Tim Cook Tweets in Memory of Steve Jobs, Who Passed Away Seven Years Ago Today

[Lone Deranger]

I was in the Shinjuku-sanchome Apple store last night and suddenly it dawned on me. As I was looking around at the various product lines, I came to the conclusion that the magic Steve brought to Apple is gone. I felt no excitement at all about any of the products like I used to. Mac or otherwise. Sure, their products are still good, some are still great even. Just not insanely great. Cook's vision for Apple, while immensely profitable, has been utterly boring and soulless compared to the excitement and boundless innovation Steve was able to deliver so many times.

I was out of the store, empty handed in under 5 minutes.

 

[Scooz]

RIP

The crazy ones - BEST AD EVER!



Apple now is the money grubbers!

we need posters for that, too!

 

[Sill]

"What it means to serve humanity."...? I would have chosen other words to remember him by. He did little to serve humanity. Building products and a business isn't serving humanity and the greater good...

What should have done then? How do you serve humanity?

Steve looked at things very differently from the typical person. He saw details that no one else did. He was able to drive the creation of devices and software that allowed people to communicate, create, and collaborate like very few others have before. Apple's design philosophies - driven by Steve Jobs and his eye for detail - have trickled into products from other companies, into print media, into home product design, and countless other things.

Hundreds of thousands of careers and companies were launched on the basis of what Steve did, whether it was Apple, NeXT, Pixar, or whatever. He was poised to take over Disney prior to his death. That company controls an enormous swath of the cultural landscape and was perfectly suited for a person with his mind and his eye. What do you think he would have done there?

I very rarely do this in debate, but in this instance I have to simply state: you're wrong. Its not an insult, and its not intended as an ad hominem. Please consider what those "products and a business" have provided: billions of dollars in wealth for common people as well as corporate, products that help us define ourselves and push our lives forward, and tools that augment creativity while boosting productivity.

 

[MacFather]

Deleted.

 

[esjr]

I'm sure he would be proud to see the Apple of 2018.

Haha. Is that a joke?

RIP Steve.

 

[supercoolmanchu]

Didn't we do this last year?

And again next year too... but you’re nominated to book the venue/buy the drinks/wear the iMac costume.

Also be sure to remember these two words: top shelf.

 

[Sill]

I was in the Shinjuku San-chome Apple store last night and suddenly it dawned on me. As I was looking around at the various product lines, i came to the conclusion that the magic Steve brought to Apple is gone. I felt no excitement at all about any of the products like I used to. Mac or otherwise. Sure, their products are still good, some are still great even. Just not insanely great. Cook's vision for Apple while immensely profitable, has been utterly boring and soulless compared to the exciting surprises Steve was able to conjure up again and again.

Thats because he had a very sharp focus on doing a few things very well, and he knew precisely what people would want from a product before they even knew it. Tim Cook lacks that focus and seems to think that putting Apple in the position of managing its customers' lives is the way to go. I know practically every other Silicon Valley company is doing that now, but I think Apple would have been better off staying as a company that made insanely great tools for people, not a company that told people when to sit, stand, breathe, or turn off their computers/devices.

As a side note: the Watch is actually a Steve Jobs product, but it was for a completely different purpose. That purpose is still waiting in the wings, its still going to be brilliant, and its going to set the entire industry on its edge. Meanwhile, we get cell phones, GPS, messaging, along with a bunch of fitness stuff, in a very nice looking package. I can do without ANY of the fitness technology, but since the Watch is already on the wrist and Apple has competitors in the wearable market who have demonstrated that people (somehow) need that stuff, they can go right ahead. They're using all these neat toys to help in building a huge dominance in the wearables category, and one day soon, at a keynote or a special presentation, they're going to offer the usual slate of new and updated products, and when they get to WatchOSx.x there'll be "one more thing..."

 

[Steve121178]

Are you kidding right? Apple would never turned into a greedy fashionable brand under his leadership.

Clearly you never heard of the Apple iPod which was the turning point for Apple.

 

[asiga]

Apple is having hard and confusing times without Steve Jobs... you see Steve is no longer at Apple in everything they do, but most notably at moments of disappointment like when you unbox a MacBook and you unsuccessfully look for the MagSafe.

I say a prayer for Steve's soul. May he rest in peace.

 

[Sill]

Am I just being cynical, or after 7 years should we just be moving on? Apple wouldn’t be where it is today without Steve, but I don’t think we have to commemorate his death every year.

I agree, somewhat. I don't want to lessen the affect his decisions have had on the world, but at the same time can we just skip over the death thing and make it about what he's done instead?

I can see the bad about that approach too. We're still a few years away from people proclaiming him to be some kind of messiah, but in a world where "Jedi" is included as an actual religion on some census forms, a world where people build mock runways to welcome back deified WWII soldiers, a world where people burn upside down crosses into their foreheads to show support for seriously deranged musical frontmen, it wouldn't surprise me. That will be much worse for his legacy, and it'll probably start happening when the narrative shifts away from his death to the day he was born.

