Steve Jobs: A lasting impression

Steve Jobs has passed away aged 56, but the technological visionary has left behind plenty for us to remember him by.
I will admit I became a little emotional sometime after hearing that Steve Jobs had passed away. I was on my iMac at the time, Skyping with my friend Murph in the US, when my phone – yes, you know what kind – buzzed with the text from another friend, an author of Microsoft textbooks.
NYT has just said Steve Jobs dead,” wrote Orin.
My immediate reaction was surprise, as was the case all the way over in Kansas City, Missouri. Murph had the TV on in the background, but the woman he loves was tuned into some sitcom. It was just after 7pm in the midwest of the US and the news was on.
Steve Jobs with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (left) in the 1970s. 

The life and times of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (left) in the 1970s. Photo: AP
  • Steve Jobs with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (left) in the 1970s.
  • 1998: Apple Computer's then interim CEO Steve Jobs delivers the keynote speech at the Macworld Expo in 1998.
  • 1997: Steve Jobs addresses the Macworld trade show in San Francisco in January, 1997.
  • 1999: Steve Jobs, Apple's then interim chief executive, gives the keynote address at the beginning of the Macworld Expo in San Francisco in January 1999.
  • 2000: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs announces he has dropped "interim" from his title as chief executive of Apple Computer at the Macworld conference in January 2000.
  • 2001: Steve Jobs gestures during his keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2001.
  • 2002: Steve Jobs introduces the newly redesigned iMac computer during his keynote address at  the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2002.
  • 2003: Steve Jobs holds a new Apple G4 Powerbook laptops after his keynote address at the Macworld Conference in January 2003.
  • 2004: Steve Jobs holds a new mini iPod at Macworld in January 2004.
  • 2005: Steve Jobs displays the new Mac Mini personal computer at the Macworld Expo in January 2005.
  • 2006: Steve Jobs delivers the keynote address during the 2006 Macworld trade show in January, 2006.
  • 2007: Steve Jobs holds up the iPhone during his keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco in January 2007.
  • 2008: Steve Jobs delivers the keynote presentation at the Macworld event in January.
  • 2009: Steve Jobs walks through a crowd on September 9, 2009 in San Francisco, California after announcing a new version of iTunes, new pricing for iPod Touch music players and a new version of the iPod Nano with video capabilities.
  • 2010: Steve Jobs poses with the iPhone 4 during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, June 7, 2010.
  • 2011: Steve Jobs unveils the iCloud storage system at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2011 in San Francisco, California, on Monday, June 6, 2011.
  • Steve Jobs introduces theiMac computer in  January, 2002.
  • Steve Jobs unveils the new iMac computer in May, 1998.
  • Steve Jobs (far left) pauses in his keynote address at the Macworld Expo in Boston to allow Microsoft's Bill Gates, right, to address the crowd via satellite link on August 6, 1997, after Jobs announced that Microsoft had invested $US150 million in the company.
  • Steve Jobs holds up the new Mac Book Air after he delivered the keynote speech to kick off the 2008 Macworld
  • Apple's chief operating officer, Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, and vice president Phil Schiller take questions during a meeting at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California on October 14, 2008.
  • Steve Jobs is pictured with an image of a server farm in Maiden, North Carolina as he discusses the iCloud service at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, June 6, 2011.
  • Steve Jobs, right, greets members of the audience with his wife Laurene Powell Jobs after unveiling the iCloud storage system at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2011 in San Francisco, California, on Monday, June 6, 2011.
  • Steve Jobs unveils the iCloud storage system at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2011 in San Francisco, California, on Monday, June 6, 2011.
  • Steve Jobs waves to the audience before unveiling the iCloud storage system at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2011 in San Francisco, California, on Monday, June 6, 2011.
  • Steve Jobs smiles during a product announcement at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California on October 14, 2008.
  • Steve Jobs speaks during an Apple Special Music Event at the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts on September 1, 2010 in San Francisco, California.
  • Steve Jobs smiles during announcement of new products at an Apple event in San Francisco, in September, 2006.
  • Steve Jobs, right, shows an iPhone 4 to Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev during his visit to Silicon Valley in Cupertino on June 23, 2010.
  • Steve Jobs gives the keynote address to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Monday, June 6, 2011.
“Turn it over, honey,” said Murph. “Find the news. Steve Jobs is dead.”
And there it was, confirmation. And there it was too, the world that Jobs had changed, the dent he had put in the planet. Information and meaning and shock and sorrow all flying around the globe in just a moment.
RIP Steve Jobs trended on Twitter within minutes and, for the most part, the reaction there was the same. Surprise, which is odd given how sick the man had been for so long, and sorrow, real sorrow, with people who had never known him confessing to tears, or feeling like tears at his passing.
Why?
Why should an American businessman, whose secretive and ruthless company employs thousands of indentured servants in dictatorships like China, why should such a man call forth our global cri de coeur upon his death?
It is not just about the shiny gadgets. The world is full of shiny gadgets, and some of them are even as good as the ones Steve Jobs created or inspired. And I don't think it's just about the way he brought the future to us, seemingly before its time, elegantly, beautifully packaged in glass and aluminium and silicon.
Time and again through Jobs’ career, he did that. Remade the world into a better place, full of wonder. He did it just yesterday with the release of the iPhone 4S, which disappointed many (but not me) for its ‘incremental’ advances, but which captured the imagination of many, many more with the promise of Siri – the first real and utilitarian example of everyday artificial intelligence that most of us will ever deal with. He's gone now, but the future he brought with him, to give to us, remains.
But even that, I think, does not explain the emotion of the day. Put the technology aside for a moment and consider the humanity of his story. A visionary, forced aside from the company of his own creation, exiled, returned, and eventually vindicated. And even then upon his return, when he seems to have triumphed, illness and the negation that awaits us all comes stalking for him.
In spite of that, he never gave up. He never once gave the impression that the future was not worth caring about because he would play no part in it. Steve Jobs loved his family and he knew that they would go on into the future without him. The future then would be where his legacy would live. Not here and now, in the latest iteration of a phone or an iPod, or in the stock price of his company, but in the future, where we must go on our own.
He cared about the future enough to change it for the better.
In this he reminds me this morning of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses, and if you will indulge me I will leave you with the closing lines of that poem which seem entirely appropriate:
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends,‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.