Thursday, October 6, 2011

Steve Jobs Dead at 56

Well I didn't expect that, at least not so soon after he announced stepping down. Not that I feel anything special for him; I'm not an Applehead, never met him, not even a technogeek. But there's a saga to his life and he was one of my generation. As my generation dies off (and we have been for 4 decades) I watch what we know, what we did, go with it. Not so for Steve Jobs. He made it on his brains and commitment, something not done often enough these days. He changed things, really- changed the world as we knew it. Whether that's good or bad is immaterial. He will be remembered for all the change he brought, all his hard work and determination. That should be enough.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

He left quite a legacy.

Austan said...

This is my favorite Steve Jobs quote:
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."
– Stanford commencement speech 2005

paulg said...

Here's a paragraph about his parentage from his Wikipedia page that I find fascinating:

"Jobs was born in San Francisco[1] and was adopted by the family of Paul Jobs and Clara Jobs (née Hagopian) of Mountain View, California.[32] Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, Patti. Jobs' biological parents—Abdulfattah John Jandali, a Syrian Muslim immigrant to the U.S.,[33][34] who later became a political science professor at the University of Nevada and is presently a vice president of Boomtown Hotel Casino in Reno, Nevada,[35] and Joanne Schieble (later Simpson), an American graduate student[36] of Swiss and German ancestry[37] who went on to become a speech language pathologist[38]—eventually married. The marriage produced Jobs' biological sister, novelist Mona Simpson; the two of them first met in 1986 as adults and enjoyed a close relationship since, with Jobs regularly visiting Simpson in Manhattan."