| AsianDivaGirlsWebDude |
10-05-2011 05:53 PM |
One More Thing...
http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/up...Steve-Jobs.jpg
Quote:
My neighbor, Steve Jobs, has been in the news lately.
The talk of the town is the recent announcement he will be stepping aside to let other seeds grow at Apple. The business press, the general press, the blogosphere, and just about everybody else has waxed poetic about the ?greatest CEO of all time? saying that this ?boy wonder? has shaped the very nature of our lives with his genius.
It?s all true, but here in Palo Alto, Steve Jobs isn?t just an icon, he?s also the guy who lives down the street.
I first met Steve (does anyone call him Mr. Jobs anymore?) years ago at a backyard pool party. I was so flummoxed by the off chance I was breathing in his DNA, I could barely say a word. I am sure I made a winning first impression as I stumbled over my own name when we were introduced.
I watched as he swam in the pool with his son. He seemed like a regular guy, a good dad having fun with his kids.
The next time I met him was when our children attended school together. He sat in on back-to-school night listening to the teacher drone on about the value of education (wait, isn?t he one of those high-tech gods who didn?t even graduate from college?) while the rest of us sat around pretending having Steve Jobs in the room was totally normal.
Not long after, I saw Steve as I was running in our neighborhood. He was deep in conversation with a younger version of himself?his very own mini-me in jeans, black T-shirt, and wire-rimmed glasses. I must have looked like an idiot as I tripped over a crack in the pavement trying to give them wide berth.
It was at Halloween not long after when I realized he actually knew my name (yes, my name!). He and his wife put on a darn scary haunted house (to be specific, a haunted garden). He was sitting on the walkway, dressed like Frankenstein. As I walked by with my son, Steve smiled and said, ?Hi Lisen.? My son thought I was the coolest mom in town when he realized The Steve Jobs knew me.
Thanks for the coolness points, Steve.
From then on, when I saw him holding his executive meetings in our neighborhood, I didn?t hesitate to smile and say hi. Steve always returned the favor, proving he may be a genius, but he is also a good neighbor.
In time, things changed. The walks were less frequent, the gait slower, the smile not so ready. Earlier this year, when I saw Steve and his wife walking down our street holding hands, I knew something was different. Now, so does the rest of the world.
While Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal and CNET continue to drone on about the impact of the Steve Jobs era, I won?t be pondering the MacBook Air I write on or the iPhone I talk on. I will think of the day I saw him at his son?s high school graduation.
There Steve stood, tears streaming down his cheeks, his smile wide and proud, as his son received his diploma and walked on into his own bright future, leaving behind a good man and a good father who can be sure of the rightness of this, perhaps his most important legacy of all.
|
Jobs quotes:
Quote:
"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
[BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998]
|
Quote:
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"
[The line he used to lure John Sculley into becoming Apple's CEO, according to Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple]
|
Quote:
?That?s been one of my mantras -- focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it?s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.?
[BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998]
|
Quote:
"This is not a one-man show. What?s reinvigorating this company is two things: One, there?s a lot of really talented people in this company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it themselves. But they?re not losers. What they didn?t have was a good set of coaches, a good plan. A good senior management team. But they have that now.?
[BusinessWeek, May 25, 1998]
|
Quote:
?You can?t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something ? your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.?
[Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]
|
Quote:
?Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven?t found it yet, keep looking. Don?t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you?ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don?t settle.?
[Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]
|
Quote:
?No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don?t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life?s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."
[Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]
|
Quote:
?Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn?t matter to me ? Going to bed at night saying we?ve done something wonderful? that?s what matters to me.?
[The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993]
|
ADG
|
