Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, whose death was reported by the company on Wednesday, leaves behind a massive legacy, not only in technology, but in design, music, movies, publishing, advertising, communications, moviemaking and the modern era writ large.
It a legacy impossible to summarize in one, or even the thousands of articles being written now in the wake of his death. But what is more achievable is getting a sense of how Steve Jobs lived his life, what he was like as a person, and what values he held dear and that he said guided his decision making and outlook.
Throughout his life, various writers attempted to get a sense of what made him tick. We’ve rounded up the best of their efforts below. But as usual, even the most definitive profiles of the tech titan were always usurped by what he had to say for himself.
Steve Jobs’ 1985 interview with Playboy magazine remains legendary for his vision and candor. In it, Jobs said: “I do feel there is another way we have an effect on society besides our computers. I think Apple has a chance to be the model of a Fortune 500 company in the late Eighties and early Nineties.”
In 1994, having been fired from Apple and seen his NeXT company go up in flames, Steve Jobs was interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine writer Jeff Goodell. Goodell asked Jobs how it felt to see Bill Gates succeed wildly at Jobs’ own mission. Jobs answered:
“If you say, well, how do you feel about Bill Gates getting rich off some of the ideas that we had … well, you know, the goal is not to be the richest man in the cemetery. It’s not my goal anyway.”
In a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone, in which Steve Jobs was put on the spot to defend the early success of iTunes, he told writer Goddell:
“We were very lucky — we grew up in a generation where music was an incredibly intimate part of that generation. More intimate than it had been, and maybe more intimate than it is today, because today there’s a lot of other alternatives. We didn’t have video games to play. We didn’t have personal computers. There’s so many other things competing for kids’ time now. But, nonetheless, music is really being reinvented in this digital age, and that is bringing it back into people’s lives. It’s a wonderful thing. And in our own small way, that’s how we’re working to make the world a better place.”
This Stanford speech was recorded and made into a prescient TED video, in which Steve Jobs explains “How to live before you die,” which quickly made the rounds around the Web on Wednesday in the minutes after his death was reported.
Longreads.com quickly linked back to a 2005 commencement speech given by Jobs to the graduating class of Stanford University. Steve Jobs, in which he was quick to note that he had dropped out of Reed College. He also delivered this incredible line about his perception of death:
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Tom Junod’s memorable 2008 write-around profile of Jobs for Esquire, in which he extensively quotes Apple co-founder Stephen Wozniak, seeks to explain how Jobs views his own mortality: ” Steve Jobs has become Steve Jobs by doing what nobody else has done before — by treating computers not just as tools but as mirrors, by making technology not just the engine but the emblem of transcendence. One day, however, he will have to do what everybody else has done before, and will wind up demonstrating what it’s like to be mortal, even in the age of the beautiful machine.”
In April 2010, Time Magazine put Jobs on the cover for the seventh, and final time, asking what we think is a rhetorical question: “The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again?” In the article by Steven Fry, the second person to own a Macintosh computer in Great Britain, the writer asks Jobs if the launch of the iPad is the curtain dropping on his career. Jobs responds:
“I don’t think of my life as a career,” he says. “I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That’s not a career — it’s a life!”
See all of the Time covers featuring Job in this slideshow.
And here are the top 10 magazine covers featuring Jobs from The Society of Publication Designers.
This Sunday Times article from August 2009 covers the career of Jobs and his health problems in vivid detail, leading Apple PR reps to attempt to have it canned before publication.
San Francisco Chronicle writer Jeff Yang in January this year wrote a lengthy piece on “How Steve Jobs ‘out-Japanned’ Japan.”
Just days before he stepped down from the helm at Apple, blogger and tech entrepreneur Anil Dash wrote a short but memorable analysis of Steve Jobs as the ideal politically liberal business titan: “He’s the anchor baby of an activist Arab Muslim who came to the U.S. on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock. He’s a non-Christian, arugula-eating, drug-using follower of unabashedly old-fashioned liberal teachings from the hippies and folk music stars of the 60s. And he believes in science, in things that science can demonstrate like climate change and Pi having a value more specific than “3”, and in extending responsible benefits to his employees while encouraging his company to lead by being environmentally responsible.”
Correction: This post originally labeled the Stanford TED video as a separate TED talk. We regret the error.
