What Steve Jobs Original Vision was for Apple
This is WITS Zen initiative to post a short series of stories and anecdotes from the recently published Steve Jobs, the new biography of the Apple co-founder written by Walter Isaacson about the “roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, table computing, and digital publishing.”
Could you say what Steve Jobs’ Original Vision was for Apple? Who was the One who instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products, Mac, iPod, iPad, iPhone, etc?
Steve Jobs, inspired by the thought of Edwin Land of Polaroid, one of his heroes, who said about the “importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences”, had always been fascinated by nicely designed simple products for the mass market.
Walter Isaacson, his biographer, writes that it was Joseph Eichler, the real estate developer, who instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of simple modern homes for the American “everyman”, Eichler’s company “spawned more than eleven thousand homes in various California subdivisions between 1950 and 1974.”
“Jobs said that his appreciation for Eichler homes instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market.”I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much,” he (Steve Jobs) said as he pointed out the clean elegance of the houses. “It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.”
WITS Zen curates across the web to provide its viewers more news, reviews, and views on Steve Jobs, the Autobiography:
‘Steve Jobs’ review: Walter Isaacson’s biography mesmerizes
Steve Jobs bio: Author speaks about writing
The Week in Tweets: Jobs Bio Tackles Reality Distortion, Meltdowns
Biography sees Jobs as crossroad of humanities, science
Review: Steve Jobs is a great story, not just a collection of quotes