The End of a Great Era

Steven Paul Jobs, 1955-2011 (Wall Street Journal)

"There may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented." - President Barack Obama

Why We Mourn Steve Jobs
By ALEXIS MADRIGAL | THE ATLANTIC

We mourn his death as if he were a beloved state leader precisely because he embodied some glorious piece of what it is to be American with all our contradictions. He was an exception to nearly every rule, went off nearly every chart, overrode any sense of purpose but his own.

Because we're all going to be dead soon....

Full text of Job's commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 provided by The Wall Street Journal. The full-length video follows here:

Stephen Colbert on Steve Jobs

The Colbert Report
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Hollywood's 'Devilish Angel': How Pixar Gave Steve Jobs His Mojo Back
By NICK SUMMERS | NEWSWEEK

Ousted from Apple, Jobs looked to moviemaking for salvation—and nearly bankrupted himself in the process.

"Hi. It's Steve."
Aaron Sorkin on an unforgettable phone call. (Newsweek)

Photo Gallery of Steve Jobs (In Focus | The Atlantic)

Steve Jobs and the Coolest Show on Earth
Like everyone who counts most in the world, he made himself up as he went along, occupied a job category whose total size was always one.
By DAVID GELERNTER | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Computing is a young, heedless industry unused to reflection. The tragic death of Steve Jobs at 56 is the first event that has ever forced this hyperactive industry to sit still, pipe down, and think about what matters. Nearly everyone in the technology world is moved by his death, as we were all moved by his life.

Jobs was an original, but he was also the latest of a long line of seers all carrying the same message: Technology is design. To be great, technology must be beautiful.

Design Different
Steve Jobs’s true genius was in design—from phones to retail, he reshaped our world with a look that was cool, clean, and friendly.
By STEVEN HELLER | NEWSWEEK

Unlike many other tech companies, design was the engine in Jobs’s world. Designers were not injected as foreign organisms into the middle or end of the conceptual and engineering process, after the engineers and marketers did the meaningful work. Rather, designers were involved at the outset as equal creative partners. Form did not follow function; it was an integral part of the functional calculus. Jonathan Ive, Apple’s visionary product designer, didn’t just make boxes in which circuit boards and chips were tucked out of sight. He designed machines that were gateways to satisfying, and often ecstatic, user experiences.

Sony to Buy Movie Rights to Steve Jobs Book for $1 Million (FOX Business)

Steve Jobs and the idea of letting go
By HANK STUEVER | THE WASHINGTON POST

People built their lives around the objects Steve Jobs gave them: the MacBook, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. What happened with Jobs and Apple over the past decade is one of the rare participatory phenomena of our disconnected and no-longer-common culture.

The Steve Jobs I Knew (WSJ)

Steve Jobs' Schizophrenic Approach to the Practice of Public Relations
By FRASER SEITEL | FOX NEWS

No other company or CEO in history could command the attention that Jobs and Apple did when introducing a new product. Indeed, most companies announcing new products have to beg journalists to cover or even arrange pre-introduction “exclusives” with favored reporters to ensure that somebody at least will report on their new market entry. Not Apple.

Steve Jobs and the Future of Journalism
By JUDY LUBIN | THE HUFFINGTON POST

While the iPad may not have saved journalism, it's clear that Jobs has had a tremendous impact on the field. In a 2010 Atlantic magazine article on How to Save the News, Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicted that in "five or 10 years, most news will be consumed on an electronic device of some sort." If Schmidt's forecast pans out, it's likely most will agree that Apple's iPad set the stage for a transformational shift of that magnitude to occur.

Steve Jobs Had LSD. We Have the iPhone (TIME)

In Praise of Bad Steve
By D. B. GRADY | THE ATLANTIC

When engineers working on the very first iPod completed the prototype, they presented their work to Steve Jobs for his approval. Jobs played with the device, scrutinized it, weighed it in his hands, and promptly rejected it. It was too big.

The engineers explained that they had to reinvent inventing to create the iPod, and that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller. Jobs was quiet for a moment. Finally he stood, walked over to an aquarium, and dropped the iPod in the tank. After it touched bottom, bubbles floated to the top.

"Those are air bubbles," he snapped. "That means there's space in there. Make it smaller."

Steve Jobs was a genius, and one of the most important businessmen and inventors of our time.... His life was too short, but never wasted, and his impact reaches even those who've never touched an Apple product. He ushered in the personal computing era, and rallied from pancreatic cancer to show us a glimpse of the post-PC world. That didn't just happen; it was made to happen.

