Posts tagged: Steve Jobs
Why the hell are my eyes filling with tears?, I asked myself this morning as I read John Gruber’s beautiful and poetic piece on Steve Jobs’ passing. Of course, like everyone else with an Internet connection, I heard the news yesterday. And like so many others, I found out on a device with his single-symbol signature on the back. Until now though, honestly, I didn’t feel much. Why should I? I didn’t know this man personally. A lot of people who I don’t know personally die every single day. Why should this guy be different? This morning it finally struck a chord. This man altered my life. He altered the lives of the last couple generations of humans. All of us. It’s not about products or “things” or iPods or Macs. It’s about the scope of the impact.
Think about it: personal computers.
Steve Jobs was one of the people largely responsible for the reason we all use them, work with them, carry them in our pockets, make art with them, explore the world with them. He wasn’t singularly responsible of course, but in the galaxy of technology that has seen supernovas of growth over the last 40 years, his star was very near the center, and just might have been the brightest. His passion and audacity and belief really did move things forward. He wasn’t always tidy, he wasn’t always nice and he wasn’t safe — people who actually change things seldom are — but he certainly did change things.
This morning I also saw the version of the “Here’s To The Crazy Ones” video which has Steve’s voice as the voiceover, a version I didn’t know existed. As I watched, it struck me: I think I’ve always heard his voice in that voiceover. It encapsulates the spirit he embodied. His face belongs in it now. He changed the world. He did indeed push the human race forward.
I love the way Apple (Steve) wrote this:
We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps.
If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.
If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you’re trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don’t want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.
We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, “I’ll know it when I see it”. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.
If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.
Yeah yeah, go ahead and call it contemptuous towards developers. Fine. It is. And I love it. This is the kind of thinking that makes Apple great, in my view. They are very simply and stubbornly NOT going to do things anybody else’s way.
(Source: daringfireball.net)
