Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO of Apple. He hasn’t stepped off the planet. But his resignation yesterday does strike many as marking the endgame for a fairly young but long-ill man.
Still – is it time for obituaries already? (There are far too many tributes to read, but you can get an appreciation from Adam Penenberg’s essay in which every sentence is an excerpt from and link to someone else’s post.)
It depends if you are talking about Steve Jobs as a person or Steve Jobs as Apple CEO – or if there is even a difference.
Many people are “married to their work.” But that could just be an overworked lawyer with two kids, a mortgage and a sailboat. Other people are their work. That’s Jobs.
What does he do when he’s not running Apple? And does anyone (outside of die-hard fans) really care?
There aren’t really paparazzi pics of Jobs, or front-page revelations about his love life. (Jobs telling Walt Mossberg about satisfaction with his sex life was the most awkward moment at the 2010 “D” conference.)
His paparazzi moments are the Apple press conferences. And his love life (for all we care) is that “one more thing” he introduces at them.
There never would be (and some say can’t continue to be) an Apple without Steve Jobs. But there also can’t be a Steve Jobs without Apple.
Even during his 12 years in the wilderness, Jobs was thinking like Apple’s CEO. the NeXT computer – for good or ill – shows where he thought computing would go. And Pixar created not only the demand for powerful technology to create and play its masterpieces, it created an aesthetic standard in line with what Apple continues to promote.
I hope the real obituary for Steve Jobs is still a way off. But I can see why so many have already been written.
