October 5 marks one year since the passing of Steve Jobs. In recognition of his accomplishments, numerous tech companies and media outlets posted tributes to the Apple CEO.
On the Apple.com home page, the company Jobs founded posted a moving video. It concludes with a letter from current Apple CEO Tim Cook. It reads:
Steve’s passing one year ago today was a sad and difficult time for all of us. I hope that today everyone will reflect on his extraordinary life and the many ways he made the world a better place.
One of the greatest gifts Steve gave to the world is Apple. No company has ever inspired such creativity or set such high standards for itself. Our values originated from Steve and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple. We share the great privilege and responsibility of carrying his legacy into the future.
I’m incredibly proud of the work we are doing, delivering products that our customers love and dreaming up new ones that will delight them down the road. It’s a wonderful tribute to Steve’s memory and everything he stood for.
The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Lynley uses the anniversary as a time to reflect on Job’s legacy and how his company has performed without him. He concludes, “Taken as a whole, the transition seems to have been successful. Since Jobs’ passing, Apple’s shares have risen about 75%, from $378.25 on Oct. 5 last year to about $665 today. In the process, Apple has become the most valuable company in the world.”
Forbes pays homage to Jobs with a collection of previously untold stories. In one such story, Marc Andreeson recounts the time when Jobs first showed him the original iPhone: “After an appropriate amount of oohing and aahing, I ventured a comment. BlackBerry aficionado as I was, I said, ‘Boy, Steve, don’t you think it’s going to be a problem not having a physical keyboard? Are people really going to be okay typing directly on the screen?’ He looked me right in the eye with that piercing gaze and said, ‘They’ll get used to it.'”
In a similar vein, SlashGear dug up a cassette tape of Jobs speaking at a convention in 1983. Jobs makes some uncanny predictions about the future of the technology industry, including forecasting that Apple would “put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes.” The SlashGear article notes, “[Jobs] added that these computers would connect via ‘radio link’ so people would not have to hook up to anything to communicate with ‘larger databases’ and computers everywhere. He speaks about how the record industry will change as the software industry changes, removing the need for brick-and-mortar stores altogether. Imagine that!”
