Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

In Memory of Steve Jobs

I was going to post an entertainment post yesterday, but with the passing of Steve Jobs last night I felt, that being this is news blog, I should write about this incredible person.  Everyone last night was calling Steve Jobs a Visionary .  What is a visionary?  A Visionary is a person of unusually keen foresight, some who can dream of wild and untested ideas.  Steve Jobs was a visionary who had dreams and then worked to make them real. 

Steve Jobs had a normal time growing up.  He was adopted as a baby into a loving middle class family. He worked hard and went to college, but dropped out of a regular college program so he could take the classes he wanted to really take and learn what he wanted to learn . In 1976 he created Apple Computer in his garage with his friend Steve Wozniak on April Fool's Day.  His idea was to take the computer which mostly big machines owned by big companies, government agencies, and universities and make it so people could have them in their homes.  His first "Personal Computer"  came out in 1976 called Apple 1. In 1977 they put out Apple II, the first personal computer with color graphics.   In 1984, he did one of the coolest commercials ever for the Super Bowl called "1984" based on the novel 1984 by George Orwell. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhsWzJo2sN4 

Directed by filmmaker Ridley Scott, it launched the Macintosh Computer.  The computer sold great, but within two years Steve Jobs resigned from Apple after having trouble with the other leaders at the company.  He went after two other companies  NeXT  a computer company for universities  and Pixar which he bought from George Lucas who created "Star Wars" .    In 1995 Pixar produced Toy Story which changed the way animated movies were done, being the first computer animated feature film.  In 1997 Steve Jobs returned to Apple and began working a new product that would revolution the way we viewed and listened to music and videos. The iPod was launched in 2001 with the iTunes store going online in 2003.  The success was incredible.  With all this going on in 2004 Steve Jobs discovered he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer.  The iPhone came out in 2007 and the iPad in 2010.  Steve Jobs took time off from Apple at various time from 2004 to 2011, until he officially resigned as CEO August 24, 2011.    He passed away yesterday. 

His lifelong business competitor, but still good friend Bill Gates said:  The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.   "    His catch phrase was to make things "insanely great", and he did.   

When it came to cancer and death,  Steve Jobs talked about this too and what is important in life.  As a tribute to him, I would like to close this blog with his words from a commencement speech he gave at Stanford. 

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it…. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. "

Thank you , Mr . Jobs for daring to dream and following your heart.  The world is a closer and better place because of it.  May I have the courage to do the same with my life. 

My thoughts and prayers are with your family today. 

RJ 

*I ran out of time to list all the sources for the above post.  I will post them tonight as a comment on the blog