Thursday morning, a bouquet and an apple with a missing bite were placed outside the Apple store on Regent Street. It was the first of many tributes to Steve Jobs, who has died aged 56.
With Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne and Mike Markkula, Jobs founded Apple Inc. in 1976. Long before pads, pods and phones, they had a mission to develop the first practical and affordable personal computers. That so many people read of Jobs’ death on devices he conceived is testament to their success.
As with almost all highly intelligent, creative and successful individuals, there is little doubt Jobs could be a tricky customer. He certainly had an impressive ego which generated friction with colleagues and contemporaries on a regular basis. Indeed, less than twelve months after the launch of first Mac machine, Jobs was relieved of his job with Apple – only returning once his NeXT machines proved irresistible to his old firm and they bought him out. (When Tim Berners Lee devised the World Wide Web, it was a NeXT machine he used as its first server.)
Steve Jobs will always, even now he has gone, be compared with that other giant of the geek generation, Bill Gates and their differences are not always apparent. But perhaps it is Jobs’ role as owner of The Graphics Group which is most telling. When TGG sealed a deal with Disney to build a series of digitally animated feature films, they changed their name to Pixar and released Toy Story. It is this ability to see technology as something at which to marvel, rather than simply deploy, that marks Jobs out. He was a creative not a scientist.
Steve Jobs' achievements are unique. His expertise was in digital technology, but it was married to a creative, artistic heart which revealed itself, not only in the glassy graphics
of his inventions, but in the humour and magic of Woody and Buzz - or my favourites, Sulley and Mike.
Yes, his idiosyncrasies were challenging, and the Apple brand has become rather too much of a consumer fetish. But without his inventiveness and ability to imagine products to revolutionise the way we communicate, listen to music, design and work – we would never have the Apple products which are now so ubiquitous and loved.
Jobs was never content to accept a device or system that simply
functioned. He understood that successful, technical
applications need ergonomic appeal, must be attractive as well
as effective. In the same way physicists perceive beauty in
mathematics, Steve Jobs sought aesthetic perfection in machinery.
Legions of Mac disciples swear he found it.
In the middle of 2009, with his health failing, Steve received a donated liver and his doctors praised his recovery. But January this year saw Apple announcing he was taking a medical leave of absence. He would never return to the company he founded all those years ago.
To lure John Sculley from Pepsi-Cola to Apple, Jobs asked: "Do you want to sell sugar water ... or do you want to ... change the world?"
It was no empty invitation.
He is survived by his wife, son and three daughters.
