It had to come. If not now, later, but the end always comes. Steve Jobs resigns, handing Apple over to Tim Cook. You can read Steve's own short resignation letter here.
The computer world, the consumer electronics world...aye, the whole world...is less better off for the resignation of Steve Jobs.
You know he wouldn't resign if it wasn't for his health. The body gives out long before the spirit and that just drenches this news with a rain of sadness.
Across the world, an outpouring of emotion washes across the internet--much of it on the famed devices that Steve built.
It was 1976 actually on April Fools' Day, that the two Steves-- Wozniak and Jobs-- created a new computer circuit board in a Silicon Valley garage. I actually remember their first press release later that year...and I discarded it as insignificant at the time. How little do you know at the time? The electronics trade press that year were full of the rise of Betamax, boomboxes, and personal computers were not yet.
Why do we love Steve Jobs so much?
Unlike the Woz who is practically cuddly, who is the overall good guy, who is the Engineer we all admire...the other Steve was...well, prickly. He could bite your nose off in disagreement. He rolled over his managers with no shame. He verbally pistol-whipped anyone that stood in his way.
Frank Perdue, America's pre-packaged chicken king, used to say: "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken." Well, it took a tougher man to make a better Apple.
We love Steve Jobs because he was tough...not your macho-muscle tough...but the Winston Churchill -tough type of never-never-never-give-in.
First, you need to understand Steve grew up in the '60s...and went to college (only briefly) in 1972. This was the time period where if you were young, you were long-haired and against the war in Vietnam and against authority in general. "Anyone over 30 couldn't be trusted." In this milieu, Apple was founded to give computers to the people instead of business and military. Apple was anti-establishment and at that time the establishment was big business/big government as represented by IBM.
With brilliant visual images, the famous Macintosh commercial directed by Ridley Scott played during the SuperBowl in 1984...and resonated the Apple mission: power to the people!
One year later, in 1985, Microsoft conceded defeat with MS-DOS and launched Windows that looked suspiciously like the Mac interface. When Mac fans cried "Foul," the PC fans simply claimed Apple stole the concept from Xerox Parc. It's one thing to take an idea from lab and bring it from market and it's another for a big company to copy it from a competitor.
The conversion of Microsoft to icons on the desktop hurt the niche Mac.
Later that same year, 1985, Steve was publicly tossed out of the company he founded in the famous row with John Sculley, a ex-Pepsi CEO that Jobs brought in to run Apple because Wall Street wanted "a businessman."
Then Sculley was seen as the saviour of Apple. Really. Steve Jobs was discarded, forgotten and Sculley reigned until 1993, his role at Apple granting him a big enough high tech halo that he even wrote a book as a high tech guru.
But when Sculley left Apple, he plummeted from sight...out of high tech..out of the halo that Apple had given him.
Apple had hard times. By 1997, the company asked Jobs back as an "advisor." Steve had launched NeXT, bought Pixar...neither huge successes at the time and Steve grabbed the opportunity to get back to his dream, Apple.
But it wasn't easy...Apple had lost its way. If it wasn't for a mercy investment of $150 million by Microsoft, maybe Apple wouldn't have made it. It must have taken a big swallow for Steve Jobs to get that money from Bill Gates. But along the way, part of being tough, is doing what has to be done. In 2000, Jobs was once again officially named CEO.
In 2001, the first iPod. In 2003, iTunes. In 2007, Apple releases its first smartphone. In 2010, the iPad sells 15 million units.
It was the greatest comeback in tech history... no the greatest in business history.
We love Steve Jobs because he rose quickly, fell down, picked himself up and had another go. And succeeded. We love Steve Jobs because he thumbed his nose at big business, all the while he became one. We love Steve Jobs because he showed up Big Business...first the PC business, then the consumer electronics business, then the mobile phone business and then the PC business again.
He showed Big Business that they don't really know what their customers really want...and that for all their workgroups, product teams, committees (and other Big Business "bs")...one man, one person, one very determined individual could create great products and change the world.
We love Steve Jobs because his best product was not Apple, it was his struggle to be an individual in a world that would have us all toe invisible lines.
And now, Steve's departure...shrouded with health issues, will leave the world minus one less hero...but the legend will live on.
