A statement released late afternoon by Apple Board of Directors announced that co-founder and longtime CEO Steve Jobs has passed away at the age of 56:
Statement by Apple’s Board of Directors
We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.
Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that
enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.
His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.
(Wired.com) — A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, it would be impossible to overstate Steve Jobs’ impact on technology and how we use it. Apple’s mercurial, mysterious leader did more than reshape his entire industry: he completely changed how we interact with technology. He made gadgets easy to use, gorgeous to behold and essential to own. He made things we absolutely wanted, long before we even knew we wanted them. Jobs’ utter dedication to how people think, touch, feel and interact with machines dictated even the smallest detail of the computers Apple built and the software it wrote.
(Gizmodo.com) — He changed the way movies are made, the way music is sold, the way stories are told, the very way we interact with the world around us. He helped us work, and gave us new ways to play. He was a myth made man.
17 thoughts on “Apple’s visionary founder Steve Jobs passed away”
As they say, It is better to burn than rust. Short enormous life. Talk about dedication, there is none like him. I wonder what Apple will be with out Jobs. God bless you, you touched us one way of another.
Steve Jobs left at a legacy for millions of people to remember him as an innovator who changed the difficulty of interacting with computers for millions of novice users. He made communicating via-computing easier for the global community. Death dose not even forgive people like Steve Jobs. My condolences to his family, friends and people who have been touched by his innovation.
What is the legacy of TPLF and its leaders going to be? I will take my answer off …
Steve Jobs: iConic!
What an accomplishment! What a life!
He was neither an engineer nor a programmer yet he owned the industry, the personal computer and digital lifestyle, from the start. He was charismatic yet slashed and burned everybody in his path. He was a Buddhist yet a savy global businessman. He was innovative yet every thing he did was copied or adapted from others: GUI and the Mouse from Xerox’s Alto; iPod and all the quality product lineups from Sony; iTunes from Napster; Apps from Ringtones; Tablet from Kindle etc…. Stay hungry. Stay foolish – your motto worked for you, Steve, RIP.
It is surely a great loss to the humanity. Hope he has educated others to continue his great job.
Condolence to his family.
If someone wants the whole world to remember him after he died, he must do something supper bad or something supper good. Hitler and Mussolini are always remembered for their supper bad killings of the five million Jews. Steve Jobs and others like him will be remembered for their supper good inventions and innovations.
Let us try to be either supper bad or supper good persons on this Planet earth while we alive and breathing. To be a supper bad person is not recommended but to be supper good person is.
Big loss. The take home message from Jobs experience is to fully accept that life is too short and to fully enjoy as if there is no tomorrow. Allow peace and tolerance among ourselves. By the way, did you know that his biological dad is Egyptian? We should be proud that one of our own was one of the greastest inventor of this century. It is sad though, to know that if he was to be involved in something bad, they would have brought the ancestory issue into the equation. C’est la vie! There is nothing we could do about it.
Steve Jobs,
R.I.P. Very few are born to leave a lasting mark on humanity. Steve jobs was one of them. A genius, dedicated and hardworking person!!
Just to be known is not important, but to be known as an incredible inventor is super and rare. Steve, thank you, if it weren’t for your inventions Egyptians, Libyans, Tunisians wouldn’t have gotten their freedom and Ethiopians around the world wouldn’t come to know some of the crimes of Melese and his TPLF thugs. Your contribution to the world is immeasurable. It is a shame an important person like you who had done so much to this world, have to die so young and despicable dictators like Melese stay around to steal and to cause so much human misery.
Thank you, sir! RIP
Answer to Mott-Ayqerr
TPLF will come up with i-steal and eventually they will come up with i-run
Thank you, tekat kemayewedew for your candid answer. Just an opinion, TPLF invented isteal already when it was in a jungle and the application it crated to run the isteal technology as a result of 17 years research, was EFORT. EFORT was a 14th century application which has been obsolete for several centuries. What are the new invention of TPLF, I think, are ibetray, ilie, iexaggerate about my capacity in everything and iif am not there-no body is there. In general TPLF can invent treason like no one could ever create it.
He was extremely smart guy. So, it is important to remember that you do not need to post this guy in your website. This guys accomplished so much. You are TOO small. If you can you need to learn from him which is try to think freely and help yourself. We all know that you love attention which no one seems to give attention nowadays. The Tigrans are continuing studying allover the country. You left behind because you are losing your time to try something you can not do. Sorry.
