Showing posts with label iGod. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iGod. Show all posts

Friday, December 2, 2011

What Steve Jobs means to me

I don't like telling people what I'm all about. What invigorates me, what inspires me, what disgusts me and what affects me. Neither do I have the patience nor the conceit that I am interesting enough. But today, I feel a need to talk about what Steve means to me. I didn't really understand or mourn his death because he doesn't mean anything as a person. He's just an idea in my head. Something that exists only as long as I have the whim for it. Despite talking long and hard about Steve, I haven't really heard him speak a lot like some other devotees do. I don't use even one Apple product and I really cannot understand what he means when he talks about Microsoft not having taste. Inspite of this, I adore Steve Jobs. After accidentally coming across his landmark Stanford Commencement Speech about four years ago, I googled him out of the same curiosity as I google everything I come across. I read about him, I heard him and I was ready to launch a self-issued, solo 'Steve Jobs is God' propaganda. Looking back, I was 17, I was lost, I was arty, I was deep into philosophy and I loved Zen. For about two years, Steve was huge. And then he fell into doldrums. True, I spoke about him now and then but the manic energy was gone. And on 6 October, Raghav called me at 0600 hours IST and the first thing he said, "Arey, me odu poyadanta?". I was half -asleep but I knew 'me odu' meant only one person. I wasn't following him as diligently as I had been earlier, so I didn't have a lot of news about the cancer issue. Everything came back about a week ago when I downloaded his new autobiography, Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, and started reading it.

And for the first time in years, I understood a lot about him in a week than I hadn't earlier in months. A sign of maturity. He was self-righteous, arrogant, rude, mean and an asshole. But he still is my God.

1. Simple/Higher Purpose
Look at any Apple product and if there's one thing that strikes you right away, it is it's almost Zen like simplicity. Steve loved Zen, Buddhist Philosophy and that simplicity, starkness and attention to detail shines in every Apple product that he created. Its the greatest blend of functionality and aesthetics and Steve's, "If a kid cannot figure out how to use the product in 2 minutes, its a goner", rings very familiar to his idol Einstein's, "If you cannot explain it to a 6 year old, you don't really understand it." And Steve Jobs didn't make products or forge a company to grow rich. He believed there was a higher purpose to one's life and his was to make the world a better place by telling people how beautiful and useful technology could really be.

2. Intense/Driven
It was Steve's stellar intensity that separated him from everybody else. His passion for the product he created, his obsession to detail, his almost child like excitement when talking about his products and his curiosity when dealing with anything that interests him are contagious. He vied for the impossible, strived to make it happen and pushed everybody else around him to make it happen. Everything that he ever created wouldn't have happened without him. True, he never made anything. He just pushed his engineers and designers around, yelling at them, abusing them and belittling them. But he had an amazing eye for talent and where he knew something was doable, he blasted away all excuses. His passion for the end product, his vision about how it would change the world and his belief that it would turn insanely great spurred engineers and designers to overwork and proudly wear t-shirts claiming, "90 hours a week and still loving it."

3. Focus/Perfection
If Steve Jobs was hellbent on getting something done, he didn't care about anything else. So unrelenting was his focus that he could push away all distractions to encounter the situation at hand. His intense discipline, his quest for things to be right and his zeal to attain perfection all stemmed from his Zen ability to focus on something so intensely, that it had to happen. His notion that things have to be right, neither superfluous nor wanting, had the company push the reset button on a lot of products a lot of times. He postponed the dates of release of Macintosh, the iPod and the iPhone for reasons as trivial as, "I'm not sure if the glass casing is right." His need to make things right might have cost the company a lot of time but that is what Apple stands for today. Trust.

4. Charisma/Aesthetic
One thing that any person who's ever spoken to Steve would talk about is his charisma. He was the true charmer, the media dream and the country's poster boy. He could summon the right line at the right time, conveniently push away the topics he wasn't comfortable with and could cultivate such a force of drive in people that they would seem less like engineers and more like crusaders waging a holy war. His talks to Apple employees that they were artists and were truly changing the world, really did instill in all those geeky engineers a sense of worth, belief and cause. He made them understand that they weren't making boxes. They were making art and were as good as a Picasso or a Bach. Oh! boy, if that won't turn people into your devotess, what else will.

