Steve Jobs - RIP!

The world, and not just Apple, has lost a visionary, a creative genius, a business mastermind, an innovator nonpareil, and a superlative tech titan just four days ago. The outpouring of grief Steve Jobs' death has spawned has been massive, on a global scale, a grief so simple yet elemental, from both users and non-users of Apple products alike. He revolutionized Silicon Valley and the world in a manner where the appeal of his unparalleled products was greater than the technology itself, it being said that Jobs was not a tech nerd but a business genius who combined technology, product, and appeal into a global marketing phenomenon for Apple. While I join the millions in paying homage to this great man, this post is not about what a great genius Jobs was. It is more about a successful human being who battled pancreatic cancer, just like millions more who share the same plight, and fell prey to it at the pinnacle of his career.

The Web has been abuzz of late about Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, the only authorized one, that is being rushed to the press for early release, now that Jobs has passed away. While it has been a well-known fact that Jobs was very guarded and secretive about his medical condition in order not to panic the investors and send the Apple stocks tumbling, rumors have been swirling around that Jobs was highly distrustful of modern medicine and even after his diagnosis of a neuroendocrine tumor in his pancreas, he chose not to have it surgically removed right away. Surgery is a personal choice and a very important one at that, and the talk was that Jobs' decision not to have had one right away might have cost him his life. No one will know for sure until Isaacson's biography is published, but with Jobs' grounding in Zen Buddhism, I can quite understand what might have made him decide not to have one.

I happened to be watching a panel discussion on CNN about Steve Jobs and his stellar rise in Silicon Valley from the time he dropped out of college, and while everyone was praising him as a genius, the moderator threw in the point that Steve Jobs had also been a perfectionist and a hard taskmaster who drove his team to perfection with singleminded determination, and micro-managed every single aspect of a product, almost to the point of being draconian, and wondered why the American media wasn't talking about that then. Interestingly, one panel member responded that it was a very cultural thing not to speak ill of a dead person, that somehow death negated all the harsh aspects of one's personality, and it was common for one to eulogize the dead person and remember only the good things about him or her. Fair enough, and true to boot, I thought. Whether Jobs chose to have surgery or not, or whether he had it done right away or delayed it, is not for anyone to judge him about, nor would it be appropriate to look into character flaws or personality traits now and to sit in judgement over him. What one has to look into and acknowledge is that Steve Jobs made a mark in this world as an exemplary entrepreneur and stellar genius, but in the face of cancer, proved to be as mortal as the next human being. There is no app for immortality after all, and the world has lost one of its illustrious sons now!

RIP, Steve Jobs!