Middle Eastern origin, given out for adoption, college drop-out, corporate reject, etc...
does not make up for a profile of one the world’s greatest designers, innovators, technology game changers or billionairs, yet that was Steve Jobs for you.
My first encounter with a Mac in the late 1980s was a defining moment and many years later when Windows 95 was launched I realized how visionary Steve Jobs was in design and how much Bill Gates and Microsoft depended on Apple to show the way.
In the preceding years I watched from the sidelines as Steve Jobs literally shaped the Personal Computer industry. Thanks to my teenage children I woke up and stepped fleetingly into the Apple world buying them their iPod Nano, iPod Touch, iPod Classic. For my birthday I got an iPad2 and next year the family will be migrating from PCs to MacBooks. I guess it’s fair to say the Steve Jobs got through to my family and me!
Other than PCs Steve Jobs took animation and made it beautiful thanks to Pixar a company he founded after being booted out of Apple. Steve also founded Next a high end computer firm whose technology later came to drive the solutions both at Pixar, Apple and many Fortune 500 firms.
During an MBA class I attended, I was taught that “good design is attention to detail”, well Mr Jobs was a darn good designer. He drew his strength in design from his time attending a calligraphy class at Reed College in California, space out experiences with drugs, time away with Buddhists in India and a dogged willingness to follow his instincts concerning what the average compute user wanted.
Clearly, Steve Jobs was a man who rather than think outside the box, defined the box.
He gave a people great tools to have fun, learn with or express their creativity, Steve Jobs was a genius! My excitement and passion derives from my personal experience as a user of Apple products and respect for what he has done to shape the industry.
The Steve Jobs story defines much of what the human spirit is capable of when unfettered. His death will be both a pain and a lesson to many but more importantly it out to remain forever an inspiration.
As he said, “the only way to do great work…is to love what you do”. That passion or love for one’s work is what is missing in billions of lives across the planet as people are de-linked from their work ad their passion through an everyday grind for survival, Boardroom politics or the yo-yo free fall of world stock markets.
In his 2005 Commencement Address to graduate of Stanford University, California Steve Jobs spoke eloquently about three issues in his life. He rightly pointed to the limitation of foresight when he said “you cannot connect the dots looking forward…you can only connect the dots looking backwards. Looking back as I reflected on my life this morning, these words rang powerfully through my head.
For a man so successful in design, marketing, business Steve Jobs had a depth of person rarely matched even in the more esoteric professions like Social Care or the Priesthood. He hear him, “death is the destination we all share.’ Adios Amigo.
Meekam K Mgbenwelu is the Director of Genika Consulting. He lives in Abuja with his family. He is also the Publisher and Director of DebateandReview.com
