Flutterby™! : Steve Jobs 2011-10-06 00:10:23.069746+00

Steve Jobs

2011-10-06 00:10:23.069746+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

Steve Jobs: 1955-2011 http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

I only met Steve a couple of times, he came in to pep talk and look at various projects I was working on in my Pixar days. When "Pirates of Silicon Valley" (or one of those nerdsploitation films) came out, a friend of mine who worked more closely with Steve back in the NeXT days commented "that showed all of the reasons you wouldn't want to work for him, but none of the reasons you would".

He was smart, perceptive, kept to what he knew, and had great people presence. And when one of our team asked "What's with the turtlenecks?" he handled it with aplomb and a sense of "I'm just a guy who doesn't want to put too much effort into the things that don't matter and it's an easy fashion choice".

Good enough people presence that a few years ago when we exchanged "hello"s while passing each other in an Apple parking lot I couldn't tell whether or not he remembered me, or if he was taking time out of his day to be to be friendly to a random person.

Every few years I buy an A-pple product, and get frustrated with his vision of computing. I loved the Apple ][ series and the sense of openness and creation that it fostered, and have never got along with the Mac/i* side of things, but Steve Jobs was a visionary who could wrap his head around other people's visions, not just his own. Yes, Pixar is a product of the creative drive of Ed Catmull and John Lasseter (and a bunch of other really smart people), but it took Steve Jobs seeing their vision and believing in it to the tune of tens of millions of dollars and years and years of patience, for that vision to blossom.

That ability to take the long view, and to see elegance and beauty in concepts, is rare. And will be missed.

I figured some of the Old Pixar guard might post here. I only interacted with him a few times but a lot of the Pixar culture had his finger prints all over it. I remember meeting an apple employee just after Steve joined as iCeo(i meant interim at the time) and she proudly said she worked for Steve's "other" company. Maybe because it was new and at the time temporary but it stuck me oddly that someone would think of Apple as anything other than Steve's primary thing.

Here is something I sent to rememberingsteve@apple.com ...maybe just to help shake the funky feeling he's gone

Yeah in a bit of a funk today. I didn't know Steve well but, I did know him. We talked a few times we argued a few times. Two arguments the I remember especially well. The first was Steve felt(well thats not strong enough) Steve KNEW gaming platforms would become dominant and I knew/felt PC/MAC would maintain it's dominance because it was a more flexible platform. That was 1996. Yup, he was right

The second happened at a Pixar lunch over the future computing devices. He KNEW devices would be completely wireless and would only need computation memory and all storage would be on a server(there was no cloud back then). I felt there would need to be a local hard drive (I couldn't picture seamless wireless everywhere). iPad/iPhone is almost there but has local storage, so I'm going to say he hasn't won that one yet.

He was a good General to have if you went into battle. He had a bit of harsh reputation because he fought so hard and we had a saying internally at Pixar. He may be an asshole..... but he's OUR asshole. Dear Apple, I'm sure Steve already demanded this but less you forget. INDUCTIVE CHARGING!!! you can make devices completely wireless. No ports! seal the device!

And, yes, on Facebook I was just reminded of "he may be an asshole, but he's our asshole".

I'm also right there with you on inductive charging: My toothbrush doesn't have a plug, why does my phone? Granted, I want my next phone to still have a hard keyboard, but...