5. Different/Intuition
There's a really old saying about Steve that 'Steve Jobs does his market research by looking at himself in the mirror.' If there's one trait in him that catapulted him into fame as a rock star, a guru, a genius, and a youth icon, despite the youth being usually anti-capitalist, it was because he didn't care. He didn't care about what the world was like, didn't care about others' ideas if he thought they were bozos and didn't care about convention. All he cared about was himself, all he listened to was the people he respected and all he lived in was Steve's Reality Distortion Field where he could accomplish anything he willed. He had huge successes not because he predicted what people liked but figured out what he liked, "If I design a product I wouldn't want to use, I know nobody would want to use it either." He knew he was special, different and gifted and this firm belief in himself made him challenge conventions. And if there's really one thing that defines him, then its his trust in instinct. His belief that art touches people somewhere deep within.

When I look back at all this and think of Steve, I see him in his spartan bungalow sitting on the wooden floor, his piercing gaze in his black and white portraits, his obsession with all things vegan, his habit of taking people out for long walks and his wonderful speech after his return to Apple. Everything so Steve. I don't know if he's really made as big a dent in the universe as he wanted to, but he's made a huge dent in my life.

For that and everything else, thank you Steve.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

That was one heckuva ride!

If you have ever seen a Steve presentation, at the end of it you'd be gaping your mouth open and thinking that it was one heckuva ride. Steve Jobs is an amazing speaker. Inspirirational, contagiously enthusiastic and with boundless energy, he can bowl you over when he speaks. But it is when he is delivering one of his keynote speeches or unveiling a new product that he keeps his listeners spellbound, like Mozart playing.

Unarguably, he is the best orator in the whole of corporate world and a guy who managed to set up billion dollar industries with his oratory skills. I just found this article today and its very nice. Its about how Steve does whatever he does on that stage. And how you can be as powerful as him- or atleast halfway through.

Give it a read.

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How to Wow 'Em Like Steve Jobs
The Apple CEO is well known for his electrifying presentations. Here are five tips to make your next talk just as mesmerizing -- or close

Apple Computer (AAPL), now celebrating 30 years of innovation, has revolutionized the way we use computers and listen to music. Now its charismatic co-founder, Steve Jobs, has transformed the corporate pitch. Anyone who has watched a Jobs keynote will tell you he is one of the most extraordinary speakers in Corporate America. Jobs learned a long time ago that a leader must be a company evangelist and brand spokesperson.

As a communications coach and former business journalist, I have spent plenty of time with Apple executives and have watched my share of Jobs' presentations. He is magnificent. But whether you are pitching a hot gizmo, such as the iPod, or a hot sub sandwich, a story is a story and your goal is to win customers. Here are Jobs' five keys to a dazzling presentation.

Sell the Benefit
Steve Jobs does not sell bits of metal; he sells an experience. Instead of focusing on mind-numbing statistics, as most technologists tend to do, Jobs sells the benefit. For example, when introducing a 30 GB iPod, he clearly explains what it means to the consumer -- users can carry 7,500 songs, 25,000 photos, or up to 75 hours of video. In January when Jobs introduced the first Intel (INTC)-based Mac notebook he began by saying, "What does this mean?"

He went on to explain the notebook had two processors, making the new product four to five times faster than the Powerbook G4, a "screamer" as he called it. He said it was Apple's thinnest notebook and comes packed with "amazing" new features like a brighter wide-screen display and a built-in camera for video conferencing. It's not about the technology, but what the technology can do for you.

Practice, Practice, and Practice Some More
Jobs takes nothing for granted during product launches. He reviews and rehearses his material. According to a Business Week article on February 6, 2006, "Jobs unveils Apple's latest products as if he were a particularly hip and plugged-in friend showing off inventions in your living room. Truth is, the sense of informality comes only after grueling hours of practice." The article goes on to say that it's not unusual for Jobs to prepare for four hours as he reviews every slide and demonstration (see BW, 2/6/06, "Steve Jobs' Magic Kingdom").

Keep It Visual
Speaking of slides, there are very few bullet points in a Jobs presentation. Each slide is highly visual. If he's discussing the new chip inside a computer, a slide in the background will show a colorful image of the chip itself alongside the product. That's it. Simple and visual.

