As a man, Steve Jobs had a lot of weaknesses. But as a businessman, he was one of the best.
Jobs co-founded Apple, and was later ousted. But when he returned, he quickly regain control of the company, which was at the brink of bankruptcy, and made it a world-class company.
Jobs envisioned a more modern world, and successfully cemented Apple inside the modern culture, replaced Sony's Walkman with iPod, reinvented the mobile industry with the iPhone, and changed the way people listen to music, and lots more.
And this time, his friends and family have gathered at Vox Media's 2022 Code Conference to remember the icon.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, former Apple design chief Jony Ive, and Jobs widow Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell Jobs participated in a panel at Kara Swisher's final appearance to discuss Steve Jobs and his influence on technology, culture, and beyond.
Powell Jobs said that:
He loved California so much, but he loved our country. He loved the idea of America. He loved what it allowed the individual and the communities to become. He loved the unfetteredness of it. He loved the personal freedoms and liberties, but also the connectedness and responsibility for each other.
It was very important to him to be able to give something back to the human experience, and I think he would not be quiet about it.
Powell Jobs, a billionaire and also an executive, is the founder and chair of Emerson Collective, an organization that supports social entrepreneurs who are committed to the ideal that everyone ought to have the chance to live to their full potential.
She is also the co-founder and chairman of XQ Institute, which aims to rethink American high schools.
She also manages the Steve Jobs Trust, which had a stake in companies like The Walt Disney Company and Apple Inc..
Steve’s legacy lives on in the company we are and the products and services we create. The Steve Jobs Archive was created as a place to spark a sense of possibility in everyone. https://t.co/MfgMuGV8IX
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) September 8, 2022
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple who replaced Jobs when he died, had a close relationship with him, that he knew a lot about him.
It means asking people's permission, asking them repeatedly, and it has been at the heart of how we view privacy. And so you know, we believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, and we see a world where privacy takes a backseat, and you have this sort of surveillance kind of mode everywhere, that this is a world where people begin to do less and think less. They begin to alter their behavior because they know they're being watched. And this is not a world that any of us want to live in.
I think he saw that, and saw that well, and I have every reason to believe that he would have put up a good arguments in good fights along the way.
While he leads Apple his way, and said that it has never been his goal to run Apple the way Jobs did, Cook said that Jobs' influence is still strongly felt at the company.
This is the reason why Jobs never failed to astonish Cook, even after more than a decade since his passing.
As for Jony Ive, he spoke how he and Steve Jobs shared a similar view about design, and how the two agreed to see even the smallest details because Jobs also believed that it was the right thing to do.
So for us in our practice of design, I think care is very often felt, and not necessarily seen. And I think, and I know it's something that I think the three of us feel strongly about that sort of care, that is, I mean Steve talks about the carpenter, the cabinet maker that would finish the back of the drawer, and it's that you're bothered beyond whether something is actually publicly seen.
You do it not because there's an economic interest. You do it because it's the right moral decision and I think it's, I think, particularly as a designer. I think it's very often in the very small quiet things like worrying about how you package a cable.
Yeah, I worry about that ever such a lot. And Steve wrote about that a lot as well. And I think it's that sort of that preoccupation when you're set there on a Sunday afternoon worrying about the power cable that's packaged as a zigzag thing and you're going to take that little wire tie off when you're set there on a Sunday afternoon worrying about this isn't really very good.
The only reason, I think you're very aware that the reason you are there is because I think, our species deserves better.
It's worth noting that Steve Jobs was the first guest to be interviewed by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the conference that was then called D: All Things Digital.