Many years from now, history books will speak about a person who made a profound impact on the landscape of personal computing. This man changed the way humans perceive computing devices and digital content. At the time when I write this post there’s already a gazillion posts out there that sing the greatness of Steven Paul Jobs. So, leaving out the details, I am going to write about my take away from Steve Job’s life and career. One of the first things that struck me when I came across his videos was that he was an insanely optimistic person. In this video below, Jobs returns to work at Apple, Inc after a decade in 1997 and at this time Apple is doing really really bad.

Their revenue is declining at an alarming rate of 2 billion per year (This was when Apple was making 12 billion per year, today Apple is making close to 400 billion!). He first lists all the negative things that people say about the company and its products, he then goes about explaining the same stuff in positive terms!! One year down the time at the 1998 Macworld keynote he explains how they went about reviving Apple by making reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He then shows off to the world what has been achieved - “Apple’s third consecutive profitable quarter”. This is what I call as being “Insanely Optimistic”. If you had read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, he refers to this as “Reality distortion field” that was coined by former Apple employees. Jobs was instrumental in conceiving the philosophy that “To change the world, you have to first believe that you can and the rest will follow”. As a programmer, I used to think of “design” in terms of structure and efficiency of algorithms and data structures. It never dawned upon me that user experience is the vital part of any device and the rest comes later. Almost every other company was under this assumption (some are still!) until Jobs made a shift in how things are thought. For a company like Apple and a leader like Jobs, customer experience comes first, he believed that most people never knew what they want until you show it to them. Then, he went about eliminating all the redundant features that would scare the hell out of a 60 year old grandma or a 3 year old kid. In doing so he created the “i” series of devices that propelled Apple to become the worlds most valuable company and set the bar for personal computing devices. I had personally never used a Apple device until I set foot in the US. And once I got them, there was no way I was getting a product of another company unless they had a superior user experience. For many, Steve Jobs is a Genius, a person who changed the world, but to me he is truly a Legend who was insanely optimistic. He may not have changed the world, but he did create iPhones and iPads, he may not have made them himself, instead he created an ecosystem where insanely great people can coexist to create amazing products.

One last Jobs video before I call it a post!