October 6, 2011
With Time Running Short, Jobs Managed His Farewells
By CHARLES DUHIGG
Over the last few months, a steady stream of visitors to Palo Alto, Calif., called an old friend’s home number and asked if he was well enough to entertain visitors, perhaps for the last time. In February, Steven P. Jobs had learned that, after years of fighting cancer, his time was becoming shorter. He quietly told a few acquaintances, and they, in turn, whispered to others. And so a pilgrimage began. The calls trickled in at first. Just a few, then dozens, and in recent weeks, a nearly endless stream of people who wanted a few moments to say goodbye, according to people close to Mr. Jobs. Most were intercepted by his wife, Laurene. She would apologetically explain that he was too tired to receive many visitors. In his final weeks, he became so weak that it was hard for him to walk up the stairs of his own home anymore, she confided to one caller. Some asked if they might try again tomorrow. Sorry, she replied. He had only so much energy for farewells. The man who valued his privacy almost as much as his ability to leave his mark on the world had decided whom he most needed to see before he left. Mr. Jobs spent his final weeks — as he had spent most of his life — in tight control of his choices. He invited a close friend, the physician Dean Ornish, a preventive health advocate, to join him for sushi at one of his favorite restaurants, Jin Sho in Palo Alto. He said goodbye to longtime colleagues including the venture capitalist John Doerr, the Apple board member Bill Campbell and the Disney chief executive Robert A. Iger. He offered Apple’s executives advice on unveiling the iPhone 4S, which occurred on Tuesday. He spoke to his biographer, Walter Isaacson. He started a new drug regime, and told some friends that there was reason for hope. But, mostly, he spent time with his wife and children — who will now oversee a fortune of at least $6.5 billion, and, in addition to their grief, take on responsibility for tending to the legacy of someone who was as much a symbol as a man. “Steve made choices,” Dr. Ornish said. “I once asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.’ ” “But for Steve, it was all about living life on his own terms and not wasting a moment with things he didn’t think were important. He was aware that his time on earth was limited. He wanted control of what he did with the choices that were left.” In his final months, Mr. Jobs’s home — a large and comfortable but relatively modest brick house in a residential neighborhood — was surrounded by security guards. His driveway’s gate was flanked by two black S.U.V.’s. On Thursday, as online eulogies multiplied and the walls of Apple stores in Taiwan, New York, Shanghai and Frankfurt were papered with hand-drawn cards, the S.U.V.’s were removed and the sidewalk at his home became a garland of bouquets, candles and a pile of apples, each with one bite carefully removed. “Everyone always wanted a piece of Steve,” said one acquaintance who, in Mr. Jobs’s final weeks, was rebuffed when he sought an opportunity to say goodbye. “He created all these layers to protect himself from the fan boys and other peoples’ expectations and the distractions that have destroyed so many other companies. “But once you’re gone, you belong to the world.” Mr. Jobs’s biographer, Mr. Isaacson, whose book will be published in two weeks, asked him why so private a man had consented to the questions of someone writing a book. “I wanted my kids to know me,” Mr. Jobs replied, Mr. Isaacson wrote Thursday in an essay on Time.com. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.” Because of that privacy, little is known yet of what Mr. Jobs’s heirs will do with his wealth. Unlike many prominent business people, he has never disclosed plans to give large amounts to charity. His shares in Disney, which Mr. Jobs acquired when the entertainment company purchased his animated film company, Pixar, are worth about $4.4 billion. That is double the $2.1 billion value of his shares in Apple, perhaps surprising given that he is best known for the computer company he founded. Mr. Jobs’s emphasis on secrecy, say acquaintances, led him to shy away from large public donations. At one point, Mr. Jobs was asked by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates to give a majority of his wealth to philanthropy alongside a number of prominent executives like Mr. Gates and Warren E. Buffett. But Mr. Jobs declined, according to a person with direct knowledge of Mr. Jobs’s decision. Now that Mr. Jobs is gone, many people expect that attention will focus on his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, who has largely avoided the spotlight, but is expected to oversee Mr. Jobs’s fortune. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Mrs. Powell Jobs worked in investment banking before founding a natural foods company. She then founded College Track, a program that pairs disadvantaged students with mentors who help them earn college degrees. That has led to some speculation in the philanthropic community that any large charitable contributions might go to education, though no one outside Mr. Jobs’s inner circle is thought to know of the plans. Mr. Jobs himself never got a college degree. Despite leaving Reed College after six months, he was asked to give the 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. In that address, delivered after Mr. Jobs was told he had cancer but before it was clear that it would ultimately claim his life, Mr. Jobs told his audience that “death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.” The benefit of death, he said, is you know not to waste life living someone else’s choices. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” In his final months, Mr. Jobs became even more dedicated to such sentiments. “Steve’s concerns these last few weeks were for people who depended on him: the people who worked for him at Apple and his four children and his wife,” said Mona Simpson, Mr. Jobs’s sister. “His tone was tenderly apologetic at the end. He felt terrible that he would have to leave us.” As news of the seriousness of his illness became more widely known, Mr. Jobs was asked to attend farewell dinners and to accept various awards. He turned down the offers. On the days that he was well enough to go to Apple’s offices, all he wanted afterward was to return home and have dinner with his family. When one acquaintance became too insistent on trying to send a gift to thank Mr. Jobs for his friendship, he was asked to stop calling. Mr. Jobs had other things to do before time ran out. “He was very human,” Dr. Ornish said. “He was so much more of a real person than most people know. That’s what made him so great.”
