Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

Recently, the world lost a icon, Steve Jobs. Jobs wasn't a politician, an actor, or a famous athlete; he was the genius behind Apple. Most of us probably own or have owned an Apple product at one point. Whether it be an iPod or the 12 core Mac Pro, "Mac" became a household name in the early 2000's.

I recently read about how parallel Jobs' life was with Bill Gates. If you look at the time line of Apple and Windows, you'll see that everything from the launch of their initial product to the time they decided to leave their active roles in their company lines up. In the early 80's, Jobs would actually have Gates come to his house to show him what he was working on. He was very passionate about his company and felt that it was going to "revolutionize" computing as the world knew it. Well... he was right!

Apple was never exactly about making "cheap" priced products by any means, and Jobs knew that if he was going to create a products that "revolutionized" the world, he couldn't take any shortcuts with the design, or functionality of his them. There is a cheaper alternative to almost any Mac product out there, yet people are still drawn to Apple's creativity and innovation, i.e., "It's cool!" If it wasn't, then the stock wouldn't be worth over $400 a share and it wouldn't have exceeded over $100 billion dollars in global sales.

Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. Recently, CNN mentioned in an article that mortality was the motivation behind the creation of Apple's boldest products yet, such as the iPhone 4GS and the iPad 2.

The 656 page book, based on over 40 interviews with Walter Isaacson, is going to go on sale any day now. According to Simon & Schuster, Jobs cooperated with the books creation and asked for no control over what was written or the rights to read the book before it was published. I think that's a 656 page book that I wouldn't mind reading! As far as Apple goes, After seeing how enthusiastic Tim Cook was in his keynote about the iPhone 4S, I have no doubt in my mind that the the legacy of Steve Jobs will be carried on.