Thanks For Everything, Steve! ;(

It’s October 6th, I woke up from my bed and was about to start getting ready for moving to NIIT in the morning.  At about 7.35AM, I received a text from my friend Ganesh asking whether me the news that Steve Jobs (Founder of Apple) had passed away.  This inconvenient message shocked me as I immediately turned on my Mac and opened Safari.  The Apple Startpage was redirecting to Apple.com which eventually had the message ‘Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011)’ and also the Wikipedia stated that he had died due to the pancreatic cancer from which he was suffering for the past few years.  I still couldn’t digest this unbearable fact, I feel as if I’ve lost of one of my closest relations on Earth although Steve will not recognize me. 

Many of my friends know that I’m a die-hard fan of Apple but little did they know that the reason of it is because I love Steve and his life history more than the Apple Products. He was more than than just a role model to me and that’s why I never told him as my role model.  He inspired me and gave me the confidence that I need not copy from anyone in order to be successful and made me feel pity at my friends who merely copy everything from what they see in movies and sometimes utter the same words what the actors say in order to show off among others. I had watched every millisecond of all his keynotes starting from Macworld at Boston 1997 to the his keynote at WWDC 2011 just to see his awesome presentation skills.  I started loving Steve from the day when my dad got a Canon Powershot Digicam to our home. The documentation manual of the camera was the first thing introduced me to the Macintosh platform although I loved and dreamt of having an iPod released by Apple in those days. When people were living with Windows XP on their computers, I wanted to be different and unique from everyone and that was the reason why I wished to start using a different operating system.  So, I started searching for everything which is not windows and eventually I met with Linux.  Although I loved the openness of Linux, it was not enough for regular use since it had a lot to mature.  The Macintosh was the perfect alternative for Windows at that time, and I badly wanted to move to Mac OS 9 (which was the latest version at that time).  But the switch was not possible since the Mac operating system can be be installed only on a Mac.  Few years passed, and in 2008 I finally got my first taste with Macintosh with my Macbook with Mac OS X Leopard although i tried a lot of OSX86 hacks with my PC earlier. But as I mentioned earlier, my passion for Apple was not because of the products what it had made.  My real zeal was because of the great work and effort given by Steve to his company while Bill Gates and others where trying to steal/copy him instead of innovating.

He was a true visionary and the word ‘innovation’ can’t match anyone better than him.  He never graduated from school, never went to a business school, and never worked for anyone in his life but still every business he touched had its Magical success because he believed that his vision for the future will drive him successfully.  He wanted to change the world and how people interact with computers which always made his motto ‘Think Different’ true to reality and revolutionize the world in his one unique way.  He saw cent percent perfection in everything he worked, from the fonts in the menus to the very edge of every button. His vision for the future was undeniably perfect as he released a portable music player (iPod) when it was an age of cassette players, he removed the DVD drive from the laptop (Macbook Air) when others where filling it with Blu-Ray Drives, he released a smartphone with no keyboard when all the popular smartphones such as the Blackberry as popular only because of its qwerty keyboard. He released the iPad, a tablet which no one could ever think of in this age in which he overthrew the mighty Adobe Flash that ruled the Internet with hope that HTML5 can rule over it.  All tech reviewers savagely criticized the vision of Steve every time he announced a new product by stating that it would be definite failure such as no DVD drive for the Macbook Air, no keyboard for the iPhone, no mouse and keyboard for the iPad.  But all those criticisms where crushed every time when those products hit the stores, where one could see thousands of people standing in line in front of Apple Retail Stores from the previous night in order to get their hands on the Apple device on its first day. And next, all the other companies would try to steal what Apple had done with its new product. Steve knew what he was doing, he never took any discouragements from others, he stood strong even in those difficult times when he left his family, his own company fired him. Being an Art Lover, he always added art to his inventions and to his gorgeous line of Apple Retail stores around the world. He pursued his interest and did not care about anything else and that made him to start PIXAR, the world’s #1 Animation Studios, the NeXT Computer Software which now powers the Macintosh & iOS and obviously Apple, the world’s most valuable company whose economical value is 3 billion dollars more than the US Treasury.

His words at the Stanford university,

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. 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. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

will always be reminded in my heart.  The tragedies he faced in his life are unspeakable and yet inspiring. Today the enthusiasm given by Apple Fans for Apple could event crash the Internet as we saw how CNET, Engadget and many other tech websites died using the iPhone 4S launch. Steve made the internet look beautiful and delivered beauty along with Mac OS X to all the Web developers. Of course, He never gave a penny in the name of charity nor treated anyone great, and because of that we can’t call him evil.  Wait, How many of us help the poor without any expectations and have selfishness in our hearts. We at least expect a good name or a have a slight hope that god will help us for that in the future. Steve was true, he was open to all and yet he was a genius with a great vision what people would love and thats how he could release the right product at the right time. That said, no one could deny that the world has lost a TRUE and AMAZING HUMAN BEING. I have no words in order to express my sadness about his death and I couldn’t even type this whenever I could think of this horrible fact. I’m sure his spirit will always be with Apple Foundation and he will still live in the hearts of many like me, around the world.  As long as I’m alive, I will always be a follower of Steve, no matter what and no one could replace him. Because of him, Our Earth is now immeasurably great and the way he changed our lives will always remind him.

Love You Steve. Thanks for everything.