JOBS: My Take
The Steve Jobs Movie & What We Can Learn From a Man the World Will Never Forget
Last night I watched (or rather, rewatched) the movie JOBS, the ever-so iconic story of Steve Jobs (played by Ashton Kutcher here). I first watched the movie when I was 11, and even though I was young, the story and legacy of Steve Jobs has always stuck with me. I had never met the man, but somehow I had never felt so connected to someone before in my life.
After rewatching the movie last night and continuing to read his biography written by Walter Isaacson (it’s fantastic, check it out free to read here), I can still say that the connection feels stronger than ever.
This connection mainly comes from not just the wild life he lived, his commitment to excellence that I see in myself, but also his will to push the boundaries of human achievement. In both the movie and the book, it’s clear to see why Jobs was difficult to work with or to work for: he wouldn’t accept anything less than greatness in everything Apple produced, everything he attacked and committed to, and in his life.
People disliked him because he wasn’t ok with things being “fine”; everything had to be great. His projects took forever to complete because they would continuously be reworked, revised, and reviewed. He wouldn’t let anything that wasn’t quality leave the design floor. This trait of his frustrated his employees and his company board; they didn’t understand why he had to continue to push when the product was good enough as it was.
A great and memorable example of this trait is the Macintosh computer (which you may now know as the iMac). The Mac was supposed to be something that Apple could just roll out while they worked on other products, something simple for everyday users. It was supposed to be a distraction for Jobs, just something to keep him busy so he wouldn’t mess with the rest of the company.
He turned it into one of Apple’s most iconic products (which actually angered the board at first; Jobs had spent millions of dollars producing this computer).
To Jobs, if every detail wasn’t perfected and every aspect of the product wasn’t optimized to the absolute, it wouldn’t be worth producing.
One of my favorite examples of this is the story of the calculator app and why one doesn’t exist on the iPad. Jobs didn’t like the look of any of the designs for the calculator app on the iPad, and ultimately decided to ship the product without one, and to this day no official calculator app exists on the iPad.
Words cannot describe how much I admire Steve Jobs. I know we would have been kindred spirits.
We need more people to propel the future of humanity forward; more people that will not accept anything less than greatness, and I recognize this trait beating within me, this commitment to excellence. All that’s left to do is to continue to realize it.
That’s all I want for myself and for others and for the world: greatness. Why live a mediocre life? Life is a gift and we should celebrate it. There’s no point of living if we aren’t living lives as remarkable and unique as ourselves.
One of my favorite quotes from the movie is this one:
“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life and try not to bash into the walls too much… that’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact—everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you… shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it versus make your mark upon it. Once you learn that, you will never be the same again.”
This one quote pretty much sums up the way I’ve felt about living for my entire life. I’ve always felt that we are given such unique gifts, talents, interests, passions, and why? To do something with them!
Why would someone ignore all the things that make them who they are, when they could use them to their advantage, and to live a life that they themselves are happy to live, when the other option is to live life unhappily?
I’m ready to bash into the walls, shake things up, and make my mark on the world.
Something else I realized too after the movie had ended was this fact:
The majority of the Apple products that exist today would not exist if Steve Jobs was still alive.
I say this because Jobs always pushed to give the consumer the latest advancement, the latest technology, and the best design possible to amplify the quality of their usage, whatever the product may have been.
But products like the iPhone, the iPad, the MacBook, etc. have began to look quite similar to their previous counterparts in the years since Jobs’ death (2011).
Jobs would have never let this phenomenon occur. As an advocate for the best design, the newest components, and innovativeness, he would never have let a product look as similar as they recently have for more than a year in a row.
I would be willing to bet that we would have seen a lot more innovative things from Apple if Jobs was still around.
Take this quote from when Jobs was reinstated as CEO of Apple after nearly 10 years of his absence after the company was stolen from him:
“I'd like to present the Board my vision for the future of Apple.
We're not Microsoft or Dell. So we need to stop trying to be that. We need to go back to who we are, and what we do best, and throw away everything else. Here's how we're gonna do it. We’re gonna build a new line of computers for the home, and for the office. We're gonna build a new operating system on the backbone of NeXT [Jobs’ new computer start-up]. The next generation of Macintosh. And we're gonna kill every other project.
Everything.
This company will not make shit anymore.”
His vision for the future put Apple back on track to become the Apple we see today. But this Apple that exists is only a remnant of what he stood for and who he was.
Which makes me wonder - what will be the next huge step forward in technology?
What will be the next advancement that changes the world like the first personal computer from Apple did, or like the iPhone did? It’s hard to say right now. Right now it’s probably an inkling of an idea in someone’s head. The only way it will change the world though is if that person has the courage to try like Jobs did.
I’ve spent my life wanting to work for Apple, to want to carry on his vision.
But I know Jobs would give me some different advice.
He would tell me to go chase my own dream, my own vision. Don’t piggyback on a company who’s founder has been dead for over ten years now. He would tell me to figure out my cause, my purpose for living, and have the passion to persevere and reach that ultimate goal. Build something that is 100% me, something that physically embodies who I am and what I stand for.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d still love to work at Apple, an innovative and revolutionary company from the get-go. But I have a feeling that my role there will just be the beginning.
I’ll finish with one more quote. This one is perhaps the most notable, but then again, everything Steve Jobs did was notable:
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
— Steve Jobs, 1997
P.S. - I’m actually creating a “hackintosh” iMac G3 right now, which means that I’m updating all the internal components while keeping the look of the original G3, the first line of computers Jobs created with his team after being reinstated as CEO:
Look for an update on this project coming soon :)
Awesome I’d like to see it when your done 👏🏼👏🏼❤️❤️❤️