Steve Jobs

After reading the news that Steve Jobs is resigning as the CEO of Apple, saying that I am sad today is an understatement.  I hope that he gets well and gets well soon.

Anyway, if you'll indulge me for a moment, here is what I feel about him..

I love Steve Jobs for all what he has done. While, I wasn't fortunate to live in the times of Einstein or any other science/technology geniuses but I do believe that I am very fortunate to live in Steve Job's era.

The way I look at it, invention and innovation as two aspects in the development of technology, both being very crucial. While invention breaks ground, innovation makes the technology accessible to a large number of consumers. While Steve Jobs (within Apple) may have not invented the computer, the chip or even the touch enabled phone or even a touch enabled computing device/tablet, by putting these things together into something cohesive that works, and works amazingly well, Jobs has truly disrupted the notion of personal computing that himself had conceptualized (IMO, the personal computing area was truly brought to market by Bill Gates and Microsoft).

Clearly the PC era evolved the PC from what Steve Jobs had conceptualized to something that has impacted every aspect of everyday lives. Similar to that I believe always-accessible, simple, touch enabled mobile computing technologies, of which iPhone, iPad and the many similar devices are early implementations, will impact our day to day life’s in more ways than what we have seen so far. The notion of App Stores has already fundamentally changed the notion of how we get new capabilities on consumer devices, and will continue to do so.

For his accomplishments (so far), I believe that he will be remembered as a very important/disruptive figure in the technology evolution. He laid the foundation of two eras of computing, disrupting one of them. Lots of writers are talking about Job's biggest hits etc, but clearly his biggest hit is Apple itself, a company that excels in creation of consumer technologies, bringing different but related/inter-connected disciplines together.

Whether he is the CEO or the Chairman or the "Chief Evangelist" or any other title, I just hope he is doing well or is on a path towards getting better, and continue to do what he does great and clearly loves doing.

One of my biggest hopes is to see him do something "disruptive", something "game-changing" in the field of Education. iPad has provided us some clues, but there is so much more to be done and we need Steve Jobs more than ever...