Inspired #4 - Steve Jobs

On October 5, Steve Jobs passed away due to the relapse of his pancreatic cancer. Steve Jobs is perhaps the most inspirational and controversial leader the tech industry has ever seen. Everything that Steve Jobs touched turned to gold and became widely successful. He was not without critics however, who argued that he never truly invented anything. Instead, he simply tweaked other people's idea to fit his vision. Despite what your opinion of Steve Jobs is, the tech industry lost a giant they can never replace.

I find myself more on the side that Steve Jobs did not invent anything and simply tweaked other people's ideas. While he may not have ever invented something, he was the best at what he did. Steve Jobs could see the flaws in other people's designs, and he would not rest until he recreated that product in his perfect vision. He changed the entire MP3 player market, because he thought that every product on the market "truly sucked." Therefore, Steve Jobs went to work at perfecting the MP3 player and introduced the world to the iPod in 2001. The iPod completely revolutionized the market and remains the number one MP3 player in the United States today. When Steve Jobs saw the cell phone and tablet markets, he went through the exact same process as he did with the MP3. Today, it is almost impossible to find a phone that does not have at least he most basic "Smartphone" technologies. By introducing the iPad, Jobs once again revolutionized a market once thought dead. Owning a tablet computer suddenly became the newest thing that you needed to have. Before the iPad tablets, were clunky and required a stylus to operate. Now, tablets no longer require a stylus and instead operate using the multi-touch systems.

While I do not want to speak ill of the dead, I have unfortunately lost some respect for Steve Jobs after the release of his official biography. In his biography, it is quite apparent that Steve Jobs does not appreciate anybody tweaking "his" ideas.  In his biography Steve Jobs said, 

Our lawsuit is saying, “Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.” Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google’s products—Android, Google Docs—are shit.

Personally, I find Steve Jobs views to be entirely hypocritical. He made his entire career based on tweaking other people's ideas. Throughout his career, Jobs took other people's idea and made them fit his vision. However, when somebody does the exact same thing to him he is furious. How can he base his entire career off other people's ideas and then are made when somebody else "copies" him?  Perhaps Bill Gates said it best when he said, "I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_gladwell