Me: Hey Tricky Ricky whats up man ?
Ricky: Steve Jobs dead.
And that's how I got the ping of death on my Google Talk, even as I was crossing the road to inquire about the iPhone 4S at the nearby ATT store. It took a while for that to sink in. And sink in it did! in an ocean of gloom, inside my head. I felt weird about myself, when everyone else around me took it as the purest form of news, with a nodding condolence. What was then wrong with me ? Specially since I have never even owned an Apple product.
The fact was, of all the deaths I stood witness to in my little lifetime , this guy had perhaps the highest possible influence on how my life has changed. It does sound an emphatic overzealous statement, but touchwood, I haven't had any close ones die on me.
I have LIVED that change! In a matter of years, starting 2007. things weren't going to be same. You needed a radical mind to view things differently. You needed somebody like Jobs to put a giant like Nokia out of business, and that's exactly what he did with the iPhone; by reinventing the phone. Every single mobile invention, ESPECIALLY Android owe their existence to him. And now when I look back at my Android vs iPhone arguments I have had with my mates , I realize what a losing cause that was. I wondered what Apple means to a passive, armchair observer like me, and here are the things that came to mind.
Design. The first word that comes to mind when one thinks of Apple, the way their products are made, look and even packaged. There is a sense of pride that the company takes in their products, a sense of care, a sense of being very very deliberate in what they do; which has reflected in how their products have become the Icon that a whole generation associates itself with; or must I rephrase it to "wants to associate itself with". There is a big gigantic gorge of a line that differentiates a company like Apple from a company that believes in market capture and monopoly. For a company like Apple doesn't need to strive to capture a market segment, but it inadvertently creates one. And pray don't misunderstand me, like the man himself said "Design is not how it looks, but how it works". That takes me to the next thing that defines Apple.
Software.My first experience of software or an OS was with Windows 95, which did not support SVGA or Multimedia; hence I was content looking at a pixellated Kate Winslet standing on the stern of the Titanic. Ever since I had only used Windows and things barely changed, and I somehow made my peace with concepts like the virus, the system slowdowns, the "error: send dont send", feeling it was all a part and parcel of the package and one had to live with it, I never knew I could ask for more. Little did I know that there was another minority who used Mac and were alien to these kinds of frustrations. And finally when I did see Mac, GOD it blew me away. It definitely was not software, it was art; or maybe it was the first instance of software being an art. Cause to be art you need to "serve no other purpose than yourself" and that is EXACTLY what the Macintosh does. It has no ulterior motives. You couldn't help but notice how the windows minimized like the flow of a genie back into the bottle; there are of course a billion other ways that the Mac is superior ; but its striking things like these that contribute to, not just customer happiness but delight and eventually the unflinching loyalty that we get to see. Its these subtle things that reflect upon the care and the due diligence that company has, and since it was Job's vision, it speaks volumes for the man himself. Its hard to imagine that in this capitalist, monopolistic , anti trust lawsuit world , that there was this company lead by this man , who were on their own, in a different sphere of activity, catering to a different set of people, with staunch belief in product quality and in the end competing only with themselves. Yes, I have never seen a Mac hang for a second or an application on an iPhone crash or restart. NEVER. And that too in a world where I had begun to accept these things, no matter how high I was willing to pay. This experience was indeed radical , and the software by Apple remains by far the closest thing to perfection I have ever seen. It would be very very apt to quote Jobs here "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected". True. Which eventually takes me to the greatest trait of Apple.
Getting the fuzzy stuff right: This definitely is the core design principle which I should have talked about under design, but it deserves a special mention and perhaps a standing ovation. If earth were to perish today, and somethings had to be embalmed and preserved; for the the possible future life to draw inference , a completely charged iPhone would be definitely be one of them. Nothing showcases in one shot the technical advancement of our race, EVEN AS it proves that we were not emotionally stunted. Yes, spare a thought for the times when multi-touch was not a word , smartphones had pricky stilus and you probably needed a crash course before you found out how you could go about your job with it. And today a pink blonde (no offence to anyone) carrying an iPhone and walking with a swagger stands testimony as to how the iPhone broke that mould , by catering to the FUZZY terms like "feel", "touch" and most importantly to your intuition amounting to "ease". Yes Jobs did stand at the intersection of where man and machine met, and what he managed to create was a remarkably human software. It is EXTREMELY hard to articulate what I want to talk about here, there are no words, hence the word fuzzy. You have to use a Mac or iPhone long enough to see , how they address some very very , very basic drawbacks of other softwares, so basic that they cannot be quantified but only be understood qualitatively; by purely catering to your intuition in such a way , that to put it simply , you. could.do.nothing.wrong. If you have worked with an Apple product you know what I am talking about , even if you hated it.
I could probably beat the topic to death with the tremendous verbal diarrhea due to the sheer emotion that I feel today. I was afraid I might get diluted tomorrow, hence I chose to sit and write, for the first time in half a decade, about a man whom I will always remember as the man who made computers fun, went away.. came back... to redefine the words 'phone' and 'beautiful' and ensured that for once they could be used in the same sentence. The death of Jobs came as a complete surprise to me like to the many in the world, specially my friends who had to wake up to it on a festive morning. The feeling of surprise in me is only exceeded by how bad I find myself feeling about it.
We have seen the death of a remarkable man today. A counter geek , who in his heydays was handsome, didn't much wear glasses, didn't have dandruff, didn't have pimples and most importantly didn't crunch numbers or attend a funky school. He just was a man who had his heart in the right place (in hind sight perhaps the best place possible), who believed in auditing (dropping in ) courses even if it was Calligraphy 101, who was like he admitted “was lucky -- I found what I love to do early in life," who for a change sought and delivered excellence without compromise and did not believe in competition , who was fired from the company he founded only to find something as legendary as Pixar that gave us WALL-E and TOY STORY and most importantly a man who got his basics right and believed in fuzzy terms like faith , gut, and instinct to the extant that it showed in his work. We will miss the iconic turtle neck + blue jeans clad man who was never seen in a tux, who kept changing our lives by revealing his latest at WWDCs with the passion that would befit a father speaking of his highly potent son. Utterly apt.
I excuse myself for the ecstasy of my lament, this is perhaps what it was going to take to take me out of my writing exile. 3 cheers then for the man who of all the things he did, immortalized the lower case "i" . May you rest in peace and "Make a ding in the universe", you will be sorely missed.
Steve Jobs
1955-2011
p.s: In his memory, if Amazon wireless allows I intend to return my 2 day old s2 and go for the iPhone 4S. It was like he waited for the following day.And no eulogy on Jobs would be complete without this video.
