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Steve Jobs' Impact Felt Well Beyond Apple

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Apr 12, 2001
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Marc Benioff, founder of the highly successful Salesforce.com, shared with Bloomberg that Steve Jobs has been a very helpful mentor to Benioff and his company -- and how he returned the favor by giving Jobs a very generous gift: the App Store trademark and domain name.

John Gruber recently said that Steve Jobs' greatest creation is Apple itself, but his impact goes well beyond that. Jobs is a mentor to many in Silicon Valley, dispensing advice and guidance to those he deems worthy to receive it.

It was reported in Steven Levy's book about Google that Steve Jobs agreed to mentor Sergey Brin and Larry Page because he saw their potential -- though that relationship broke down when Google launched Android.

Benioff: He has probably given me more help and more advice than just about anybody. When I get in trouble, and when I get lost in my own vision, I've been fortunate to go and see him and he's been able to show me the future a couple times when I got lost in the forest for the trees.

One really good example of that happened in 2003. I went down to talk to him and brought a few members of my executive team. He said something really exciting: "Look, you've got a fantastic enterprise application here, but you've gotta build an ecosystem." So, to us, we went back and we're like "well, we don't know how to do that." That was like a Zen koan. How do we build an ecosystem?

So we designed this whole technology that we called "app store" that was the ability to buy these apps and run them in Salesforce. And when we launched it, we called it AppExchange and you can see it at AppExchange.com.

But we liked the App Store name so much that we bought the URL and trademarked it and then I was in the audience when he announced the App Store and I went up to him and I said "I have a gift for you. I'm going to give you the trademark and the URL for the help you gave me in 2003."
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(Photo courtesy Flickr/Acaben)

Article Link: Steve Jobs' Impact Felt Well Beyond Apple
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/26/steve-jobs-impact-felt-well-beyond-apple/
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ProwlingTiger

ProwlingTiger

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What would be the point of having a trademark if you don't protect it? That defeats the entire purpose. Sure, Apple received it as a gift, but that doesn't mean to completely abandon the system's purpose out of the goodness of its heart.
 
Northgrove

Northgrove

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Aug 3, 2010
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This surge of interesting stories, big and small, surrounding Apple and Steve Jobs was something I had never expected to see when Jobs stepped down, but I for one am enjoying them!

It touches me to read these stories as told by numerous entrepreneurs in the industry. And what a testament to his influence, with the many industry profiles looking up to him. I hope that Steve Jobs has taken some of these stories to heart as they keep coming up, finding comfort and satisfaction in the midst of his hard times right now.
 
B J M

B J M

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I'm sure a new turtle neck would have sufficed..
 
Gemütlichkeit

Gemütlichkeit

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Nov 17, 2010
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"and i think everyone is trying to catch up to where they are"

so true. not based on hardware alone.. that can be disproven by stats on paper.. but apples image, their quality of product, the complete package.

Apple is the best company out there right now that can pair together good hardware with great software, in an elegantly designed package.
 
*LTD*

*LTD*

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Feb 5, 2009
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Northgrove said:
This surge of interesting stories, big and small, surrounding Apple and Steve Jobs was something I had never expected to see when Jobs stepped down, but I for one am enjoying them!

It touches me to read these stories as told by numerous entrepreneurs in the industry. And what a testament to his influence, with the many industry profiles looking up to him. I hope that Steve Jobs has taken some of these stories to heart as they keep coming up, finding comfort and satisfaction in the midst of his hard times right now.
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Beautiful post.
 
M

macnisse

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Nice story. Great gift!
 
I

Icehand03

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Aug 26, 2010
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Northgrove said:
This surge of interesting stories, big and small, surrounding Apple and Steve Jobs was something I had never expected to see when Jobs stepped down, but I for one am enjoying them!

It touches me to read these stories as told by numerous entrepreneurs in the industry. And what a testament to his influence, with the many industry profiles looking up to him. I hope that Steve Jobs has taken some of these stories to heart as they keep coming up, finding comfort and satisfaction in the midst of his hard times right now.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with *LTD*, absolutely amazing post.
 
1

126351

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Sep 17, 2007
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Tried looking at some of the demos on the salesforce website but you have to hand them your personal data first.

Seems a bit self-defeating for them. Wonder if Steve will point that out to them.
 
Freis968

Freis968

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Overwhelmed by the generosity, Jobs then gave him a $25 iTunes giftcard.
 
nateo200

nateo200

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Freis968 said:
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Overwhelmed by the generosity, Jobs then gave him a $25 iTunes giftcard.
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Eh he's not that bad. Probably gave him the back to school discount on all new MacBook'sm :D :D
 
gnasher729

gnasher729

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kenypowa said:
and Apple is suing Amazon for using the term "App Store"?
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Did you read the story? When Marc Benioff needed some advice, he went to Steve Jobs, and not to Amazon. And apparently he got some really, really good advice. From Steve Jobs, not from Jeff Bezos. And that is why Apple is suing Amazon, and not Amazon suing Apple.
 
Cheffy Dave

Cheffy Dave

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Feb 5, 2007
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Northgrove said:
This surge of interesting stories, big and small, surrounding Apple and Steve Jobs was something I had never expected to see when Jobs stepped down, but I for one am enjoying them!

It touches me to read these stories as told by numerous entrepreneurs in the industry. And what a testament to his influence, with the many industry profiles looking up to him. I hope that Steve Jobs has taken some of these stories to heart as they keep coming up, finding comfort and satisfaction in the midst of his hard times right now.
Click to expand...

as am I, a remarkable Man
 
B

Benjamins

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Jul 15, 2010
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ProwlingTiger said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

What would be the point of having a trademark if you don't protect it? That defeats the entire purpose. Sure, Apple received it as a gift, but that doesn't mean to completely abandon the system's purpose out of the goodness of its heart.
Click to expand...

Just because someone gave me something, doesn't mean someone else can take it.

When it's a gift from someone, it's even more important to protect it.
 
Xenc

Xenc

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ProwlingTiger said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

What would be the point of having a trademark if you don't protect it? That defeats the entire purpose. Sure, Apple received it as a gift, but that doesn't mean to completely abandon the system's purpose out of the goodness of its heart.
Click to expand...

It sounds as though Benioff wasn't aware that Jobs was going to launch the App Store. He could have fought for it, but he decided to give it up as a gift to his mentor. Remember that by this time SalesForce had already settled on the App Exchange name.
 
T

Tiggs

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Jul 6, 2011
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Xenc said:
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It sounds as though Benioff wasn't aware that Jobs was going to launch the App Store. He could have fought for it, but he decided to give it up as a gift to his mentor. Remember that by this time SalesForce had already settled on the App Exchange name.
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Considering the timeframe of 2003, doubt an App store was even on Jobs mind or even the iPhone. Those were the glory days for the iPod and iTunes adoption.

Good story, hes such a unique and great influence on countless areas.
 
M

ModerateFKR

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May 10, 2011
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Tiggs said:
Considering the timeframe of 2003, doubt an App store was even on Jobs mind or even the iPhone. Those were the glory days for the iPod and iTunes adoption.

Good story, hes such a unique and great influence on countless areas.
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Only four years before iPhone was released? Do you really think so? Working backwards, the first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007. The first iPod was announced on October 23, 2001, and released on November 10, 2001.

I think we can be pretty certain conversations took place along the lines of: "Where else can we take this stuff?" from very early on. One thing that has characterised Apple's success since Steve's return in 1997 is the evidence of very good, very intuitive forward planning.
 
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