here's to the crazy one.
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world
are the ones who do.
He reinvented the computer. Then he reinvented the computer again. Then he reinvented Hollywood. (Pixar has, bar none, the best record in Hollywood history.) Then he reinvented the music business. Then he reinvented the telephone business.
Honestly! What more could he have done? The fact is that Apple will not be the same, and its products will not be the same. There will probably be no more new stuff from them that matches Jobs's groundbreaking innovations. I remember well what happened when his company foolishly booted him. During his decade in the wilderness, the Macintosh began to look and act just like every other computer. Big beige boxes, not too reliable. He returned from the wilderness and suddenly the world exploded into a colorful series of is: Macs, Books, Phones, Pods, Pads.
He's a hero to anyone who believes that the conventional wisdom about creatives vs. suits is wrong. (When the music industry had very nearly destroyed itself, the only thing they could figure out to do with the internet being to sue Napster, he changed the rules and made a single internet portal that consolidated the business and remains the biggest seller of music in the world, period. As a musician who just today got a nice deposit in my account from iTunes, I'll testify that we owe him more than any music-biz hotshot.) He's certainly a hero to anyone who believes that you never have to choose between success and integrity, between business and vision.
So, while we justly mourn the loss of this man, and justly mourn for a tech future without him, the only other just thing is to celebrate that we ever had him in the first place. What a gift to humanity.
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