Steve Jobs died yesterday.
I’ve been a Mac guy a long time, but I’m not going to wax poetic about my first Mac, the joy I’ve gotten from Apple products, or how the Mac first made my career at Aldus/Adobe possible, then later transformed my career with iOS.
Apple and Steve Jobs struck gold with so many of their recent blockbuster creations like the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air.
But it wasn’t always so.
Sure, Apple has made plenty of flop products, and has come around to success, but to me that’s not the Jobs legacy.
What I admire most about Jobs is that for a long time he languished, and was easily dismissed by many.
His return to Apple was nostalgic, but by no means a slam dunk for the success of Apple.
It was after all of this that his best creations came to life.
The fact that he wasn’t born a genius, that he had to tread through the mediocre products and personal failures before he arrived, gives me hope.
If you think about it, this is obvious. Everyone including geniuses has to work and fail and work and fail again before their genius is realized.
But it’s easy to find yourself in the midst of mundane work, in the midst of failure and start doubting, start slowing down. During those times is when Steve Jobs’ legacy is a welcome shot in the arm, propelling me forward.
Even if most of us are no geniuses, and none of us are Steve Jobs, I still like the idea that our best work is still ahead of us.
