RIP : Steve Jobs journey

Untimely death of a man is regretted but people the world over revere the persons bold and conceited enough to act as if they were gods. Steve jobs was no other. He was an eccentric visionary with a big big ego. Visionaries are many but such prominence is attained only by portraying a larger than life persona.

He was the creative genius behind the success of Apple, but the real technical genius who actually created the Apple computers all by himself was another Steve, about whom not many people know. Steve Wozniak was the technical mind who created the things and Jobs marketed them. Since Jobs was the face of Apple people credit him to have godlike powers. This god was in the market to make money (he banned all philanthropic work by Apple) mostly out of the people who have more money than sense and prefer style and aesthetics over performance.

courtesy: tech

Steve and Laurene Powell

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Jobs married Laurene Powell on March 18, 1991. Presiding over the wedding was the Zen Buddhist monk Kobun Chino Otogawa. The couple have a son and two daughters. Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan. She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity by claiming he was sterile; he later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter.

The above picture is from April 24, 1984 at the flamboyant "Apple II Forever" introduction of the Apple IIc. This was shortly after the introduction of the Macintosh, so Apple wanted to assure dealers the Apple II would continue to be supported. The Apple II product line continued until the final Apple IIGS model was discontinued in December 1992.

Steve Jobs with an Apple II

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Looking back to 1976, the Apple I was the first big success for Apple, though arguably it was also a failure. The company ultimately killed the Apple computer in favor of the Apple Macintosh. Introduced in 1984, the Macintosh popularized the Graphical User Interface, as well as the input device known as the “mouse.” The Macintosh was self-contained, including the display, and easy to set up with few cables, characteristics favored by Jobs and ones that continue to distinguish Apple products to this day.

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RIP

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Steve Jobs rests his head against his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, after delivering the keynote address to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference at Moscone West on Monday.

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If the Nineties had Bill Gates, the Noughties have Steve Jobs. As Apple goes from milestone to milestone – overtaking Microsoft, reinventing the wheel with the iPad, taking smartphones to the next level with the iPhone – Jobs is technology's knight errant of the moment.

What Steve Jobs did in India 35 years ago?

Today, India woke up to a world without Steve Jobs. His company, Apple, has sometimes treated its India customers with disdain, launching products here months after the international release. Yet, India mourns with the rest of the world. But the truth is that Steve Jobs had a short lived fling with our country in the '70s, before he founded Apple, and like many flings it was a bitter experience.

Then an employee of video game company Atari, the young Jobs came to India with his friend Dan Kottke. Just when they were here and how long they stayed is a matter of some speculation. What is certain is that Jobs and Kottke were here between 1974 and 1976, and spent between one and three months travelling around North India. He was mystified by eastern philosophies; he was on a quest for higher learning, to solve the unanswered questions of science.

According to unofficial Steve Jobs autobiography iCon, Kottke states "He was totally determined to go to India". Kottke goes on to say, "He felt some kind of unresolved pain over being adopted. That was the same period that he hired a private investigator to try and track down his mother. He was obsessed with it for a while."

In New Delhi, Steve chose to don a lungi and roam around barefoot.In the flower child fashion of the era, he embraced Indian culture. Or thought he had. But India, he discovered, came bundled with beggars on the streets and the reality of poverty, far removed from the hippy-ish existence Jobs had led till then.

There was worse in store for him. He met a holy man in Kainchi near Nainital, who shaved his head on a mountaintop and claimed to know the whereabouts the elusive and much sought Neem Karoli Baba. Many versions of this story exist. In one such,this man turned out to be a fraud, and when Jobs' finally made it to the Baba's ashram he was found to have had passed away. Jobs later said "We weren't going to find a place where we could go for a month to be enlightened. It was one of the first times that I started to realize that maybe Thomas Edison did a lot more to improve the world than Karl Marx and Neem Karoli Baba put together."

By now Jobs' spiritual quest lay in tatters as did his notions of the world. To his emotional turmoil was added a measure of physical discomfort. Both Jobs and Kottke were struck down with diarrhea and fatigue in the unforgiving Indian summer. Kottke describes this time: "Out there in the dry creek bed, in the middle of India, completely disoriented, all our rhythms and beliefs shattered, where we were sure a flash flood would come through any moment, the two of us praying to any god that could here us; Dear God, if I ever get through this, ill be a good person, I promise."

Finally, Kottke's traveller's cheques were stolen and the companions had to cancel a planned trip to the cooler climes of Manali.

India both traumatised Steve Jobs and changed his life. He returned to Atari a Buddhist, and a more focused and hardened individual. Did he find in India the steel that was to allow him to survive an ouster from the company he founded and then to return and rise to unexpected heights?

After returning to Atari, Jobs' rekindled his friendship with high school mate Steve Wozniak who was working at Hewlett-Packard then. Together, the two Steves launched a startup called Apple Computer from Jobs' garage in Palo Alto, California.

It's hard to say if India's less than favoured status with Apple can be attributed to Steve Jobs' early experience with the country. But it is definitely true that it was then that the foundations were laid for the titanic, perfection-obsessed, often ruthless personality he was to become later.

courtesy : News channel

The Sorcerer wrote:

Funny clip of actor Noah Wyle imitating Steve Jobs at a Macworld convention