Today, Steve Jobs passed away. I woke up early today, could not sleep, thoughts and ideas about a new project were flowing and had to get up to write them. Once I finished writing and drawing them, started my Macbook pro to launch safari and saw this…

I searched around, checked Techmeme and all my feeds on Google Reader to realize something I had an inkling for since his mail for stepping down as CEO has actually happened. Then I cried…

I consider myself an apple fanboy owning iMac, Airport Express, Macbook Pro, iPhone, iPod, iPad 1 and iPad 2 plus additionally gifting iPad 2s to people around me. Steve with his vision and resultant products has changed the way I come to look at technology and its incarnations as macs, pc’s, software, internet, mobile, tablets can become if looked upon with a keen sense of taste, design and meaning. As Steve said famously on “computers as bicycle for our minds”…

My immediate reaction on Facebook as my first status of the day:

RIP Steve Jobs, thanks for everything! You made our lives better with technology, showed us having good taste is a matter of design and motivated us to live ones life by believing in your ideas rather than following. We will miss you!

After some crying (yes, i know sounds corny and stupid but read on), updated my Facebook status to:

Way to live ones life as Steve Jobs lived it! For those who have not read/listened to his Stanford address, this is the time to read it. For me, it is not only about Apple or its innovations, Steve motivated me to seek what I want to do in life and always love what I do. I will miss him for that inspiration!

But then rest of the day, I reflected on my emotion in the morning and what Steve meant to me as a person, hence this post.

I never knew Steve, in fact never ever met him personally, only know him from his talks, interviews, anecdotes of people who worked close to him and speculation about him on his way of working and thinking. But in time I came to consider him as the guiding light for the way to live my life.

For me, he offered hope on pursuing a higher meaning in life rather than continue ones existence on daily steps and ladders society seems to thrust upon us as the rules to live by. He offered a chance not to fall in to trap of working in one’s job for sake of the next promotion or next bonus or next salary increment. He made me feel OK to pursue knowledge with the belief that it will all come together and get tied up in the stream of creative pursuit.

I believe he was an inspiration in this regard for not just me but one and all. As Mark Zuckerberg said “Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.” or as Larry Page said “He always seemed to be able to say in very few words what you actually should have been thinking before you thought it.” or as Bill Gates said For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor.  I will miss Steve immensely. and as Obama so fittingly said “he changed the way each of us sees the world.”

He definitely changed me in so many little ways, that it is hard for me to point at one thing that made me consider him as a my mentor, teacher and coach on how to look at problems and work on solutions, on how to be creative yet be diligent and practical, on how to stay positive and not be disappointed since it will all come together at the end.

Apart from life, working in Software Industry focused on product development, I came to appreciate the challenges with which one can create a product, decisions that are necessary to be made and at the end it is not easy. Steve offered a method and an approach on how to go about it.

His Stanford commencement address (for life) and his interview at All Things D (for work) will always be etched in memory for quotes that are inspirational and aspirational while being precise at the same time.

I will pick the key ones of those interviews to illustrate what I mean.

From his Stanford Address:

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

“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.”

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.“

For my work, the 2 quotes which reminded me the focus and determination needed to develop products!:

“Real artists ship.” — Steve Jobs, 1983 and

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.” – Steve Jobs, 2008

But there was more in his interview at all this digital conference in 2008 (thanks Walt and Kara) that tells the culture he has imbibed at Apple :

“Apple is a company that doesn’t have the most resources in the world, and they way we’ve succeeded is to bet the right technological horse, to look at technologies that have a future. We try to pick things that are in their springs. And if you choose wisely, you can be quite successful.”

“We’re just trying to make great products, We don’t think Flash makes a great product, so we’re leaving it out. Instead, we’re going to focus on technologies that are in ascendancy. If we succeed, people will buy them and if we don’t they won’t….”

“We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft, either…Maybe that’s why we lost. … But we never thought of ourselves in a platform war; we just wanted to make good products.”

“These devices over time are going to grow to do new things. … You know, people laugh at me because I use the phrase “magical” to describe the iPad. But it’s what I really think. You have a much more direct and intimate relationship with the Internet and media, your apps, your content. It’s like some intermediate thing has been removed and stripped away. …. I think we’re just scratching the surface on the kind of apps we can build for it. I think one can create a lot of content on the tablet.”

“Bottom line is, yes, we sometimes make mistakes…but we correct them….We are doing the best we can, changing the rules when it makes sense.”

 “I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to hang out with some of the most talented, committed people around and together we get to play in this sandbox and build these cool products….Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero. We’re structured like a start-up. We’re the biggest start-up on the planet. And we all meet once a week to discuss our business…and there’s tremendous teamwork at the top and that filters down to the other employees…and so what I do all day is meet with teams of people and work on ideas and new problems to come up with new products.”

Mossberg: And are people willing to tell you you’re wrong? Jobs: Oh, yeah, no we have wonderful arguments.

Mossberg: And do you win them all? Jobs: Oh no I wish I did. No, you see you can’t. If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay.

Mossberg: But you must be more than a facilitator who runs meetings. You obviously contribute your own ideas. Jobs: I contribute ideas, sure. Why would I be there if I didn’t?

and the last but one especially since I work for an enterprise software company:

“What I love about the consumer market, that I always hated about the enterprise market, is that we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it, and every person votes for themselves. They go ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and if enough of them say ‘yes,’ we get to come to work tomorrow. That’s how it works. It’s really simple. With the enterprise market, it’s not so simple. The people that use the products don’t decide for themselves, and the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused.”

All of these are just statements but hearing Steve you realize he actually believed in them, lived and worked by them. To be being aware of your environment is necessary and most important but then to be able to continue going on with ones own conviction what made Steve more than just a business leader and visionary.

I already see his influence on next generation of entrepreneurs in India and China for whom he defined the benchmark to aspire for. So hopefully we will be lucky to have products around us which have been thought and created with that extra effort to delight us and make us feel happy to discover abilities of technology as it pushes us to be more connected every where around.

He was and will remain for me and hopefully for a generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, creators, designers, software geeks, management folks, students  and every normal working man or woman out there, the guiding influence to continue going on with our lives with convictions of our heart.

Thanks Steve for being who you were and I am honored to have gotten to know you even if from far away!

Must end with the video of Think Different in Steve’s own voice