Steve Jobs: 56 Years of Genius

WhatPirate Flag at Half Staff can I say that hasn’t been said? Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, creator of the home computer, the graphical operating system and the smart phone, is dead at the age of 56. Fifty-six years is far too short for any man or woman, much less one of Jobs’ talents. And yet, 56 years was all Jobs needed. Though he did not live to a ripe hold age, he did more in the time given to him than most people could do in a dozen lifetimes.

I was never lucky enough to meet the man. I never got to experience his charisma first-hand, the so-called “reality distortion field“. But Steve Jobs was a part of my life, just as he was a part of yours. The world we live in would be worse without his existence.

You Are Already Naked

We would do well to live life like Jobs, to focus on giving our best to the world: working harder and smarter than we could possibly imagine. Because as Steve Jobs said, in his commencement speech at Stanford University:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Rest in peace, Mr. Jobs. You now belong to the ages.

Steve Lovelace

Steve Lovelace is a writer and graphic artist. After graduating Michigan State University in 2004, he taught Spanish in Samoa before moving to Dallas, Texas. He blogs regularly at http://steve-lovelace.com.

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11 Responses

  1. October 5, 2011

    […] 5, 2011: Steve Jobs passed away today, less than two months after stepping down as Apple CEO. Here is my eulogy for the […]

  2. January 7, 2013

    […] From the earliest days with Jobs and Woz, to 1990s Dark Ages, to rise of the iPhone and the death of Steve Jobs, Apple successes have been matched only by their failures. As a student of history, I believe that […]

  3. April 26, 2013

    […] It’s the year 2012 and a lot of people are predicting the end of the world. In fact, it’s the biggest year for doomsday since 2000. I’m sure there will be other doomsdays as well. So why are people so quick to predict the end of the world? I think that this comes from a narcissistic view of death. […]

  4. May 16, 2013

    […] few weeks after the death of Steve Jobs, Apple came out with a new AI program called Siri. It was touted as the system’s killer app, […]

  5. January 19, 2015

    […] Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple in 1985, just after his 30th birthday. He still had a lot of energy and ideas, so after a month or two of feeling sorry for himself, he started a company called NeXT. NeXT’s mission was to make high-end workstations that would make the Apple Macintosh look like a toy. Using the most powerful processors the late 1980s could provide, Jobs and his associates made a computer than was a decade ahead of its time. The NeXTSTEP operating system used preemptive multitasking, so that one rogue application wouldn’t take down the whole computer. It used a high-resolution (grayscale) monitor that allowed for large, detailed icons. Most importantly, the NeXT OS had built in networking capabilities, back in an age where the Internet was unknown to the general public. The built-in networking made it an attractive platform to a scientist named Tim Berners-Lee. He used a NeXT machine at CERN in Switzerland to code his new internet protocol, the World Wide Web. Before Berners-Lee invented the Web, the Internet was used mostly for emails and Usenet threads. But thanks to the built in abilities of the NeXTSTEP operating system, Berners-Lee was able to make the hyperlinked multimedia internet experience that we all know and love today. […]

  6. July 4, 2015

    […] that I’d like to go into detail later, but suffice to say that he is up there with Gates and Jobs in the pantheon of Silicon Valley entrpreneurs. Kildall’s role on the show gives us an […]

  7. July 11, 2015

    […] Gassee and offered to buy out Be. Gassee gave them a ridiculously high price, so they turned to Steve Jobs’ NeXT, Inc. instead. Jobs’ NeXTstep operating system became the basis for every Mac and iOS […]

  8. August 2, 2016

    […] by the iPhone 4S. Maybe it was the fact that it had finally come to Sprint, or maybe it was the death of Steve Jobs that finally convinced me, but I decided to bite the bullet and get it. To my surprise, I […]

  9. August 2, 2016

    […] for a moment a man stuck in a time loop, going from 1955 to 2011. Imagine that he went through this loop only-God-knows-how-many times. Just think about how many […]

  10. April 19, 2017

    […] known for corporate contrition, or any kind of humility for that matter. It’s always been a Steve-knows-best kind of company. But someone in Apple’s upper echelons finally realized that, […]

  11. May 3, 2017

    […] A new NeXT Computer. For those of you who don’t know, NeXT was computer company founded by Steve Jobs after he was fired from Apple. The NeXT computer was a never a mainstream success, but its […]

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