Gr8insurance salutes Steve Jobs (RIP)

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, a pioneering businessman in the microcomputer, animation, music, and mobile phone industries -- several products have made significant inroads recently in the legal industry -- died last night from an extended battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.


Born on Feb. 24, 1955, and adopted by a Mountain View, Calif., family, Steven Paul Jobs' legacy will be his profound impact as the Henry Ford of our time. He was a man who did not personally invent things, but saw the potential of existing inventions, and possessed both the marketing chops and business acumen to transform them into world-changing products and services. Jobs was unfortunately similar to other 20th-century titans in being widely disliked for his management style, yet unique among them for being just as widely beloved by his customers -- something Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg can only dream of.

Steve Jobs

Among his stated secrets for success, Jobs often said that his team built technology in response to great product ideas, not products in response to great technology ideas.


Jobs' friend Steve Wozniak, in 1976, designed a personal computer on a single circuit board. Wozniak, at the time a calculator engineer for Hewlett-Packard, was reluctant to form a company, thereby inspiring Jobs to have Wozniak's friends and family persuade him by proxy. Jobs was himself an engineer, but his true talent was in marketing and selling Wozniak's computer, the Apple 1. Its original price: $666.66. Approximately 200 units were sold, of which roughly 50 are known to exist today, easily fetching $20,000 or more among high-end technology collectors. One unit sold for a mind-bending $213,600 a year ago.


Apple's first smash hit was the Apple II, a preassembled consumer-oriented desktop computer, in 1977. It was far from being the first such computer and had stiff competition in the Commodore PET 2001 and Tandy TRS-80 Model 1. Commodore had the only design with built-in mass storage, and Tandy had the advantage of its Radio Shack retail stores. But it was Apple that conquered the education market by offering steep discounts, and then invaded the business market thanks to the third-party VisiCalc program, which was a popular early spreadsheet. By the time the IBM PC launched in 1981, the Apple II had dozens of competitors, but by far the largest dealer network and the biggest selection of aftermarket software for any purpose. Apple later became the first company to sell mainstream microcomputers that used graphical interfaces and mouses for input, starting with the little-known and poor-selling Lisa in 1983, and then blooming with the refined Macintosh in 1984 and beyond.


Commodore, Tandy, and even IBM are all now out of the personal computer business, and even market-leading HP, where Wozniak once begged his managers to produce his personal computer design, is heading out of the field, as well. Meanwhile, Apple today is the Mercedes of the personal computer and smartphone businesses -- a leader in products that combine luxury and performance, sold in elegant showrooms -- although it will never be the best-selling company in those fields. Apple has managed to be a best-seller in the smaller markets for personal music players and mainstream tablet computers. Music players are now being subsumed by smartphones such as the iPhone 4S, and the future of tablets is open to debate, but the modern Apple led by CEO Tim Cook and Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive is sure to remain influential in whatever fields it enters -- even in fields where it failed, such as the mid-1990s PDA market, and where it chose to delay its own entry, such as in smartphones.


Jobs has been just as famous in related fields, namely the iTunes music download service and his stake in the Pixar animation studio. The iTunes service gave legitimacy to its field, causing music industry executives to eventually embrace an idea that would destroy their traditional distribution methods, where previously Napster was loathed by the same companies. Pixar made animated feature films return to their past glory via digital techniques. In both situations, Jobs was backed by large and highly paid teams of experts, but deserves immense credit for his leadership and vision.


Then there are lawyers. Microsoft Windows has a stranglehold on law firms' desktop computers, but the iPhone has largely blown away Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones, and what savvy counselor doesn't use an iPad? Lawyers love their Apple gadgets for being easy-to-use, feature-rich, reliable, and packed with techno-sex appeal. "Major legal software company announces iOS edition" is something we routinely consider solid news.


Jobs changed our lives, our childrens' lives, and the greater world around us. It was on an Apple II that this reporter, in sixth grade, was impelled to put down his Atari joystick, learn BASIC programming, and start writing about technology for his middle school newspaper. There were always jokes about Jobs' Reality Distortion Field and minimalist wardrobe, but it's no laughing matter that he is already sorely missed.


Source : http://www.law.com
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