I don't want to participate in any kind of SteveCult. I do want to remember a person who had a profound effect on my world from the Apple II till today.

 

[rpat701]

What should have done then? How do you serve humanity?

Steve looked at things very differently from the typical person. He saw details that no one else did. He was able to drive the creation of devices and software that allowed people to communicate, create, and collaborate like very few others have before. Apple's design philosophies - driven by Steve Jobs and his eye for detail - have trickled into products from other companies, into print media, into home product design, and countless other things.

Hundreds of thousands of careers and companies were launched on the basis of what Steve did, whether it was Apple, NeXT, Pixar, or whatever. He was poised to take over Disney prior to his death. That company controls an enormous swath of the cultural landscape and was perfectly suited for a person with his mind and his eye. What do you think he would have done there?

I very rarely do this in debate, but in this instance I have to simply state: you're wrong. Its not an insult, and its not intended as an ad hominem. Please consider what those "products and a business" have provided: billions of dollars in wealth for common people as well as corporate, products that help us define ourselves and push our lives forward, and tools that augment creativity while boosting productivity.

Well, I did volunteer for 2 years through JVC in Micronesia. But that's not important. Everything you mentioned is not "serving humanity."

 

[TheSkywalker77]

Rest in peace Steve. His products are some of the best I've used and while I don't entirely agree with Tim Cook and some of the stuff he's doing with the company I must say he's doing a good job at the responsibility Steve gave him.

 

[jonnyb098]

I will say Steve would for sure be happy that Apple has become a cash cow over the years. But after reading many books about the guy including his official bio, the Watch would either never have come out....or came out a couple years later than it did. It was purely an unfinished product that Apple had NO IDEA about how to present to the market. Steve was always crystal clear on a products vision and intent. Also he sure as hell would have sold and marketed an $1100+ iPhone (Excess MAX) a lot better to people.....and not have given it that ridiculous name.

 

[mhuggett]

More than anything I miss that time period. Steve's passing, for me, is a reminder of that period of time. It was simply inspiring to be around at the birth of these technologies (circa 70's) we take for granted today. A time when people would look at this technology and go "why would I use it in my life?", for those of us who "got it" and burned the midnight oil playing with it, experimenting with it, oh the magic of that time; to appreciate something that hadn't received mass adoption; the rebel, the misfit.

He reminds me of that early frontier. Bill Gates, the HP dudes and others. The originals. I personally enjoy commemorating the day of Steve's passing, because it opens the door to relive that period. I miss it as much as I miss his presence (and his keynotes).

 

[Sill]

Well, I did volunteer for 2 years through JVC in Micronesia. But that's not important. Everything you mentioned is not "serving humanity."

Have you ever heard of the old saying "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"?

I don't mean to discount what you did. Helping anyone, in any way, hands on - its a noble thing. But if you give people tools to help them express their capabilities, to help them communicate with each other in ways that weren't possible just a few years previous, don't you think thats adding value to their lives?

Haven't you seen what this stuff does for people? We can exchange ideas with people across the globe, people can collaborate in real time on projects. There are entire movies made where the post production staff doesn't even have to leave their homes to work. Things that used to take hundreds of people can now be done by half a dozen, so a group of kids in an Iowa farm town now have the same ability to create that an entire studio or school or corporation would have had just 30 years ago. We now carry around iPhones with computing power that vastly exceeds that of the entire space program up to the day that Apollo 11 came home.

I look at the things Steve and his staff - and his companies - accomplished, and I can make a direct correlation between their efforts and the improvement in quality of life of hundreds of millions of people. That is truly "serving humanity", and I think its a whole lot more than if Steve donated his Apple stock to charity in 2001 and then left to go put plumbing for clean water in villages in SE Asia. The latter would have been a really nice gesture, but it wouldn't have changed the world.

 

[americanguy]

Rest in peace Steve, Apple is changed a lot since you're not around. I miss you so much Steve

 

[stevie grant]

"Steve showed me--and all of us--what it means to serve humanity," tweeted Cook...

Except for his own daughter.

 

[MacWorld78]

Are you kidding right? Apple would never turned into a greedy fashionable brand under his leadership.

I've seen this video before - I'm 100% with Steve Jobs, he's gone Steve Jobs (RIP). Apple starting to push up the price year by year slowly transition - what can we do about it?

you may called as greedy or apple create over 2 millions job all over the world.

 

[ocnitsa]

Am I just being cynical, or after 7 years should we just be moving on? Apple wouldn’t be where it is today without Steve, but I don’t think we have to commemorate his death every year.

Maybe a little cynical...But, as you said, Apple wouldn't be where it is today without Steve...without him, it moves on on its own...remembering him like this, offers a focal point of the ideal/imagined Steve that can continue to provide a kind of guidance or influence. The idea of Steve can continue to have a positive effect, when a million things conspire to change the path or quality of a given product line (like the MBP).

