Apple fans reach for Jobs' devices to mourn him

He was a conjurer, a modern magician who reached into tomorrow and came up with things that changed millions of lives. And as people gathered at Apple Stores from Sydney 

to San Francisco to mourn Steve Jobs, the feeling was more than grief for an executive or even an inventor. It was something closer to awe for a wizard.

On Thursday, the admirers who turned his technological marvels into everyday tools used them as instruments of grief. People held up pictures of candles on their iPads, 

Apple computer fans hold their iPhones and iPads displaying candle graphics during a candle light vigil to pay tribute to Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO, at an Apple Store in the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011. Apple announced Jobs' death without giving a specific cause. He died on Wednesdayat the age of 56. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

booted up their MacBook Pros to watch old Jobs presentations on YouTube, used their iPhones to sift through remembrances on Twitter.

They grieved his loss through devices that before his time, or without his vision, would have been considered beyond humanity's reach.

Ten years ago, the only people who carried their music around were tech geeks, music obsessives and those willing to tote a clunky CD player. Presto — the iPod, and 

everyone wanted one. And then another and another.

Five years ago, cellphones had hinges, and the displays looked more like the age of Atari than the age of the Internet. Texting, for the most part, was a matter of 

cryptography, tapping out strings of numbers to make words. Presto — the iPhone, and everyone wanted one of those, too.

Two years ago, the economy had just tanked, and it was hard enough for companies to persuade people to buy the things they needed. Getting people to buy a product they 

didn't need was out of the question. Most people already had a desktop computer, or a laptop, or a smartphone. And yet, presto — the iPad.

Nothing up his sleeve. Though Jobs, ever the showman, once reached into the tiny fifth pocket of his trademark blue jeans at an Apple event and fished out an iPod Nano, 

just to emphasize how small the gadget was. They always were. Ever smaller, ever sleeker, ever cooler.

Anne Sweeney, the president of Disney and ABC, remembered when Jobs flew from Cupertino, Calif., to Burbank to persuade her to license ABC shows to be shown on the tiny 

screen of his newest invention, the video iPod. He wowed them by playing an episode of ABC's own hit show, "Lost."

Sweeney was so bowled over she forgot to ask where he got a copy of the program.

"I thought, 'He's Steve Jobs. He can do anything,'" she remembered.

One day after his death, two days after Apple introduced the latest incarnation of a touch-screen phone that touched pop culture, sadness and admiration poured out — not 

for a rock star, not for a religious figure, but for an American corporate executive.

"He was a genius," Rosario Hidalgo said outside an Apple Store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan while her daughter, 21-month-old Carlotta, used an iPhone to play an 

app that teaches children to match animal sounds to animal pictures.

For people who have grown up in a world where iPod headphones are as ubiquitous as wristwatches were to a previous generation, Jobs was remembered as their Elvis Presley 

or John Lennon. Perhaps even their Thomas Edison.

"It's like the end of the innovators," said Scott Robbins, 34, who described himself as an Apple fan of 20 years and who rushed to an Apple Store in San Francisco when 

he heard the news.

Apple announced Jobs' death Wednesday night and remembered him as a "visionary and creative genius." The company announced no cause of death, but Jobs had been diagnosed 

with a rare pancreatic cancer seven years ago and had a liver transplant in 2009. He was 56. The company did not release any details about Jobs' funeral; a spokesman 

said there would be no public services.

On Thursday, the Apple website, which usually features slick presentations of multicolored iPods and ever-thinner MacBook laptop computers, simply displayed a black-

and-white photo of Jobs, thumb and finger to his beard as if in contemplation.

Around the world, tributes sprang up of the highest and lowest technology.

In the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo, people held up iPhones and iPads, their screens facing outward and displaying sharply defined, touchable graphics of flickering 

candles.

At an Apple Store in Hong Kong, old and new means of grief came together: People scribbled "RIP" and "We miss Steve" and longer notes of condolence on Post-It notes, and 

stuck them to an iPad display.

And at the 24-hour Apple Store in midtown Manhattan, the remembrances were more traditional. Passersby left flowers and candles, actual ones. Even there, people snapped 

pictures of the memorial with their iPhones.

"I was so saddened. For me it was like Michael Jackson or Princess Diana — that magnitude," Stephen Jarjoura said at the Apple Store in Sydney. His said Jobs left a 

legacy to rival Edison and Albert Einstein.

Philippe Meunier, a senior partner of a Canadian ad agency who was visiting New York from Montreal, reflected on how weird it was to receive the news of Jobs' death on 

the phone he invented.

Even in Syria, seven months into an uprising, people paused to take pride in Jobs, whose father was born in Homs, the third-largest city.

