The Insanely Great Life of Steve Jobs

There is already a ton of articles commenting on the passing of Steve Jobs and as an Apple user since 1989 and an Apple Dealer since 2001, I thought I'd add to the pile.

Few people in life achieve greatness. For the rarified few, the vast majority achieve one great thing. Steve Jobs achieved many, many great things, which puts him in a very unique class of individuals. And what makes him even more unique is he achieved three great things after his initial diagnosis of cancer - the iPod Touch, the iPhone, and the iPad. Just one of those would be an amazing accomplishment in life. This was just the final act in a too-short life of 56 years.

Some people call him this generation's Edison, but that's not quite accurate. Steve didn't really "invent" things - he had a very talented team of engineers do that for him. Yes, his name is on a number of patents, but he was more of a conceptual over-seer with a vision who pushed those poor engineers to heights they would have not accomplished on their own.

Steve Jobs' genius was user interface. When you look at the sum of his life with Apple, what made him and his products stand out was the way technology interacted with humans. He didn't invent the keyboard and mouse, he didn't invent cell phones or touchscreens, but what he did was make them easy to use, and more than that - fun.

The legacy of Jobs exists in so many non-Apple products. The Macintosh changed computers forever. The iPod Touch has revolutionized touch-screen - everything has to be touchscreen now, whether it be cell phones or video cameras.

Apple, in the end, is an user-interface company. The same way Honda is really an engine company, and Nikon is a lens company, Apple is an user-interface company, and the success of Apple is applying their genius to different products (computers, MP3 players, cell phones, tablets). And at the core of that genius was Steve Jobs.

The video at the top of this post is the commencement speech he gave at Stanford in June 2005. It is a touching, insightful and philosophical speech. It's worth the 10 minutes out of your day to watch it.