Remembering Steve Jobs
”Power and sex!” Those were the words with which Steve Jobs introduced the first Powerbook made out of titanium in 2001. That was just the beginning of his second coming. Before that he had already rolled out Macintosh, NeXT and Pixar.
Jobs was a controversial personality, but one thing is certain – by instilling his charisma to make his products sexy, he reclaimed technology from the hands of technocrats.
Also, despite being neither designer nor engineer, Jobs excelled as the ”ultimate end-user”. Henry Ford once claimed “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Steve Jobs never asked for faster horses, or cars for that matter – he demanded his personal jetpack.
In his last outing as Apple's CEO he attributed the company's success to the polygamous marriage of technology, liberal arts, and humanities. No mention of business, growth or profits there, yet this oblique approach yielded massive success.
One more thing… What really ought to resonate within the design and tech community left behind is Jobs's ability to articulate advanced concepts in a very inclusive way. One of the best examples of this was when he said ”Computer is the equivalent of bicycle for our minds”. And this was inspired by a scientific article on energy-efficiency of condors, humans and humans on bicycles. Thinking different is a polygamous affair indeed.
