Oct 6, 2011
Bloggers around the world have struggled to come to terms with the untimely death of Steve Jobs on October 5 at the age of 56, with some of the most influential tech bloggers writing little more than “I don’t know what to say, and I’ll write more about it later.” I have also encountered great difficulty in trying to come up with the appropriate words for such a sad occasion, and wrote about some of my favorite Apple memories instead. On this page, I have collected some of the reactions that I have found on blogs across the Web. If I missed any good articles — and I’m sure there are hundreds that I have yet to read — please feel free to post the links.
If you read any of these posts, I suggest reading the last, written by Brian Lam, formerly of Gizmodo. The touching piece describes Lam’s meetings and phone calls with Steve Jobs during Gizmodo’s controversial coverage of the iPhone 4 and expresses Lam’s regrets at the way he handled Gizmodo’s position of power over Apple.
“‘Sometimes I can be an asshole,’ he said to me many times, and it was true, but I miss him already.” Robert X. Cringely
“He was so much fun because he was so quick — he was such a fast study. You showed him anything and he could get it in a second. I was always fascinated by his design sense. It was wonderful because he liked my pictures.” Diana Walker, TIME
“Steve Jobs’ heart and intuition knew what he wanted out of life — and his ambitions took him, and us, to extraordinary places.” Harry McCracken, TIME
“For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.” Bill Gates
“For me, however, his greatness is amplified by what he accomplished under the most difficult of circumstances. For here was a man who had an uncommon cancer that recurred and required a liver transplant. Here was a man who was failing in his health, yet had the fortitude to face every day as a new challenge, to do what he wanted to do, to accomplish successes that had never been accomplished before. Here was a man who embodied the drive and the spirit that so many cancer survivors possess every day of their lives, even when facing the ultimate moment as Steve Jobs faced today.” Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld, American Cancer Society
“Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.” President Barack Obama
“The full legacy of Steve Jobs will not be sorted out for a very long time. When employees first talked about Jobs’ “reality distortion field,” it was a pejorative — they were referring to the way that he got you to sign on to a false truth by the force of his conviction and charisma. But at a certain point the view of the world from Steve Jobs’ brain ceased to become distorted. It became an instrument of self-fulfilling prophecy. As product after product emerged from Apple, each one breaking ground and changing our behavior, Steve Job’s reality field actually came into being. And we all live in it.” Steven Levy, Wired
“Earlier in the day, before Gates arrived, I did a solo onstage interview with Jobs, and asked him what it was like to be a major Windows developer, since Apple’s iTunes program was by then installed on hundreds of millions of Windows PCs. He quipped: ‘It’s like giving a glass of ice water to someone in Hell.'” Walt Mossberg, All Things D
“Perhaps it’s a little overly dramatic to say a computer changed my life. It really was just a hunk of metal and electronics after all. But there was a very real feeling of newness, of recalibrated expectations, of inspiration to reach for the next level that I found in that box back in 2005. And it has been in every box since.” Bryce T. Roberts
“I will not regret things professionally. The scoop was big. People loved it. If I could do it again, I’d do the first story about the phone again. But I probably would have given the phone back without asking for the letter. And I would have done the story about the engineer who lost it with more compassion and without naming him. Steve said we’d had our fun and we had the first story but we were being greedy. And he was right. We were.” Brian Lam