 

[Dirtydutch]

No matter your personal opinion on the man, this empire was built on his back and ideology, RIP Steve, you were one of a kind for sure...

 

[Bustycat]

I was like this on October 5, 2011—

 

[Mike Haas]

Well, Steve was a great thinker and entrepreneur but I don’t think he was the humanitarian that Tim Cook is describing him.

Indeed. Jobs was likely a sociopath with narcissistic tendencies who pointed fingers at his associates and insulted their work and themselves personally but whose Reality Distortion Field never allowed him to accept the blame when things went South. The story of how he cheated the Woz out the bonus for a game Woz designed for Atari - which Wozniak wouldn't learn about until the story was told in print years later - speaks volumes about the sort of man Jobs really was.

The way he and Bill Gates tried to take credit for inventing the Desktop Paradigm is another indication. Jobs had seen the Xerox Alto in 1979 and the direction of the Lisa's early design was absolutely based on the Alto. We can dismiss Gates' claim altogether: In 1979, Gates and Microsoft were unknowns with only a Basic for the MITS Altair and a version of Unix called Xenix under their belts and would never have gotten an invitation to Xerox, nor does anyone who worked at the Parc facility remember ever seeing Gates anywhere near their offices. Gates' claim was an indication of his own narcissism.

The part of the story Steve always neglected to mention was visiting the El Segundo facility in 1980 and seeing what would become the Xerox 8010: The Xerox "Star" Office System. Every aspect of what would come to be known as the Desktop Paradigm was developed for the 8010 at El Segundo and the direction of the Lisa changed to follow suit. Yet, Jobs and Apple always insisted the Desktop Paradigm was innovated by Apple. True, Xerox deserves part of the blame for never properly honoring and recognizing the work and ideas that the men and women of the Xerox Parc and El Segundo facilities produced but Jobs (and Gates) took credit for technical innovation neither men deserved.

Jobs should be remembered for inspiring others to produce great products and insisting on a tasteful and artistic approach even if part of that inspiration process was via threats and intimidation. He brought Apple back to life - give him credit where credit is due but leave the syrupy praise out of it.

 

[Sill]

I will say Steve would for sure be happy that Apple has become a cash cow over the years. But after reading many books about the guy including his official bio, the Watch would either never have come out....or came out a couple years later than it did. It was purely an unfinished product that Apple had NO IDEA about how to present to the market. Steve was always crystal clear on a products vision and intent. Also he sure as hell would have sold and marketed an $1100+ iPhone (Excess MAX) a lot better to people.....and not have given it that ridiculous name.

Take a look at my post above. The Watch was a Steve product, but it had (and still has) a far different purpose than we see. Right now, they're building all sorts of tech into that device in order to get it on as many people's wrists as possible. At a future date, its going to interact with HomeKit, and with MacOS/iOS, in ways you wouldn't believe. When you see it happening, you're going to know who conceived of it.

The names are definitely getting ridiculous. I really don't know how to solve it now. I was upset when Apple started phasing out "i" names for products, but in hindsight I didn't really see how fatiguing it was becoming. It didn't help that outside products were accumulating iNames as well. I'm glad we still have products named "iMac" and "iPhone", but it would have been ridiculous to see an "iWatch". I think the most ridiculous was "iDVD", and I think even Steve saw that was a name too far.
Kind of sorry that iMessage is now just "Messages", though...

The downside to dropping the "i" is now Apple has become a bit more like Microsoft, with "Apple" preceding the product name just as everything MS used to make had "Microsoft" before the name. Microsoft Word. Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Access. Branding is great, but it can become oppressive. The lowercase "i" was a great brand for its time, and Apple neatly avoided MS naming convention by using it. But it couldn't last forever.

So what should be done about the naming? Far too many things in life are getting defined by nonsense strings. Cars used to be known by simple names, usually totemic. Cars were named after animals, winds/storms/other forces of nature, or places. Then some genius said "Americans like numbers more than names", and yes that was an actual article in a national media outlet back in the 80s. Ford had changed the Escort to the "EXP" and imported a model from Germany and called it the "Merkur XR4ti". Other manufacturers had already started making models out of what used to be option codes. The Z/28 stands out. BMW recently made cars called the Z4 3.0 s-drive, and I think in current years the numbers and letters have gotten longer.

The point here is that we're practically using SKU numbers to refer to things now. People will have to be able to read and speak UPC and QR codes in order to talk about products. The rest of the cell phone market has already swung that way, and Apple is not far behind. I'd venture to say we're in for a naming shakeup, and I hope Apple leads it.

 

[Agent OrangeZ]

Clearly you never heard of the Apple iPod which was the turning point for Apple.

The original iMac was the turning point for Apple. The iPod put them into overdrive.

 

[mazz0]

Steve showed me--and all of us--what it means to serve humanity

Jesus H Christ. Is he ********ting or does he genuinely believe that's what people like Jobs and him do?