Steve Jobs – the legacy he leaves behind

Steve Jobs, former CEO and founder of Apple and an iconic genius and hero to many of the people in the marketing world, has passed away after a long fight with pancreatic cancer.

He was revered as a visionary who lead one of the most powerful and profitable corporations in the United States.

Starting in late 1970′s he, Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula and others worked to create the Apple II, a personal computer that revolutionized the world with a computer capable of color and sound and could be hooked up to your television.

In the 80′s, following a dispute with the board of directors, Jobs left apple to found a computer platform company called NeXT that specialed in higher education and business.

In 1986 he purchased the computer graphics devision of LucasArts which spun off and became Pixar Animation Studios to which he remained the CEO of until their purchase by Walt Disney in 2006.

When Apple found themselves in 1996 with a meager market share they bought NeXT and had Steve Jobs retake the helm at Apple.  With this purchase they had acquired NeXTSTEP which became Mac OS X.  Following this Steve Jobs lead the company toward a revolution of design focused and increased market share significantly starting with the iMac in 1998 and then a product that became the defacto standard of music players and the medium in which we listen to music, the iPod and iTunes music store in 2001.

In 2007, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone and quickly became the measure to which other phones were compared against and, once again, Jobs, the visionary behind products that were designed with a meticulous attention to every detail that has come to define the quality of products Apple made.

Steve Jobs was known to be have an agressive and demanding personality and had made Fortune’s list of America’s Toughest Bosses.  He was also not known to be a philanthropist and after resuming control of Apple in 1997 he ended all corporate philanthropy programs.

His ideas and his legacy will be felt for generations to come.  He changed our language, our lifestyle and our lives and, in our industry, the way we work, the things we work on and the nature of work that our clients want and need.   To have that great of an impact on the world is something most of us can only dream of having, something most presidents never even have.  You will be missed Steve.