Small Dog Electronics employees share their reflections on Jobs’ life and legacy. Please feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments.
Steve Jobs changed my life. Almost 30 years ago, my 12-year-old son asked for a MacPlus. We purchased the first MacPlus in the state of Vermont. This computer changed our lives. Forward 30 years later, and the iPad 2, iPhone and MacBook Air are still changing our lives. This is because of one man’s vision. Not bad, Steve! Thank you.
—Grace Mayer
To say Steve Jobs has touched my life is an understatement. His revolutionary ideas and sustained vision have not only bought exciting products to my life and changed the way I view computing, but he’s also provided me with a career that I love. I learned to type on an Apple II and was preaching the Apple OS from that moment on. My first real job out of college was at an Apple Store where I proudly wrote on my application that Steve and I shared a birthday. That job blossomed into a career that I adore. I work with Apple technology every day, I get excited teaching it to others and I sit like a kid at Christmas glued to my monitor at every new product launch.
I always hoped I would get a chance to meet Steve in person. I’ll admit that every time I get a promotion or a new certification I think, ‘Steve would be proud of me,’ knowing that he never knew who the heck I was. While I’m deeply saddened by his death, and in knowing I will never have a chance to fulfill that dream of meeting him, I can’t deny his existence lives on…in the computer I’m typing on, the phone in my pocket, the iPad on my desk. He created a legacy. It’s now up to Apple and all of us Apple fans and affiliates to keep moving the company forward, keep reaching towards his vision!
—Rebecca Kraemer
This is one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes:
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
—Rob Amon
I always liked this quote—it’s from his 2005 Stanford Commencement speech (watch it below if you haven’t heard it):
“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.”
—Lonnie Isham
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” (Steve Jobs in Inc. Magazine)
—Jim Overman
No single person in technology can claim such an impact on all the things we take for granted. You will be missed by millions whose lives were transformed by your technology. You will be missed.
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” (Steve Jobs, Stanford University commencement speech, 2005)
—Peter Gray
A haiku:
His journey is nigh
To the great iCloud on high
Steve Jobs rest in peace
—Art Hendrickson
Steve Jobs had one major vision when he originally thought about the Mac computer, and that was that computers should be able to have beautiful typography just like the typography he learned in a college calligraphy course. To this day Mac computers have the most elegant and wonderful typefaces I’ve seen.
To bring a vision like this to a computer is one of the main reasons why to this day he is one of my biggest role models and heroes. Even after his unfortunate death I still view him as someone to look up to. For the rest of my life I will aspire to be like him in many ways, and will always remember him as a major influence in my life.
—Shawn Mahoney
It’s hard for me to imagine my life without the things that Steve has envisioned and made a reality. My first computer was not a Mac, but I became more familiar with them when I was in college and studying “computer graphics” (it seemed so new-fangled then… ha!). After four years of using them in the computer lab, my parents bought me a graduation gift: a dual-USB MacBook with OS X, the brand new operating system. I was hooked.
Several iPods, iMacs, iPhones, countless Apple accessories and two different Apple Specialist jobs later, I’m doing what I love, surrounded by my favorite products on the planet. Thank you, Steve—your impact has been profound.
—Kali