Apple's presentations are not created on PowerPoint, as the vast majority of presentations are. But PowerPoint slides can be made visual as well. It's a matter of thinking about the content visually instead of falling into the habit of creating slide after slide with headlines and bullet points. I once worked with the vice-president of a public company who planned to show more than 80 data-heavy slides in a 40-minute presentation. Imagine how quickly his audience would have tuned out.

After I showed him just how visual his message could be, he went back to the drawing board, dismantled his existing presentation, and reduced it to about 10 image-rich slides. The next day a newspaper reporter wrote that my client had "wowed" analysts and investors. The stock rose 17% in the days that followed. Take a cue from Jobs and help your listeners visualize the message.

Exude Passion, Energy, and Enthusiasm
Jobs has an infectious enthusiasm. When launching the video iPod, Jobs said, "It's the best music player we've made," "It has a gorgeous screen," "The color is fantastic," and "The video quality is amazing."

The first time I watch my clients present, I often have to stop them to ask if they are sincerely passionate about their message. They usually assure me they are, but they tend to lose energy and enthusiasm when they fall into "presentation mode." Jobs carries his enthusiasm into his presentations.

There is no better example of Jobs' passion than the famous story of how he convinced John Sculley to lead Apple in the mid '80s by asking him, "Do you want to sell sugared water all your life or do you want to change the world?" The former Pepsi executive chose the latter and, although the pairing ultimately failed to work out, it reflects Jobs' sense of mission -- a mission that he conveyed consistently in the early years of Apple and continues to today.

"And One More Thing..."
At the end of each presentation Jobs adds to the drama by saying, "and one more thing." He then adds a new product, new feature, or sometimes introduces a band. He approaches each presentation as an event, a production with a strong opening, product demonstrations in the middle, a strong conclusion, and an encore -- that "one more thing!"

BusinessWeek April 6,2006

Friday, April 17, 2009

The good and the not-so-good

I came across this interesting piece today. When I was browsing for more titbits of Steve, I found this article written more than three years ago. I know its more against Steve but I somehow liked it and its kind of true. Check it out.

Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?
Leander Kahney 01.25.06 www.wired.com

