Steve Jobs dead at 56

Steve Jobs is dead. I’ve been archiving jokes and puns for months, but I dont feel like posting any of them now. in time. but for now: R.I.P and thanks for the amazing products and software I use every day to pursue my own dreams.

I’m unusually sad about this. Like, approaching tears welling up, legit-Sad. Not just “aw, that sucks. he was cool” thoughts of someone I didn’t know. I didn’t even think he was particularly “cool” even. I think i’m sad because of the unfairness of his death. Only 56 and was still chugging along so hard, creating new and wonderful things that help people like me create our own new and wonderful things. He wasn’t some retired CEO lounging in his billions. He was actively creating and innovating.

The Image above is the current splash page at Apple.com. The file for the picture is “t_hero.png”.

He’ll never get to see the next Pixar movie (he was a founding member of Pixar, if you don’t understand why I say that). He’ll never get to walk around in that one-of-a-kind space ship style new Apple campus being constructed in Cupertino. He won’t get to host any more Apple events (I might as well unsubscribe from the video podcast right now). He won’t get to hold the iPad 3 or 4 or 15 – but worse: His mind won’t have designed them.

Human beings can’t absorb the pain and sorrow of loss of people they don’t know or they would self destruct. We HAVE to have some kind of barrier when we hear about a shooting or an earthquake or the passing of some celebrity.

I’m terribly upset over the loss of Steve Jobs because he did life right and still got robbed.

He was responsible for a record of new and “magical” things that hundreds of millions of people got to enjoy and showed no sign of slowing down until literally weeks ago when his health forced such a slowing.

From the WSJ:

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” Apple’s board said in a statement. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”

His family, in a separate statement, said Mr. Jobs “died peacefully today surrounded by his family…We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.”

..

In addition to laying the groundwork for the modern high-tech industry alongside other pioneers like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, Mr. Jobs proved the appeal of well-designed intuitive products over the sheer power of technology itself and shifted the way consumers interact with technology in an increasingly digital world.

Unlike those men, however, the most productive chapter in Mr. Jobs’ career occurred near the end of his life, when a nearly unbroken string of innovative and wildly successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad fundamentally changed the PC, electronics and digital media industries. The way he marketed and sold those products through savvy advertising campaigns and its retail stores, in the meanwhile, helped turn the company into a pop culture icon.

He turned fruit orchards into innovative technology that blew all our minds on a consistant basis. He was hard working, charitable, made countless lives better and he still got robbed by cancer. I’ve been teasing him and Apple hipsters just as much as anyone over the years, but damn. this is sad as fuck 🙁

Part of the reason, as many of you familiar with my world view and life aspirations may have guessed, that I’m so distraught over his death – even though it was known to be imminent – is that it’s a unique reminder of mortality. Everyone know’s they’ll die. I think I’m more conscious than most that my time is limited and that I could get incinerated in a plane crash or hit by a bus any day but that cant get in the way of attempting a full 90+ year plan on this earth. But Steve Jobs was hard at work doing big things and making billions at it and he still got robbed – not by a freak accident, but by a slow killing bottom feeder (which is why cancer is called that, btw: because it’s like a crab).

His commencement address at Stanford in 2005 contained the following:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960?s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.