Farewell to the man in the turtleneck and jeans

Steve Jobs, co-founder and once CEO of Apple Inc. passed away on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011. He had a history of pancreatic cancer, which led to a cardiac arrest. Though Steve Jobs has come and gone, his legacy will continue to exist and inspire all.

To become an entrepreneur, CEO, or to be on the board of trustees for a multi-billion dollar corporation, one must be very lucky, highly intelligent, or worked hard for a long time after being granted a college degree. Steve Jobs did attend college, but he dropped out after a semester. Steve Jobs may or may not be lucky, but intelligence and hard working only begin to described the genius

Jobs co-founded Apple Inc in the late 70’s, and in the 80’s presented the world with the first commercial personal computer. Soon after he would retire due to corporation politics. Jobs then formed a new company, NeXT. With the new company Jobs would lay the framework for the iTunes Store and other web markets. In the mid-80’s Jobs acquired Pixar from George Lucas. With Pixar, Jobs was able to produce the first movie made completely by Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), “Toy Story”. To this day the Pixar company continues to produce movies like “Up”, “Monsters Inc”, and “WALL-E”. But in the 2000’s The Walt Disney Company merged with Pixar, which landed Jobs on the Board of Directors for Disney. With the success of NeXT and Pixar, Jobs was hired by his original company, Apple Inc and in 1997 he became the CEO of the company, with which he revolutionized technology till his retirement in 2011.

Ten years ago Jobs presented a new device that was new in the way of marketing and production so that it may capture the new millennium. The device was called the iPod. One decade has passed since the world has been introduced to the iPod, and since then we have seen new styles come and go, whether it was the shuffle, the nano, the mini, the touch or if it was the original with 5 GB of the newest with 160 GB. Now we have the ability to see such technologies like the iPhone or the iPad which started craves of combining music and phones and the spark for a large competition in the tablet market.

Everyone has sometime come across one of Jobs genius patents. Whether it is how they talk with their friends, catch-up with the news, check social websites, or even relieve boredom in class with games like Angry Birds.

Jobs always pressed onwards, towards the future never looking to the past. At the MacWorld Conference and Expo in 2007 Jobs is quoted to have said “There is an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.”

Jobs did not only leave behind the iPhone, the iPad, or the Mac notebooks. Jobs left his ideology to resonate through the minds of all, to press on towards the future and to do all you can as best as you can. For a man without a college degree and that has been disconnected with a company that he co-founded can come out on top. Jobs’ legacy was that working hard will pay-off, as he had lived to prove.

Farewell Jobs, thank you for all you have done. You will be missed.