Until recently, Bill Gates has been viewed as the villain of the tech world, while his archrival, Steve Jobs, enjoys an almost saintly reputation.
Gates is the cutthroat capitalist. A genius maybe, but one more interested in maximizing profits than perfecting technology. He's the ultimate vengeful nerd. Ostracized at school, he gets the last laugh by bleeding us all dry.
On the other hand, Jobs has never seemed much concerned with business, though he's been very successful at it of late. Instead, Jobs has been portrayed as a man of art and culture. He's an aesthete, an artist; driven to make a dent in the universe.
But these perceptions are wrong. In fact, the reality is reversed. It's Gates who's making a dent in the universe, and Jobs who's taking on the role of single-minded capitalist, seemingly oblivious to the broader needs of society.
Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems. He has also spoken out on major policy issues, for example, by opposing proposals to cut back the inheritance tax.
In contrast, Jobs does not appear on any charitable contribution lists of note. And Jobs has said nary a word on behalf of important social issues, reserving his talents of persuasion for selling Apple products.
According to Forbes, Jobs was recently worth $3.3 billion which puts him among the 194th richest in the world, and makes him the 67th richest American. But the standings were shuffled on Tuesday with Disney's $7.4 billion acquisition of Pixar Animation -- a deal that makes Jobs' Pixar holdings alone worth some $3.7 billion.
But great wealth does not make a great man.
Giving USA Foundation, a philanthropy research group which publishes an annual charity survey, said Jobs does not appear on lists of gifts of $5 million or more over the last four years. Nor is his name on a list of gifts of $1 million or more compiled by Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy.
Jobs' wife is also absent from these philanthropic lists, although she has made dozens of political donations totaling tens of thousands of dollars to the Democrats, according to the Open Secrets database.
Of course, Jobs and his wife may be giving enormous sums of money to charity anonymously. If they are funneling cash to various causes in private, their names wouldn't show up on any lists, regardless of the size of their gifts.
For a person as private as Jobs, who shuns any publicity about his family life, this seems credible. If so, however, this would make Jobs virtually unique among moguls. Richard Jolly, chairman of Giving USA Foundation, said not all billionaires give their money away, but a lot do, and most do not do it quietly.
"We see it over and over again," he said. "Very wealthy individuals do support the organizations and institutions they believe in."
That's certainly true of Gates, who not only gives vast sums away, but also speaks up in support of the organizations and institutions he believes in.
This is not the case for Jobs. To the best of my knowledge, in the last decade or more, Jobs has not spoken up on any social or political issue he believes in -- with the exception of admitting he's a big Bob Dylan fan.
Rather, he uses social issues to support his own selfish business goals. In the Think Different campaign, Jobs used cultural figures he admired to sell computers -- figures who stuck their necks out to fight racism, poverty, inequality or war.
Jobs once offered to be an advisor to Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election, and he invited President Clinton over for dinner when Bubba visited Silicon Valley in 1996 -- hardly evidence of deep political convictions.
Jobs can't even get behind causes that would seem to carry deep personal meaning, let alone lasting social importance. Like Lance Armstrong, he is a cancer survivor. But unlike Armstrong, Jobs has so far done little publicly to raise money or awareness for the disease.
Given Jobs' social detachment, I'm confused by the adulation he enjoys. Yes, he has great charisma and his presentations are good theater. But his absence from public discourse makes him a cipher. People project their values onto him, and he skates away from the responsibilities that come with great wealth and power.
On the evidence, he's nothing more than a greedy capitalist who's amassed an obscene fortune. It's shameful. In almost every way, Gates is much more deserving of Jobs' rock star exaltation.
In the same way, I admire Bono over Mick Jagger, and John Lennon over Elvis, because they spoke up about things bigger than their own celebrity.
It's time for Jobs to do the same.
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Rings a bell somewhere, doesn't it? So, despite all this, why is it that Steve is worshiped whereas Bill is seen as the evil force? Keeping business, money and technology aside, when you strip the both of them to their bare themselves, Steve and Bill are more similar than what they appear to be. Both of them are restless, crazy, extremely-focused, ruthless and eccentric. The most important thing in the world for them is, well, themselves. To satisfy their quest for higher truth and perfection, they push those people around them to the borders of human possibility. But the way they approach what they do is radically different. Bill doesn't care about portraying himself nor does he care about what people think of him. For him, it is very important to wake up every morning and prove to the world that he is second to no one. That is his paranoia. Steve, on the other hand, is more focused on the way he wants people to think of him, more inclined to the art of it and is philosophically, seeking perfection. He is a showman. His confidence is boosted everytime people are intrigued by him. And that is why Steve appears as the arty, philosophical, courageous adventurer who's experimented with life and whose one-liners are brilliant. Bill, to the common man, looks like the nerd whose sole motive in life is to sell Windows and earn money.

But you can't deny the effect of these two guys on the world. They indeed have made a dent in the universe.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

does god have negative shades?

I watched the documentary, Pirates of Silicon Valley, today. Its a documentary about how Microsoft and Apple took over the Big Brother IBM and their journey of first 10 years. It was beautifully made and I loved watching it.

Noah Wyle was brilliant as Steve Jobs and the other crew also resembled their real life characters a lot. The film left me pondering over my stance on Steve Jobs' character and I guess mildly affected my worship for him. As it is evident from my previous piece on Steve that I love his charisma, his showmanship and his courage, that probably deceived me that Steve Jobs was the perfect man. I've read quite a lot about him and so took the liberty of portraying his character in my own words.

Now, the movie mostly put Steve in a negative shade. I mean I knew that the way he treated his employees, his rivals, Woz and even his daughter and her mother is appalling but I didn't expect his actions were his way of hiding his insecurity. Guys, I'm not changing my stance on Jobs. I'm just telling you that the different way in which he was portrayed provoked me to think.

And though I was trying to convince myself that the film was just the director's point of view, I still can't convince that small part of my brain which tells me that Steve isn't the perfect man which I had imagined him to be, or even desperately hoped him to be. I hated the way he treated his daughter, although he himself was in a quest for his parents. He should've realised how his daughter must have felt to grow up without a dad. People call it immaturity but I think that's bullshit.

