Idol

I heard it this morning. On the commute to college, a friend asks me, "So Steve Jobs has resigned?" Before I went all Yeah Right, he told me that he read it in his Facebook News Feed at 7 am today. I asked him if he read any article and he denied but said that there was a link posted. I refused to believe some troll's Facebook status; but within a second it did strike me. He was on medical leave after all. He was planning to retire in the coming years. Did he really resign?

Within the next second, for some reason, my heart started to sink.

As soon I reached the campus, I rushed to the lab and opened up Engadget - "Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple".

As another friend described, the sadness is physical. There is this uneasiness since morning that I haven't been able to overcome yet. So many things running through mind.

First, about the man himself. It sounds dramatic, but this guy is a part of shaping who I am and want to be. There is so much about engineering, design, entrepreneurship, communication and much more that I learnt just by observing this guy. He almost defines the word Respect for me.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with someone I met two months ago in Mumbai. He asked, "Who is your idol?" Dismissing it as concept on which 12-year-olds write essays, I said diplomatically, "No one." I actually never thought about this notion. He insisted, "Guys who discuss stuff like we are discussing, always have an idol." Listening to this, I had my answer in a second- "Steve Jobs".

This explains the uneasiness.

Then, there are concerns about Apple. I love Apple products. The kind of thought and vision they bring to the market is something extraordinary. Of course they are doing business, but the game they play and the goals they set, are very different from any other tech company out there. And Steve Jobs was Apple.

When you turn all geeky and progress to the computing industry while gathering knowledge about it, there are these faces you start to identify and associate with companies. Google brings an image of Sergey Brin and Schmidt to my mind, and in the recent times, Larry Page. Facebook brings up Mark Zuckerberg. Apple, obviously, brought up Steve Job's image. Now, its just weird. I am trying to put in some image from here; maybe Forstall or Schiller(thanks to Job's thoughtfully designed keynotes), but Apple just seems faceless now. It's like the solidness has gone.

Also, I noticed him when he said this at the iPad 2 launch:

We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon, but in the organization to build these kinds of products.

Who knew he was subtly sowing the idea of his retirement at the end of the keynote. Classic Steve Jobs.

I read this piece after this news, and its striking to see how much John Gruber gets me sometimes (or perhaps vice-versa):

Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself. 

Today’s announcement is just one more step, albeit a big and sad one, in a long-planned orderly transition — a transition that no one wanted but which could not, alas, be avoided. And as ever, he’s doing it his way.

The next iPhone gets announced next month. While it would be great to see him on stage, I hope he's in the audience at least. Watching what he created.