Steve Jobs: 5 years later, he is still the greatest innovator of our time

By Sheldon Pinto / 06 Oct 2016 , 19:20

Google just announced the Pixel yesterday and I am pretty sure Steve Jobs would have had plenty to complain about. It was evident even before launch, thanks to the rumours, that Google was going to pull off an iPhone-like device, one that is probably the best, current day example about how having a control on things resulted in a better consumer products.

Jobs was never pro Google and often mocked the search giant for copying his iPhone’s design.

Steve Jobs with the iPhone in 2007. Reuters

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

Yes, that’s how much he loved Android. But Jobs was no saint either. If you read up Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, you will also know that the late CEO of Apple did in fact copy from Xerox to build the software we see on the Mac today.

But he had an answer to that as well. “Good artists copy; great artists steal”

So he did have his strange philosophies. The hippie who went on to change the way we interact with computers and mobile devices did get one thing straight, and that was control.

Winding back to Isaacson’s biography it was easy to see how Jobs grew into the greatest visionary of our time. After him the world has yet to find the next big driving force for innovation, an innovator that currently has no replacement or equal.

While his philosophies still live on, Jobs’ ideas have started to dwindle away. We still have the iPhone, it offers the most powerful processor in the smartphone space, but it’s a bit too large and not too thumb-friendly, as Jobs would have preferred it.

Steve Jobs unveiled the Macbook Air from an envelope. Image: Bestpresentations

We have the MacBook Air, that still looks the same as the first one Jobs pulled out of the envelope at its first unveiling on stage. The Mac has transformed drastically, but is still not in everyone’s homes; a Windows PC is.

iPads have grown out of proportion and have not become one

bit lighter nor practical. It’s even grown a stylus!

Apple’s not exactly making flawless products. Software is still buggy. And Apple now has a smartwatch as well.

So how does his legacy live on?

Well, it’s the ripple effect that the man in a black turtleneck shirt had on the entire industry.