Remembering Steve Jobs – The Crazy One
He was a dreamer, a misfit, and one of the crazy ones. Perhaps “The Crazy One.” He built one of the most endurable brands in history. He created not one, but multiple revolutions in technology, music, entertainment, and entrepreneurial thinking. He even master-minded one of the most popular advertising campaigns ever seen: Think Different: the original Apple commercial paying tribute to The Crazy Ones. It featured 17 iconic figures (Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon, Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Pablo Picasso).
On October 5, 2011, we lost Apple visionary, Steve Jobs. He leaves behind an entrepreneurial spirit we may not see again for generations. His biography (Steve Jobs) by Walter Isaacson reveals the full saga of a complex soul that seemed to vacillate, at least occasionally, between genius and madness. In Isaacson’s words, we discover a “deeply emotional, sometimes mean, even anti-social human being .. who lived in his own “altered reality.” But we also marvel at a creative mind who had intolerance for mediocrity and a passion for what’s possible.
It’s hard to hear the phrase “think different” and not picture the Apple logo. So when I heard Steve Jobs had passed away, I thought about one of favorite stories in The 4 Essentials of Entrepreneurial Thinking. It’s from Essential 1, Life Skill 6 …
Practice with Purpose (from The 4 Essentials)
… Most of us know the story of garage start up Apple Computers and co-Founder Steve Jobs. We also know the legacy comparisons to Microsoft Founder Bill Gates. Volumes have been written about both computer giants so I can offer little more to their biographies. But there’s a lesson I picked up watching a 2010 Apple commercial comparing PC to Mac. Like The Crazy Ones, it opened my mind to a new definition for entrepreneurial thinking and what we might remember most about Jobs.
In a cheeky ad campaign, Apple enjoys poking fun at the many versions of Microsoft’s operating systems and history of problems. It’s not as if Apple never had to make improvements, but since the PC is known to crash more, the audience gets the joke. The commercial is smart marketing, but I came away with a totally different take than the one Apple intended. I came away with a core principle I’m certain Jobs intended. Most of you know the commercial. It goes like this:
A young, hip-looking kid in jeans stands next to an older-looking guy wearing a suit and eyeglasses. The hip one is symbolic of Jobs and Mac-lovers, the other of Gates and PC-lovers.
Kid Mac: “Hello, I’m a Mac.”
PC Gates (smiling): “And I’m a PC. Hey Mac, did you hear the good news? Windows 7 is out and it’s not gonna have any of the problems that my last
operating system had. Trust me.”
Kid Mac (suspiciously): “I feel like I’ve heard this before, PC.”
For the next 60 seconds, we see PC Gates in progressively outdated leisure suits, insisting each new version of the Microsoft operating software won’t have
problems of previous versions …
PC Gates: “Windows Vista is here and it won’t have any of the problems
Windows XP had, or any of the problems Windows ’98 had, or any of the problems Windows ’95 had.”
By the time the commercial is over, we’ve flashed back 20 years and PC Gates is now wearing an ’80s Miami-Vice-Don-Johnson-wannabe outfit with flip-lens sunglasses. And then comes the final line …
PC Gates: (winking) “… It’s not gonna have any of the problems Windows 2 had. This time it’s gonna be different. Trust me.”
What I gleaned from this little history lesson wasn’t that Mac was better than PC, or Apple better than Microsoft, or Jobs better than Gates. I’ve used both PC and Mac. There are pros and cons to both. My epiphany was that Gates and Jobs never stopped innovating. Microsoft was still working out the kinks on Windows 7.0 when I wrote this. The next version won’t have any problems of the previous one — trust me. Nonetheless, Gates owned the software industry for decades in spite of glitch after glitch. Why? Persistent and passionate innovation.
Similarly, Jobs took us through not one, but multiple revolutions. How? He was never satisfied with the first incarnations of his home computer: Apple Lisa, Apple II, or Macintosh. He always wanted his next iteration to be “insanely great.” Jobs then rocked our music world by developing i-Tunes and turning the music industry upside down. And wasn’t that first i-Pod® good enough? Don’t be silly. By the time you read this, new versions of iPads and iPhones will be in stores. “Get rid of the crappy stuff,” said Jobs. Focus on SOMETHING GREAT!
Sadly, Steve Jobs passed away too young. We won’t see the likes of him for some time (but I hope we do). Fortunately, his core lesson lives on … “Think different … Don’t be trapped by dogma and other people’s thinking … Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition … They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
When we look at this complex man, we come to terms with a singular fact … Jobs was one of the Crazy Ones. He is revered as a genius not because of his perfection but his imperfections. He never stopped asking, “What if — how can I make it better?” We classify him as modern-day Mozart because he innovated with passion and practiced with purpose. For any of us to harness these principles, we can’t wonder if our latest effort is good enough. That’s easy. It’s good enough for today. If the goal is “insanely great,” then the genius question is “What’s next …?”
Thank you, Steve. (R.I.P.)
