steve jobs

Steve

This is a music blog. Forgive me whilst I pay brief tribute to the man that was Steve Jobs.

There are not many strangers whose deaths touch me in the way that Jobs' has. It is a perculier feeling, like that felt as a teenager when your favourite musician died or band split up.

People tend to say that you are either an Apple person or a Windows person. With Jobs' passing this feels like a bizarre sentiment. We are just people and these are just products. But the thing that sticks with me is that Jobs approached design with a view that only the best is good enough. Sure, you may not be able to take it apart, upgrade it or use Flash on it (God forbid). But everything you can do on it will (almost) always just work. And it will be easy and intuitive to use. That approach has a lot of appeal - over the years so many people that used to berate my love of Apple products have become almost as fanatical about them as I.

Steve didn't see design as beautification, although his products were and are beautiful. He saw design as being concerned with how you use something, not how it looked, whilst relying on timeless clean lines (and Jonny Ive) for visuals.

Steve was a rock star. He may have made a lot of money and helped a lot of CEOs, but he also did a lot to piss a lot of people off. Good enough was never good enough and it was this mentality that saw Steve tear apart and revolutionise the music, mobile and now arguably personal computer markets. And, most importantly, give people a better experience as a result.

Thanks Steve.

BP 

Image source: Wired.

And yes, I wrote this on my iPad.