"This shows that this country can produce geniuses, if only we had freedoms instead of a suffocating dictatorship," said Sara, a 23-year-old Syrian student who refused 

to give her full name for fear of Syrian government reprisal.

Apple has sold 129 million iPhones and 29 million iPads. And in the decade since it revolutionized the music industry by offering "1,000 songs in your pocket," it has 

sold 300 million iPods, or roughly enough to outfit every person in the United States.

Famously devoted to Apple products — and often mocked, it must be said, by people who are not — even the acolytes of Jobs paused to reflect on how deeply his creations 

were enmeshed in their lives. Seamlessly, of course.

"I'm Apple everything," said Alison Brie, who plays Annie Edison on the NBC comedy show "Community." ''It's changed the way we listen to music and watch TV, connect to 

fans. Twitter on my phone is — it's huge."

In New York, a family visiting from Norway waited for the 9 a.m. opening of an Apple Store. Jorund Skurdal said his family owned about 15 Apple gadgets, including "a 

couple iPads, iPods, an iMac, an iBook, and some other things."

Five-year-old son Carsten already had his own MacBook, and 3-year-old Sanna was an iPod fan. Carsten had just bought a new app yesterday — Life of George, an interactive 

Lego game.

"He was one of a kind," Skurdal, who lives in Oslo, said of Jobs. "He was able to take these boring computer items and make them accessible, usable and very sexy." His 

main interest now, he said, "is that the company survives, and thrives. I think it will."

Jobs' death came a day after Tim Cook, who took over as Apple CEO when Jobs stepped down in August, presided over the launch of the iPhone 4S. It was the first time in 

years Apple had launched a major product without Jobs to advertise it in his trademark jeans and black mock turtleneck.

Apple stock, which traded at about $5 a share when Jobs assumed the CEO job for the second time in 1997, passed $400 earlier this year. Investors have worried for years 

about what would happen to the company without him.

Because so many products that were graced by the Jobs touch are still in the sales pipeline, it will take years to measure the impact of his death. On Thursday, the 

stock fluctuated, but only by a couple of percentage points. It closed down 88 cents at $377.37.

In a measure of his impact on personal technology, Jobs was venerated by his fiercest competitors in the hours after his death.

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, a company that Apple once treated as Goliath to its David and then blew past in market value, said it was "an insanely great 

honor" to have known Jobs. A statement of grief came from Sony, whose Walkman and Discman were buried by the iPod.

Google added a link to the Apple site on its famously minimalist search page. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, thanked him for changing the world.

To the extent that there is an online version of the old-time public square, it was overrun Thursday by remembrances of Jobs.

On Twitter, where the most popular "trending" topics change by the hour, "ThankYouSteve" and "iSad" were still high on the list a day after his death.

On Facebook, people posted revisions of the Apple logo, a stylized apple with a detached leaf and a half-moon bite taken out. One added a frown and tears to the apple. 

Another replaced the bite with a silhouette of Jobs himself.

Heads of state around the world added their thoughts. President Barack Obama said Jobs exemplified American ingenuity. Mexico's President Felipe Calderon bemoaned the 

loss of "one of the most visionary minds of our times." India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was "deeply saddened."

Source: 
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Preorders of Steve Jobs biography jump 41,800% on Amazon.com

The world is still coming to terms with the tragic loss of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, many are making their way to their local Apple Store to pay their respects, tweeting messages of condolence and remembering the man that helped shape today’s technology industry.

With news of Jobs’ passing still fresh, with many waking up to the announcement, EdibleApple noticed that fans of the talismanic Apple leader have taken to Amazon to pre-order Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography of the former Apple CEO simply titled “Steve Jobs“.

Demand for the book is so high, Amazon’s sales algorithms have charted a 41,800% increase in pre-orders for the $17.88 title, which is expected to launch on November 21, around seven weeks from now.

A similar book by the name I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words, by George Beahm, priced $5.99 and launching on November 8, has seen similar boost, with pre-orders rising by 34,825%.

As you can see from the screenshot below, Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” is now the number one seller on Amazon, with “I, Steve” ranking 323 from its previous position of 112,808:

Isaacson is a renowned biographer who is the former chairman of CNN and former managing editor of Time Magazine. He has previously bio’d Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein - recently changing the name from iSteve: The Book of Jobs.

Source: The Next Web

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On Steve Jobs: a man who changed lives

Steve Jobs passed away today, Wednesday October 5, 2011, at the age of 56. As the chairman and co-founder of Apple, Jobs irrevocably changed the way we use and think about technology with his intense interest in making it better, easier to use and more beautiful.

