Simply Said

Inimitable Leader – Steve Jobs

His impact. His vision.

Guest post – authored by John Biggs of Tech Crunch.

An inspirational tribute to Steve Jobs.

- a passionate generation-changing cultural leader -

- Apple founder and long-time CEO -

Intro – Joanne Maly of Lincoln Maly Marketing

No doubt, each of us experienced our own personal reactions and emotions on Wednesday evening, August 23, 2011 when Apple announced that Steve Jobs was resigning as CEO of Apple because of health reasons.

Steve Jobs personally impacted the culture of America and the world with his own entrepreneurial spirit and vision, as well as the creative culture of excellence that he has inspired and exemplified for more than a generation. Mr. Jobs has become more than a business leader, technology icon, and innovator.  The creative genius of Mr. Jobs and his very public life helped this man become ‘a real person’ in our lives even though we have never met him personally. We are sad for his failing health and for the loss of his continued ‘thinking-outside-the-box’ inventions.

The day after the announcement, I read the following post written by TechCrunch.com editor, John Biggs and was inspired by the beauty of the John’s words and the simplicity with which he captured the impact, spirit, and legacy of Steve Jobs.

John Biggs has graciously agreed to allow me to include his TechCrunch,com post on the ‘Simply Said’ Blog. Thank you, John.  - jlm

John Bigg’s bio follows at the end of this Simply Said Blog entry.

Steve Jobs: The End of an Era

by John Biggs on TechCrunch.com, August 24, 2011

We all know the broad strokes: a boy is born to a graduate student and her Syrian boyfriend. She places the boy for adoption. He comes to live with Paul and Clara. Paul is a machinist who moved to San Francisco after WWII. He grows up in Santa Clara county. It’s flat, lots of one story buildings, mostly middle/upper middle class, outside of the bad parts. Parts of it are pretty, parts aren’t. He wasn’t coddled. His biological mother makes his adoptive parents promise to send him to college. In fourth grade he has a great teacher and, presumably, another and another.

His parents scrape to send him to Reed. He drops out of college and starts dropping in on classes that interest him. He makes money returning bottles and he hits the Hare Krishna temple now and then for a free meal. He takes calligraphy, eschews the typical coursework, and at age 20 he and a buddy start a company.

He’s a buddhist with a temper. He cuts down rivals and builds up a team of 4,000 dedicated to his singular vision. He’s ousted, builds another company or two, and comes back. He’s kind of a hippie, enjoying Bob Dylan and the Beatles. He loves music.

He’s leaving, now, the victim of something gnawing at his health like sea spray whittles a wooden pier.

Where does that leave Apple? And where does that leave us?

I wasn’t always a Mac lover. I thought they were over-priced and pretty, the candy colors far too silly for my 486 tastes. Any chip that had the word Power in its name was overcompensating, I wagered.

But over the past decade I learned the satisfaction of a machine that just works. It’s a machine that the boy put most of his life into, a machine that has the heart of a much older thing, a thing that lay blinking and frantic in a Stanford computer lab somewhere and then, over time, shrank down to something you and I can fit into our pockets.

Many complained that the ecosystem that he created was a walled garden, but I’d equate it to a pasture. “The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance,” wrote Zen master Shunryu Suzuki. “But its background is always in perfect harmony.” In the front, anything can happen. In the back, perfect calm and order.

There is a strain of Internet thought that requires us to tear down, to refuse to see the other side. There will be plenty of that going on in the next few days as talking heads talk. But name one CEO who, on leaving his company, will raise such a wave of well-wishes and interest? When Michael Dell dodders off or Howard Stringer plops into a club chair for his final cigar, will anyone care the next day?

We all know the broad strokes: The man got sicker, he almost quit, kept at it. He embraced a successor and groomed him to be as calm a force as he once was. He kept us surprised, entertained, constantly speculating. We wondered where he was. If he was well.

We all know the broad strokes: He isn’t well. He’s stepped down. Another Buddhist (or near enough to one) said “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

Godspeed, Mr. Jobs. We’ll miss you on stage.

About John Biggs

John Biggs lives in Brooklyn, New York and writes about technology, security, gadget, gear, wristwatches, and the Internet. After spending four years as an IT programmer, John switched gears and became a full-time journalist.

His work has appeared in the New York Times, Laptop, PC Upgrade, Surge, Gizmodo, Men’s Health, InSync, Linux Journal, Popular Science, Sync. John has written a book called Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age.

John Biggs is currently Editor-in-Chief of CrunchGear.com and he runs the BigWideLogic.com family of blogs, including SlushPile.net and WristWatchReview.com. John also runs the HourTime Podcast with Ariel Adams.

Thank you for allowing us to share your post, with our Simply Said Blog readers.  - jlm

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