Apple.com homepage: Tribute to Steve Jobs
I found out that Steve Jobs died on Wednesday, 10/5/11, when a stranger on the M23 gave me the newsflash off his iPhone. It didn’t really hit me, however, until l decided to scour CNN.com the next day and stopped at the Fifth Ave Apple Store today, four days later. Upon scouring CNN, I re-watched Job’s commencement speech at Stanford University’s graduation. Stunning. Please watch it here.
It is from this speech that many of his famous quotes were extracted that wallpapered Facebook upon his death:
“You’ve got to find what you love.”
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle…keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
“…I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose…There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life…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.”
“Stay hungry. Stay foolish”
These are just some of his excerpts, but I could easily paste the entire transcript here and not feel it to be redundant. This man is easily the Einstein/Edison/Etc of our day. Everybody…Every..Body..uses Macs, ipods, iphones, ipads…all of it. These products dramatically affected our lives. But it’s not just that. Job’s story is one of triumph o’er adversity and following one’s dreams if I’ve ever heard one. He is a life story of exceptions to the rule: dropping out of college; inventing Apple out of his garage; being fired from Apple, his own company, his own invention!; revolutionizing music players, revolutionizing phones, pressing on through his bout with pancreatic cancer…this man is the living example of the Japanese proverb: “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
From an article in the Daily News on Friday, 10/7:
“He was Steve Jobs and he was what we still want America to be, a guy who came out of a garage in Los Altos, Calif., with his buddy Steve Wozniak and his big ideas and changed the world so much they talk about him with Einstein and Edison and Henry Ford. He was Apple Inc., and iPods and iPads, and iTunes and Pixar Animation and phones that are like home entertainment centers, the guy who did the most to take the world and put it in the palm of your hand – or the tip of your fingers. And Jobs said something along the way that was as smart as any gadget that came out of his imagination, something that spoke to all the dreamers like him: ‘it’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.’ He changed the world and he touched the world”
I was at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store today and it was really incredible to read the personal messages that people wrote to this guy: messages on post-it notes, messages on apples, messages in all languages, messages from all corners of the world, messages on iPad boxes, heartfelt notes of thanks and remembrance. People held up their iPads with the video of a candle flickering. Flowers graced the foot of the memorial. Artlcles of the fateful day served as a timestamp amongst the memorabilia. There was a reverence for this man in front of the Apple store this morning and “iAdmire Steve Jobs.” Thank you.
