This morning when I got up the first thing I saw was an image of Apple 2 with RIP Steve Jobs written on screen. It took me time to realize what has happened. It was a shock. A shock because I believed this time also he is going to pull back from setbacks that life keeps on throwing at him.
In 90s I knew who Steve Jobs was, but had no idea how his product looked like or how great were those. Reading tech articles, I had general idea about how good he was. Sometimes in 2004 I saw an iPod and I was surprised by the product and great mind behind this.
What really made me a fanboy was his Stanford Commencement Speech in 2005. I heard this for first time and I was so impressed that I printed the speech and mailed it to my father, with a note saying, “you know father there is this guy called Steve Jobs, he is the founder of Apple Company and read how amazing this guy is”. Those three stories that he talks about were such an inspiration for me. His struggle in beginning and trying to break boundaries, challenge the conventional ways was something spectacular. I was so inspired that first laptop I brought, I got “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”, engraved on it.
All this time I knew him as great innovator and visionary. But in 2007 when iPhone was unveiled it struck me how my thinking of him as innovator was an understatement. Ad story does not stop here, apart from all this he was the greatest marketing guy ever. His skills in marketing are not comparable. I never missed a single Apple event after 2007. I watched them not because I wanted to get the news first; I wanted to see him deliver those speeches. It was just a mesmerizing experience.
I should be a good example of his marketing skills. I am a person who does not listen to music, but after seeing his iPhone announcement I could not resist and bought iPod Touch soon afterwards. Using his products over years have taught me what actually experience is, and how to create customer experience. No one does it better than Steve Jobs.
He has such an influence on me that I would often say that one thing that can keep me in US is a job at Apple, for anything else I am returning back to India. I always tried to imitate his business style in exercises/simulation we did. I would always quote his example when arguing and when someone would quote his example, I would say, “he is an outlier, his examples don’t count.”
Rest in peace Steve Jobs, you are an outlier.