As an orphan of immigrant parentage who rose to the literal pinnacle of his calling through hard work and invention, Jobs epitomizes the American myth. When coupled with his obvious skill as a CEO and public speaker, it made him a fascinating character to watch. When you’re passionate about something, when you live and breathe it, it shows.

Yes, Jobs was a gifted orator and showman, but that was augmented by his love and passion for his products because he had a hand in causing them to be. The impact of that personal connection cannot be understated.

Jobs died peacefully and is survived by his wife Laureen and four children and they will miss him as a man who “cherished his family.”

The rest of us will miss him in a less intimate, but somehow still personal, way.

In his span here on Earth, Jobs defined the computer as something more than a tool. He made it personal. He founded a company, was forced to leave it behind and brought it back from the edge of disaster on his return. It is now the most valuable in the world.

Not content to simply change the device that would soon come to define our world, Jobs also turned his attention to music and mobile phones and made the way that we use gadgets made of glass and metal more personal.

Known simply as ‘Steve’ to most of us, he was nevertheless a private man who gave every ounce of himself that he was prepared to give in the creation of a product.

That product isn’t the massive cash pile that Apple is sitting on, or Steve’s impressive trove of patents, it’s not even the intensely dominant iPad. Instead, it was Apple, and the way that he imbued it with his way of thought and the drive to continuously reinvent itself.

Steve wasn’t perfect by any definition of the word. He also had plenty of traits that people find distasteful. He could be incredibly demanding and short-tempered. He got irritated with the press, a lot. He was spectacularly wrong about some of Apple’s products and leveraged every bit of his persuasiveness to try to convince the public otherwise. He even had a reputation for a puckish delight in misleading competitors and journalists. But that doesn’t change the fact that he will likely be remembered as one of the best business leaders of our time.

In a response to a question about the symbolic value of his return to Apple in 1997 after being ousted in 1985 from the company that he helped create, Jobs was blunt about the fact that Apple was more than a puppet with his hand inside. “You’re missing it. This is not a one-man show,” he said. “What’s reinvigorating this company is…there’s a lot of really talented people in this company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it themselves. But they’re not losers. What they didn’t have was a good set of coaches, a good plan. A good senior management team. But they have that now.”

Regardless of the reputation that Steve had for riding his employees hard and expecting the world out of them, they still have a reputation as some of the most loyal of any on the planet.

In 1997, Apple’s logo still bore the characteristic multicolored apple that had been its mark almost since its founding.

When Jobs returned to Apple that year, he asked an unnamed employee why he didn’t just leave during the company’s dark years. The employee replied, “we bleed 6 colors.”

Steve Jobs created Apple as a company in his own image. By turns brilliant, secretive, prescient and yes, a bit of a hard ass. As huge as Apple is as a company it has managed to maintain some of the rebel spirit that drew Jobs to the music of Bob Dylan. Through its constant willingness to treat the status quo as a rule to be broken, Apple has defied conventional wisdom over and over as pundits predicted its doom at every turn.

Steve Jobs’ attitude towards building the company that Apple is today can be summed up with a response to a question he was asked about how the younger generation of entrepreneurs were handling their success in starting companies.

…there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That’s when you find out who you are and what your values are. So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

The very way that Steve solved problems was imbued in the company at a molecular level. I was once told by a 20 year Apple veteran that if 10 or 20 engineers was working on a problem, it was instinctively known that they were doing something wrong. Apple thrives on one or two person teams creating things passionately and being edited conscientiously by superiors that care.

“Design is a funny word,” Steve said, “some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”

Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. Even from the first moments of its existence, it has been a conduit for the philosophy and vision of Steve Jobs. However, throughout the past decade have we seen signs that Jobs hasn’t just been producing the next iMac, iPod or iPad.

He has instead been crafting Apple itself, his last great ‘one more thing.’

Steve taught us to look beyond how something worked and think about how it made us feel. Millions of people have been inspired to create beautiful, meaningful things by using the tools that Steve—by way of Apple—provided.

These tools were inspiring because they themselves were beautiful and imbued with a sense of care and purpose. It is this sense of craftsmanship and quivering, consuming attention to detail that is perhaps at the heart of the way that the news of Steve’s passing is affecting those who have used his creations.

Because Steve put so much of what he was into what he made, it made every time you picked up an iPad, an iPhone or sat down at a Mac, feel like a conversation with him. You would use it and he would smile back at you as you marveled at its feeling of clarity and the way it made you feel like you were living in the future that we had always been promised.

Too young, too young; many will no doubt say today and in the time that follows. But the truth is that any age would have been too young to lose Steve.

We would always have been waiting for him to change everything again, just one more time.

Source: The Next Web

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