Thursday 6 October 2011

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs


Few hours ago, 'breaking news notification' appeared on my iPad. It said that Apple Inc's founder Steve Jobs passed away of age 56. I was utterly shocked. Until today, I thought one can be shocked by someone's death only if they were closely related. I didn't know Steve Jobs personally and nor did he, but his death was a crushing news. I always admired his vision and story of overcoming the difficulties he had to face. Born without father's care, getting adopted away by his mother, dropping out of college broke, getting fired from a company he founded, fighting an uphill battle with a cancer, and et cetera. If someone drew a life graph of Jobs, it would be an lines of ups and downs till the end.

At first, I wasn't a big fan of Apple Inc. As a person who was born and raised from a country which its 97% of the population uses 'MS Windows', Apple was a somewhat illusive. It was after moving to Canada when I first heard of the company and its CEO. I began to use their products and was surprised how easy it was to use. I love tech gadgets as much I love photography. Apple's precision and quality control on their product is really par to Leica's. Naturally, I wanted to know who the company's CEO was, I looked into Jobs' keynotes, articles, and history events. His life was incredible and he became my role model.


I don't want to bore anyone with my fanboy-istic storytelling of his life. The best part about his story was the fact that he was just a mere 'human'. Many people worship him like some kind of god, but I think he was far from a saint or a villain. On this early days, he was cruel and not forgiving to his people. He lied to his friend (co-founder of Apple) and took more than half of his pay check. But at the end, he turned over his flaws in to his strengths. He changed his cold attitude into charismatic leadership, slyness into a creative mind.  Idealistically, every people wants to be a good person. But as  Karen. M said, "There are only shades of gray. Black and white are nothing more than lofty ideals in our minds". Steve Jobs was the ultimate "grey shade" who pursued his goal. He saw things differently and wrote an entire page of human history. 


Here’s to the Crazy One. 

The misfit. The rebel. The troublemaker. The round peg in the square hole. 

The One Who Saw Things Differently. 

He wasn't fond of rules. And he had no respect for the status quo. 

You can quote him, disagree with him, glorify or vilify him. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore him. Because he changed things. 

He pushed the human race forward. And while some may have seen him as the crazy one, we saw genius. 

Because the man who was crazy enough to think he could change the world, was the one who did.

He was a great role model and will alway be.