Steve Jobs
I have written the few words I intend to write here multiple different ways, none of them satisfactory. So, I’ll tell you what I am feeling instead because I really didn’t expect to feel this way. I feel a sense of loss. I haven’t been an Apple ‘fanboy’ since the mid-1990s. And yes, I know Steve Jobs is still very much alive and Apple is still very much an amazing company.
But, damn’t if listening to Steve Jobs talk in the video below wasn’t inspirational. It was honest, courageous, thoughtful and just plain wonderful. It brought all the memories back and reminded me why I do what I do. The man is special.
Thank you, Steve. I wish you well.
P.S. – Thanks to Cullen Roche for posting this video first.
I’m not into Steve’s hagiography.
The Reality Distortion Field of the likes that Steve Jobs was a master, is what convinces people to take on more risk, be they employees who willingly subjected themselves to a “hero/shithead roller coaster” [1] or consumers who’d go as far as selling their own kidney to purchase the iPad [2]. In the case of Apple, the risk taking has paid off handsomely. Unfortunately, the risks made by other stakeholders who were inspired by similarly charismatic evangelists projecting their own brand of RDF, didn’t end so well. And so today, no one is rushing to elevate to sainthood, the purveyors of securitization of mortgage debt.
We’d do well to understand this phenomenon.
[1]https://www.allaboutstevejobs.com/being/3-work/3-work.html
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13639934
When I said, “I really didn’t expect to feel this way” I meant that I don’t see Jobs as some infallible super-manager. You can see that from my posts that are critical of Apple. But that was definitely an inspiring talk he gave and he is certainly a unique innovator like Disney or Ford, two men who also had their considerable flaw too.