The Steve Jobs Era has Passed

Steve Jobs died in 2011. It was a fateful day for Apple, the tech industry, and the world.

Steve Jobs held Apple to a high standard. A very high standard. After he died, that standard wasn’t quite the same.

I don’t want to be the one guy from the comments who keeps shouting that “Steve never would’ve let that happen,” but there’s a little bit truth to that idea.

Apple was started by two men, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The common misconception is that Jobs was the brains of the operation, but Wozniak was the one who did most of the development. Steve was more of the finance and marketing guy.

That changed when Apple became a big corporation. Now Jobs was less of the marketing guy and more of the big picture, visionary guy.

Steve held the company to a high standard. He had a vision and saw it through.

Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple, takes an entirely different approach. Cook is more of a logistics guy. This approach has helped Apple make some of the most value-retaining devices on the planet, but with less of the driving, keep-pushing, work-on-it-till-it’s-perfect mentality.

It’s a trade-off. Instead of Steve’s visionary, keep-at-it, details-matter orientation that focused on “what,” we have Cook’s economics-related manner that tends to focus more on “how.”

It’s a good thing and a bad thing. Cook’s approach has brought us things like the latest iPad and it’s low price, especially for the education market. On the contrary, we don’t have Steve’s focus on details.

There are advantages and disadvantages to any such trade-off, but the truth is we can’t do anything about it. We can’t bring Steve Jobs back, so we should stop saying “Steve would’ve done a better job.” Celebrate the accomplishments Apple is making today instead. If we start focusing on what could have been, we lose sight of what is now.

Thanks for reading!

(Header image from Unsplash.com)