AS SHARES IN Apple fall initially and the world of technology comes to terms to the news that CEO Steve Jobs has resigned, tributes have begun rolling in to the man himself.
The news will inevitably stir up debate on how Apple Inc. will be affected by the resignation (Bryan Appleyard wrote a detailed account in the Sunday Times in 2009 of how Apple and Jobs himself had tried to keep the nature of his illness under wraps for some time, and how the company was very much tied up with its CEO’s personality).
Today, however, many are choosing to focus on giving credit to the tech visionary.
Harry McCracken, TIME columnist and founder of of Technologizer, tweeted:
Profiles of Steve Jobs recount how he was a college dropout and yet shepherded Apple from a two-man startup to Silicon Valley darling when the Apple II, the first computer for regular people to really catch on, sent IBM Corp. and others scrambling to get their own PCs to market.
Earlier this month Apple became the most valuable company in America and Jobs’s hits seemed to grow bigger as the years went on: After the colorful iMac computer and the now-ubiquitous iPod, the iPhone redefined the category of smart phones and the iPad all but created the market for tablet computers.
His own aura seemed part of the attraction. On stage at trade shows and company events in his uniform of jeans, sneakers and black mock-turtlenecks, he’d entrance audiences with new devices, new colors, new software features, building up to a grand finale he’d predictably preface by saying, “One more thing.”
The best profile of Jobs, however, may well have come from Jobs himself in this 2005 address he made to Stanford University.
Watch and learn as he tells three pivotal stories which shaped the direction of his life, starting with his adoption as a baby:
- additional reporting from AP
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