Siri: The Perfect Robot for Our Time
Siri combines the human-helper visions of previous decades with the new information organizing bots of recent times.
By ALEXIS MADRIGAL | THE ATLANTIC

Apple's latest trick will debut this week: a voice-driven artificial intelligence system created with DARPA funds and integrated into the company's newest, the iPhone 4S. Apple calls it Siri, and if the hype holds up, the software will be the biggest deployment of human-like AI the world has seen.

Siri is aware of locations and can remind you of things in particular places. Siri can call cabs for you and bring up restaurants. Siri can take dictations for emails and text. You communicate with Siri with your voice, nothing more.

FLASHBACK FROM MAY 1993:

What's Next? Steve Jobs's Vision, So on Target at Apple, Now Is Falling Short
He Struggles to Win a Niche In the Computer Industry After a Series of Missteps––Deep Faith in His Own Genius
By G. PASCAL ZACHARY & KEN YAMADA | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The 38-year-old co-founder of Apple Computer Inc. is a spellbinding spinner of visions, the most famous being his once-unconventional ideas that foresaw the personal-computer revolution. For years, his biggest strength was his ability to mesmerize even savvy people with sales pitches for new, but sometimes flawed, products.

Since Apple ousted him in 1985, however, his vision of creating another major computer company has begun to look like a pipe dream....

All this amounts to a steep fall from a very lofty perch. Mr. Jobs led and inspired the team that created the most acclaimed personal computer, Apple's Macintosh, but his Next workstation seems destined to become a high-tech museum relic. He himself is fighting to show he still matters in the computer industry.

"People have stopped paying attention to him," says Richard Shaffer, editor of Computer Letter. "It's sad."

FLASHBACK FROM APRIL 1998:
Jobs Makes Headway at Apple, But Not Without Much Turmoil
By JIM CARLTON | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

No one should doubt the intensity of Mr. Jobs's desire to save the company he helped create 20 years ago, as shown by that interview last fall. He describes as "bozos" John Sculley, who forced him out in the 1980s, and Gilbert Amelio, the Apple CEO dismissed last summer, and would like nothing better than to show them how it's done. Mr. Jobs has labored for the past nine months without pay to reverse Apple's slide, pulling off neat marketing moves, launching development of new products and at least temporarily restoring profitability. He has so impressed the board that it plans to give him a hefty financial reward whether or not he agrees to become permanent CEO. His performance, says director Edgar S. Woolard, a former CEO of DuPont Co., has been "phenomenal."

Firing Steve Jobs was "a terrible mistake"

Ad that changed the world
By JOSY PAUL | BUSINESS STANDARD

It’s what made Apple famous. ‘1984’ wasn’t just about personal computers. It was more personal than that.

It is said to be the greatest ad ever made. And yet it ran only once. It’s the ad that made Apple famous. The ad that made personal computers more personal. The ad that made legends out of the people like Lee Clow and Steve Hayden (the people behind the film). The ad that put Chiat/Day (the advertising agency)on the world map. The ad of the century. The most controversial, most discussed ad in the world. And behind all this fame, glory and unending conversation was one man: who else, but Steve Jobs.

BEST APPLE COMMERCIAL EVER
"By the time Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company had lost its way, with a confusing lineup of undistinguished products. Jobs knew ads touting them would ring false. His answer: the "Think Different" campaign." (Newsweek)

Super Computer


I'm a Mac










Bill Gates on the Mac

The Best of Frenemies
By LEANDER KAHNEY | NEWSWEEK

The relationship between Gates and Jobs was always complicated, sometimes nasty, and, in the end, surprisingly tender.

PHOTOS: Steve Jobs Memorials Around the World

PHOTOS: Apple's Seeds of Innovation

PHOTOS: Steve Jobs Through the Years

A Chief's Gradual Decline in Health (Newsweek)

Job's Unorthodox Treatment (Daily Beast)

The Godfathers of His Genius: The inspired innovators before him who made Steve Job's triumphs possible. (Newsweek)

Steve Jobs dies: Remembering a legacy (Washington Post)

Steve's Jobs's death leaves Apple facing challenges without its lead visionary (Washington Post)

Apple Fights On Without Its Muse (WSJ)

Thank you, Steve Jobs (Washington Post)

Steve Jobs bio: Jobs told author, ‘I wanted my kids to know me’ (Washington Post)

The Wilderness Years: The bleakest time in Jobs’s career would turn out to be his most productive. (Newsweek)

Thanks for the Future: How a college dropout trusted his gut, defied corporate America, and carried us into tomorrow (Newsweek)

Laurene Powell Jobs is warm, funny, socially engaged, and intensely private. Meet the apple of the great genius’s eye. (Newsweek)

Steve Wozniak built a motherboard. Steve Jobs built a business. The seeds of Apple’s triumph. (Newsweek)