Steve Jobs interpreted and changed the world

Steve Jobs has become, in death, the poster child of the mortality of genius just as he was in life the human — and bearded — face of cutting-edge innovation and inspirational business leadership.

He built Apple into an institution that was as iconic as he was, not just because it had a monosyllable for a brand name — like his own surname— but also because he invited his customers, nay followers, to take a bite of the trend-setting apple.

It would not be stretching the imagination too far to conclude that it was Jobs himself who took the first bite from his own fruit of technological pleasures, for it has often been said that he built gadgets that he himself wanted to use.

From the 1970s, when Apple used to build desktop computers with wooden hard disks, he overcame many hurdles — including being thrown out in 1985 from the firm he co-founded — to transform Apple into a company that became synonymous with the sleekest gadgets of modern-day communication. From the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple products are easily regarded as the gold standard in their respective markets.

“The quality of the sound of the iPod is classy,” my colleague, John Gachiri, said as he mourned his own device, stolen in December 2010. “Nothing can match it.”

Die-hard capitalist

It is entirely possible that Steve Jobs was a die-hard capitalist. After all, Apple was for a brief moment, earlier this year, the biggest company in the US by share value.

According to the Newsweek edition of September 5, Apple had $350 billion (about Sh35 trillion) in market capitalisation and $76 billion (Sh7.6 trillion) in cash and investments. Yet, despite this, Steve Jobs had the lowest pay in the capitalist world: A dollar a year.

How could one man represent the two extremes of capitalism with so much ease that it was not even regarded as newsworthy?

Is it that he did not need his pay? Or is it that when he set out to create Apple products, he first and foremost wanted to change the world?

Here was a man, one would say, who would at once have been at home with world leaders and global executives in the winter parleys of Davos as he would have been sitting in with the Wall Street occupiers protesting against unbridled corporate greed.

It would not be a surprise if the protesters used their Apple gadgets to mobilise against the ugly face of capitalism.

Even as an individual, Steve Jobs represented the complex duality of identity that continues to shape foreign relations across the globe. He was an American, of course, but being the son of a Syrian father, Arab blood coursed in his veins at a time when the relationship between the Western and the Arab worlds has not been at their best, no thanks to the twin spectres of terrorism and imperialism.

Disney CEO Robert Iger spoke for many across the world when he said in his condolence message that Steve Jobs’ legacy “will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed and the culture he defined.”

One of Jobs’ greatest influences on culture has been the unrivalled ability of Apple products to shape the lifestyles of millions of people around the world. With the iPod, he changed the way people listened to music.

For less than a dollar per song, he turned the music industry into a world of limitless possibilities where everyone with the gadget could become the ultimate DJ in his or her own life.

With the iPhone, he changed the way people communicate and view the world through the touchscreen technology that has made Apple products such a pleasure to use. And with the iPad, he has transformed the reading habits of the world.

Indeed, one can engage in practically any pastime or indulgence just by downloading apps from App Store, the virtual shop where one can allow fancies to fly on nimble wings with practically any application.

Incidentally, the iPad is seldom mentioned in the same sentence with other green innovations of the world, yet, by putting news, books, maps and valuable, everyday information behind a touchscreen the size of a book, Jobs has saved millions of trees from disappearing from the face of the earth.

Thanks to him in large part, readers can now envision a world without newspapers and hard copies of books and other publications.

Follow your heart

Karl Marx famously observed that “philosophers have over the ages interpreted the world but the point is to change it”. Steve jobs, who was born in 1955 and died in 2011, not only interpreted but also changed the world as much with his gadgets as with his transcendence.

“Today, we lost one of the most influential thinkers, creators and entrepreneurs of all time,” said Rupert Murdoch of NewsCorp on Thursday. “Steve Jobs was simply the greatest CEO of his generation”.

It is rare indeed for a man who had such a public life — who had so much to do for the world — to pass on peacefully, surrounded only by his family. Even in his final moment, he had a profound lesson to teach the world.

In a famous speech he delivered at Stanford University and quoted in the September 5 Newsweek, Steve Jobs said: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life... There is no reason not to follow your heart.”