Reporting was contributed by Julie Bosman, Quentin Hardy, Claire Cain Miller and Evelyn M. Rusli.
R.I.P Steve Jobs.
What a moron! The creature commenting above #11 is using my name -Mott-Ayqerr. What you are blabbering does not make sense and the question does not concern you. Don’t blabber.
The contribution of Steve Jobs to humanity is almost immeasurable and will be told and re-told for generations to come. His invention made the world wide web, google, facebook, and online communication in general possible. The arab revolution, was aided by his invetion. What a man and what a lose. We lost one of the agents of freedom.
Interesting facts about the late Mr. Jobs, the founder of Apple, NeXT and Pixar.
Steve Jobs was born and given to adoption in San Francisco, Ca 56 years ago. His natural father was a Syrian, Abdulfatha “John” Jandali and his mother, an American with German descent, Joann Carol Shebale. The parents were the same age, yet Jandali having earned a Phd at early age was her teacher. All this took place at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Because of objection from Joann’s father, they had to give up Steve to an adoption. However, a few months after Steve’s birth, Joann’s father would die and the couple would marry.
A daughter, Mona, would be born to the Janadalis and they would move to Syria. Having lived there for several years, they’ll divorce and Joann would return to the U.S with Mona. “John” Jandali, would also return and eventually becomes a vice president of one of the Reno, NV, Casinos, which he, at the age of 80, still works. He looks like a white man by the way. Joanne Carol earns a graduate degree, remarried, becomes Joann Simpson and worked as speech therapist. Mona Simpson becomes famous on her own right having wrote some best sellers including A Regular Guy about her famous brother. Mona Simpson is married to the producer of The Simpsons, but her last name is a coincidence; its from her mother’s last name. Steve Jobs never accepted his father even though Mr. Jandali unfailingly emailed a Happy Birthday note on Steve’s birthday.
Steve Job’s adoptive parents never attended college although one of Joanne’s conditions when she gave up Steve was that the adopting parents be college graduates. Clara, the adoptive mother of Steve is an Armenian. And the senior Mr. Job was a machinist. They later adopted another daughter, Patti.
Steve briefly attended a college, Reed College, in Portland OR. He was in India for about a year. His other early experiances include the counter culture (Hippie) movement in San Francisco and the drug LSD.
His first child, a daughter, was out of wedlock. Her name is Lisa Jobs Brennan’s and her mother was a painter. She was raised on a welfare until the age two. Steve eventually accepted responsibility and raised her. She went to Harvard and became a writer for magazines such as O, Oprah Winfrey’s Magazine and Vogue. He eventually fathered three children with Laurene, his wife.
For a man very rich and famous, Steve Job’s house in Palo Alto, Ca, is so modest and regular, a lot of average Ethiopians have houses bigger than his. His net worth from Pixar and Apple is about 7billion making him the 105th richest person in the world. Had he not sold his Apple shares when he was fired from the company he co-founded, he would have been the 4th richest. The Apple Board bought him a cool Gulfstream 650 Jet for $80 million whose tail number is N2N. Otherwise, he always drove a silver Mercedes. Modest, Steve, modest iMan.
He once showed up dressed as Jesus Christ at Apple Haloween Party. He was also very critical of the performance of his employees, most including the co-founder of Apple did not survive his wrath. Steve Wozniak, the co-founder, makes a token $11,000 a year but no access to the company or his former friend. Steve Jobs fired an employee who showed the first iPad to Wozniak before the release date. The typical Steve verbal jab goes like this: “You have baked a nice cake, but it has got dog feces on it” – to a poor Apple designer.
Despite Steve Job’s unyielding and slash and burn personality, he was a shy and private person for the most of his life. His hippie and Buddhist background has made him shun worldly stuff – materials for himself while pipelining quality products for the masses.
Steve Jobs was the true star, zen and prince of the personal computer and digital age.
The inventor of HTML, Tim Berners-Lee, used Steve Job’s creation, the NeXT computer to advance the Internet.
Upon hearing the bad news of his death, the Syrians are quoted as saying that the cancer killed the wrong Syrian i.e Jobs; the cancer should have killed the cancer, i.e. Bashar.
He was buried in a very private ceremony on Friday, October 07, 2011.
How I wish the bloodsucker Meles was the one buried 6′ under.