Tim Cook offers tribute to Steve Jobs on 8th anniversary of his passing
Apple CEO Tim Cook has marked the 8th anniversary of the passing of company co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs with a post to Twitter, publishing a photograph of the luminary outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store.
Posted to Twitter on Saturday morning, Cook quotes Steve Jobs in his piece, writing "The most precious resource we all have is time." Cook goes on to tell Jobs posthumously "Remembering you always."
Steve Jobs passed away at around 3pm Pacific Time on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at his Palo Alto home, aged 56. The death was caused by pancreatic cancer, a rare illness Jobs fought against since he was 49, and one that prompted an extended leave of absence from Apple in 2009 to undergo a liver transplant. He later stepped down from his role at Apple in August 2011.
The choice of the accompanying photograph of Jobs is apt, as it is of the Apple logo within the famous glass cube of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York. The retail outlet recently reopened following an extensive two-year refurbishment, which saw the underground store expanded in size, and the Cube itself was temporarily removed and reworked at an estimated cost of $2 million.
Jobs originally opened Apple Fifth Avenue in 2006, and since then it has received over 57 million visitors.
Posted to Twitter on Saturday morning, Cook quotes Steve Jobs in his piece, writing "The most precious resource we all have is time." Cook goes on to tell Jobs posthumously "Remembering you always."
Steve Jobs passed away at around 3pm Pacific Time on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at his Palo Alto home, aged 56. The death was caused by pancreatic cancer, a rare illness Jobs fought against since he was 49, and one that prompted an extended leave of absence from Apple in 2009 to undergo a liver transplant. He later stepped down from his role at Apple in August 2011.
"The most precious resource we all have is time." - SJ. Remembering you always. pic.twitter.com/nsUUiFzZnz
-- Tim Cook (@tim_cook)
The choice of the accompanying photograph of Jobs is apt, as it is of the Apple logo within the famous glass cube of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York. The retail outlet recently reopened following an extensive two-year refurbishment, which saw the underground store expanded in size, and the Cube itself was temporarily removed and reworked at an estimated cost of $2 million.
Jobs originally opened Apple Fifth Avenue in 2006, and since then it has received over 57 million visitors.
Comments
Some may carp about the fact that these titans could not have accomplished what they did without the scientists and inventors who made the technology they used possible. While that may be true the technology is useless until someone like Jobs or Gates takes it to market and makes it available to society and the common man.
Now get you head out of your f@cking smartphone and live life.
There is a very simple response to people who say that and this is: So, where's your "iPhone"?
After all, if there was nothing to it, then every company should have come up with the idea first. A lot of Apple's competitors have spent a long time trying to make the iPhone seem like an obvious idea (Google et.al. during the Samsung trial for example). Their goal was to make the iPhone seem like an obvious, natural convergence of technologies. It wasn't obvious, it wasn't an expected or natural convergence, it wasn't Apple being in the right place at the right time. It was a tremendous risk, it took a lot of hard work and significant vision for what could be possible. The first "iPhone" looks like a bunch of loosely wired parts on a desk, it is still remarkable that they were able to package all of it together into one little iPod-sized unit.
So in summary: sure Steve Jobs didn't invent all the technologies inside the iPhone. But those same technologies were available to everyone, and yet it was only Apple which were able to bring the iPhone to market. (As it may happen to be, Apple did invent a lot of the technologies in the iPhone. Apple are also the inventor of a lot of the basic technology that we use today.)
The analogous argument would be to look at the Mona Lisa and saying "oh but he didn't invent paint did he?! He didn't invent portraits, did he??"
Godspeed Steve Jobs!
I’ll always remember what a Google engineer said when the iPhone was introduced...
Chris DeSalvo’s reaction to the iPhone was immediate and visceral. “As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’”
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-day-google-had-to-start-over-on-android/282479/
Our resident Google sycophant will dispute this, of course. Can’t wait to hear his spin.
Of all the things I do or could do, there is still nothing that satisfies me as much as getting down by a nice lake and fishing for hours and hours. Catching something is irrelevant when you are simply taking in all the tiny things around that go unnoticed for almost all of us, virtually all the time. Those moments are priceless.
Then, from out of nowhere you could be told your life will be far shorter or far more different than it is and you are made savagely aware of what those priceless moments really represent and I'm sure many regret not having taken more of that precious time to do the things that matter to them.
I wasn't a fan of the Jobs I 'knew' but when anybody receives news which sets a premature end date to their life, it is always a reminder of the importance of time. Jobs will have had the same regrets because all of us take something for granted - and always will.
Sadly, but also luckily, it is these situations that make some people find a little more time for the things that matter to them, however insignificant they may seem to others.
When my wife was in hospital and the surgeon came out to tell me there was 'nothing more they could do' but they would keep trying for a while, I spent twenty minutes thinking about time in an isolated, cold white room with nothing in it except me.
I was lucky, after those twenty minutes he came back to announce a miracle and she would live. That was 2011 and I still haven't done enough to take advantage of all the time since then. Human nature perhaps.
Jobs didn't get the miracle. Neither did a friend who recently died at 50 due to lung cancer and another who had prostrate cancer but these cases and all the others, serve as reminders that when we're doing those things that really satisfy us, we should reflect on how important they are and try to find the time to squeeze all we can out of them.
Were Steve alive now, I would not expect Apple to be radically different than it is now, but certainly there would be some minor differences -- Steve was already leaning towards working more closely with just a handful of people than running the company, so I would imagine he would have ridden more herd on Jony Ive in the design department perhaps, maybe avoided some of the (small handful of) mistakes the company has made in the years since his death (but -- let's be real -- would have made some of his own mistakes instead).
I think overall he'd be pretty pleased with the product lineup, and that Tim has pivoted to relying less on regular innovation (which is healthier to help foster and develop said innovation) and more towards keeping the company healthy and competitive between "next big things." I think he'd freakin' love the Apple Watch and HomePod, and maybe not be such a fan of IAP on apps (which of course Apple is itself starting to course-correct on), among other things.
Of course, I only met him once and corresponded with him a couple of times, so I'm certainly not some sage close friend who knew him well, but I think the Jobs I met was a guy who cared most about amazing, high-quality products and strong customer service, and Apple still has both in spades.
Finally, if Steve was alive, there is one thing on which I'm certain: Apple would still not be paying dividends or giving "analysts" the time of day, so I would guess the stock would be about half what it is now.
Makes me think of all the time wasted here trying to convince others of some esoteric point about which brand is best or more deserving of consumer’s choice. It’s all flattery by imitation of the company and product that invented the form; we all attempt to compare ourselves to the best.
But in a world where, as you so eloquently point out, life can dramatically change in a moment, why expend so much of our time on so fruitless a pursuit? Unless there’s reward beyond merely making a point. Unless it’s connected some way to our income or wealth.
Isn’t it better to spend more time fishing?
Apple is never "innovating" according to iKnockoff morons. I have a very anti-Apple friend who's the biggest idiot in the world but believes he's smarter than everyone in the world. That's just how these people are. He hated Jobs and complained that Apple was not innovating after buying his first knockoff iPhone. He'd praise every knockoff Apple product but never gave credit to the actual inventors because they were Apple. He thinks Samsung and SamsungPay are innovative.
Apple is always innovating whether the media says so or not. AirPods is one of the latest examples but I guess 2 years is too old?
Even when Steve was alive Apple was "not innovating", "doomed" and "greedy". The same morons who claim "Steve is rolling in his grave" are the same idiots who hated Steve. They just had to move the goalpost to his grave site to keep hating.