’t mean he was always fair, nice to work with, never wrong, greedy or biased – It just means he shot at something no one else could see, and hit it. And in doing so lit up our screens, and our age.
RIP Steve Jobs 1952-2011
A genius is one who shoots at something no one else can see – and hits it. ~Anon
Men of genius are meteors destined to burn themselves out in lighting up their age. ~Napoleon
Bonaparte
Where-ever you stand on the Apple vs. Microsoft lifestyle choice debate, the recent news of Steve Job’s untimely death hit the industries of digital media, technology, advertising, music, design, software andfilm with as much impact and fanfare as the hysteria that new Apple product launches have become known for.
Reading through online newsfeeds in the days following his death it was clear, this wasn’t a man whose contribution was exclusive to one field or discipline but one that cross fertilized between different industries successfully. His vision, leadership, influence, and ultimately products, were and remain omnipresent in almost all aspects of modern industry, art and commerce. That the company he headed was started in the back of his garage and not taken seriously by industry insiders and only accounting for 1% of the computing industry for the last decades of the past millennium, just highlights the greatness of his achievements in a relatively very short time.
Along the way to greatness Jobs was savvy, creative, hungry, a little bit foolish, at times undeniably ruthless and always exceptional. He resourcefully grabbed the opportunities of the era in which he came of age, utilized and re-designed inventions that were under- developed and tapped some great minds that he met along the way. David Kokkte (later an integral early Apple employee) said in a recent interview; “Steve paid a lot of attention to those doing good work”, and Jobs-himself confirmed that “Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team.” He was an innovator, not an inventor and despite this, perhaps because of it, he goes down in history as an icon in a broad arena of human ideas, progress and creative brilliance.
To understand what drove Jobs in his c0-creation of Apple it has often been sited, even celebrated, that he was a college drop out, once traveled to India on a hippie pilgrimage and openly stated that his experimentation with psychedelics at that time was “one of the two or three most important things I’ve ever done in my life.” It may seem sensationalist to highlight this yet these early countercultural aspects of his life remained, if you look closely, fairly fundamental to his life’s work until the end.
Jobs and Kokkte traveled to India after reading seminal hippie tome ‘Be Here Now’ and gaining interest in Buddhism, which Jobs converted to with gusto. These idealistic hippie ideologies were then applied to Job’s and Wozniak’s vision for personal, and later home, computing as a creative empowerment for the ordinary individual and masses. You could liken their journey for spiritual enlightenment in India to their quest to reach the nirvana of what technology could be and the coming phenomenon of the information revolution: “between the iPhone and the Internet and Google, all the knowledge of the world is in your hand, that’s a miracle […] What someone can do with their iPhone is magic!“ Kokkte has said.
Perhaps it was this search for magic, knowledge, enlightenment and minimalist brilliance can be seen quite clearly at the heart of Job’s product design, which has set Apple apart in the tech industry. Only now are technology makers accepting that aesthetic and design are not only the superficial identity of the product but can, and should, be linked to its functionality and user experience.
“Steve was the marketing person [and] brought the design aspect to it.” Kokkte says of his experience of Apple’s early days.
Job’s designs set the bar for computing, portable mp3 players, smartphones and most recently tablets, with every product spawning a string of copycat designs running throughout the industry. Since the iPhone it is sometimes hard to see at first glance which smartphones are actually Apple following the adoption of the ‘i’ look of slick touch-screen interface and minimalist mini-tablet functionality. Or take the recent launch by Asus and Intel of the ‘Zenbook’ (reference to Buddhism or Macbook anyone?) it couldn’t be anymore Apple if it was sat in a basket of Pink Ladies. From the brushed chrome casing, the effort for slimness and the low easy keyboard. Even the interface seems to have been paired down in a minimalist style, as if to trick the eye that it might be the 11.6-inchMacBook Air. In my humble (and a few other’s) opinion the exterior of these copy cat products have never held the same level of ergonomic excellence within. So OK I’ll admit it, I’m an Apple fan kid. Sue me.
Job’s value for creativity, his single focus and the minimalist and high quality aesthetic he pioneered in technology design all were informed by a fearless experimental mindset, and has always added to his image as a maverick, cultural icon and a rebel of rock n roll proportions. Being fired from Apple only to re-emerge the victor only cemented this. As one aging rock star branded him last week, Job’s was in many ways; ‘The Bob Dylan of Machines…the Elvis of the hardware-software dialectic”, fitting as Rolling Stone prepares a commemorative issue for release. His presentations as CEO of Apple show a man playing to his audience with the swagger and deft touch of an artist on stage. Iconic, even down to his ever-present black turtleneck, his attire as recognizable, minimal and ergonomic as the casing for Apple products themselves.
Apple’s revolutionary insistence of integration amongst their products and harmony between different functions were always highlighted in the finished product, first most evident in the “plug and play” experience of an iPod and Mac. Integration this sophisticated just hadn’t been done before, and the sheer enjoyment of using a technological product, which was key to Job’s designs, took Apple to the next level. As the Harvard Business review wrote last week: “Apple existed to delight customers first”, all else fell into place around that, and it worked.
“His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me.” Larry Page of Google.
The designed synchronization between Apple products was criticized by some as a way of trapping people into picking only from the Apple tree, one of many criticisms aimed at Job’s and co throughout the years. Some felt Apple was creating a “walled garden approach to media on their devices” by taking a 30% cut from subscriptions and sales via their platforms. Many questioned this as just simply ‘greedy’ and an exploitation of their position as leaders. Jobs was, after all a hard-nosed business man for all his cool-credentials. However his contribution to e-commerce revenue is immeasurable; from the $2.5 Billion in revenue from apps over the last 3 years with 70% going to developers, to the way iTunes addressed the downloading deficit in the music industry.
Yet even for someone who doesn’t buy into Apple, Job’s involvement with Pixar makes him an important figure. Pixar, which was founded as an offshoot of LucasFilm to develop imaging technology, was bought by Jobs in 1986 after he was kicked out of Apple and then later acquired by Disney. Under Jobs as CEO Pixar became a technical and creative leader of CGI animated films, Pixar’s John Lasseter saying that Job’s vision guided them; “He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us did.”
When all is weighed up his loss cannot be overstated. He may not have ever imagined or set out to innovate and revolutionize across multiple industries (he was innately always most interested in technology, software, and design) but he brought something utterly new to this emerging industry and was never afraid to integrate, innovate and move things forward or to borrow from unexpected places to cultivate beauty in a once quite sterile landscape.
The greatest feat he achieved, on a personal level, was producing an operating system that I ‘got’, even enjoyed. iOS worked intuitively in a way I hadn’t experienced before with computing, which until that point I had loathed and rejected. iOS and the Apple products around it made computing and interacting with technology easy and encouraged me want to use it. For the first time I felt instilled the notion that great and creative things could be created on a computer and using modern technology. For a long-time technophobe and lover of the archaic and low-tech approach that was huge.
It is easy, in hindsight, to brand a person a genius. In death all accolades are heightened by finality however if ever a man deserves the title, I feel Job’s earned it. Genius doesn’t mean he was always fair, nice to work with, never wrong, greedy or biased – It just means he shot at something no one else could see, and hit it. And in doing so lit up our screens, and our age.
RIP Steve Jobs 1952-2011
Posts