And the film show's that Steve had this knack of exploiting people's negatives. That was true but he should've put himself constraints. To cover his insecurities, he freaked others out. The responses of his employees turned into severe nervousness whenever he was around because Steve could show something wrong even when everything was right.

I don't even know why I'm writing this article. So long, I couldn't restrain myself if anyone spoke bad about Jobs but now I don't think I can do that anymore. He was probably psyched,mad and tyrannical at times but still you can't deny his silver-tongue or his foresight into the future.

He still is my hero...

Friday, August 8, 2008

my God...iGod


I first came across the name Steve Jobs last year, when I was reading a forwarded mail of his famous "2005 Stanford Commencement Speech" and lola!, I was struck by it. I didn't realise at that point of time that this man would change my life, I mean, literally. Every word of that commencement speech touched me and I realised this man was someone I wanted to be. So, back to Wikipedia and more research on the guy.

As they say, Charisma is a gift. But what if all you have in your life is loads of courage and oodles of charisma. Then you'd be Steve Jobs and someone I worship ;). Adopted by ungraduate parents, Steve went to college at the age of 17. But when he realized that formal education would lead him nowhere, he dropped out of college and took up only those courses which interested him. Now, tell me how much courage does it take for a middle-class boy of 17 to drop out of the conventional way and trust his guts? How many people in his place would have done it?

He was attracted by his neighbour, a Zen master, and attended his classes. He realized that there was some higher truth than everyone saw. So, he came to India in search of Spiritual Wisdom. But alas!, he couldn't find a teacher who could answer all his questions and returned to the US. And we must thank our gods because had he found himself a spiritual teacher, he never would've returned to the US and the computer would still be a device only for the scholarly elite.

At the age of 19, he started a business with his friend, a brilliant computer geek called Steve Wozniak. When he couldn't come up with a good name for the company, he called it his favourite fruit, "Apple". Woz was the mastermind behind the Apple I and Apple II but Steve was the one who took it to people. He was such a brilliant marketer and a businessman with great taste that within four years, Apple was transformed from an office of two in Jobs' garage to a 4,000 employee, billion dollar company.

Jobs became the overnight idol for the new generation of Americans. He was so captivating an orator that he could keep the audience spellbound even on his impromptu speeches. Jobs is a perfectionist and it shows in everything that he's created. From implementing GUI to Mac, to the look of the NeXT Cube and to the extraordinary simplicity of the iPod, his creativity shows. And the best part was, Steve was never a programmer. He could never understand the working of a computer. And that gave him a disregard for the impossible. He gave his engineers impossible designs and specifications and motivated them so much that they believed that they could do it.

He was probably rude, crazy and extremely short-tempered but all those people who knew him loved him because he was so charismatic. He could convince people into anything he wanted to. One of the most famous lines of business history, "Will you sell sugared water all your life or come with me and change the world?", was uttered by Steve to lure Paul Schulley, the then CEO of PepsiCo.

Even after he was chucked out of his own company, Steve still came back hard and gave successes to the almost bankrupt company Pixar, and started NeXT. But, as he himself admits, all that he got from life is well justified. Probably we don't realise it then but later, at one point of time, we do realise that What You Do is What You Get. After he was fired, he became a more stable man. He realised his limits, gave more time for himself and his friends and grew within himself. And now, Pixar sets the landmark for animation films throughout the World and NeXT is the core of Apple, which thanks to Steve, is now the biggest second act story of any company.

Steve has redefined the way people live their lives. They say, Ignorance is Bliss. Its very true in the case of Steve. Just because he was uneducated enough not to know what impossible was, he pushed people hard for getting it. Four of his milestones, the Apple II(the first largely marketed PC), the Macintosh(the first computer to successfully utilise GUI), Pixar(which proved to the people that animation wasn't just a tiny part of the movies, it could be used to make movies and show the impossible) and the iPod(which changed the way people commute and treat music), have changed the way we live.

And what's more, his famous rivalry with Bill Gates is scaling new heights and this man is still on. We don't know what he is going to come up with next. He doesn't know it either. But whatever maybe it, I can promise you that it will make a huge mark on the way people live. That's just of part of Steve for you folks. No one can ever come up with everything about Steve.

After all, he's the iGod.

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For anyone who is interested to know more about Steve, check out this site. It is one of the most resourceful links available about Steve on the net.