CHENNAI: With AIADMK cadre painting the town red for celebrations of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, a small group of tech enthusiasts remembered a legend of the modern technological revolution — Steve Jobs.
The founder of the now ubiquitous Apple Inc was born on February 24, 1955 and is held by many as the man in front of the relentless march of technology, along with fellow giants like Microsoft’s Bill Gates and, more recently, Mark Zuckerberg.
For a whole set of people, mostly those you find queuing in front of an electronics store during every Apple product launch, Jobs is the man who made technology cool. Jobs is also seen by those in electronic product design as the man who made his top motto ‘simplicity’. For the young and aspiring, however, Jobs is more than just a man who led the electronic and digital revolution.
“Steve Jobs was a great entrepreneur and I really admire his man management skills. He changed the landscape completely in the field of personal computers and smartphones with his ideas that are relevant even today,” says Srinath, a student at IIT Madras.
It is this very aspect that young students want to emulate. Because not only was Jobs’ a scientist and researcher, he was a businessman who made his brand one the most valuable in the world.
It is no wonder then that the speeches he gave to students are still some of the most watched on the Internet. “In his speech at Stanford in 2005, he voiced his regret at not being able to finish college. Yet, he emphasised the importance of education — this was something that I liked and admired,” said Sameera Begum, a journalism student from MOP College for Women.
Jobs’ 2005 speech is one of his most popular, and was one in which he spoke about his hardships after he dropped out of college — a time when he slept on the floor in his friends’ dorm rooms, returned Coke bottles for money to buy food, and get free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.
Then came Apple. “Steve Jobs’ success had a lot to do with the idea of simplicity he had set in all of his products. Apple’s designs focused on making the most secure, yet high performance operating system,” said Karthik B, a management
student. Though they were not new technologies, he ensured they made it the best in terms of performance and looks too, he added. “It was always about marketing and about the way he presented them in all their launches,” he said.