AppleInsider Staff
Apple CEO Tim Cook on Friday sent an email to Apple employees to honor the third anniversary of the passing of co-founder Steve Jobs, saying the late tech guru's legacy lives on through their work.
In the note obtained by iClarified, Cook asked Apple team members to reflect on how the products created under Jobs' Apple have impacted not only the technology industry, but the world.
Team,
Sunday will mark the third anniversary of Steve's passing. I'm sure that many of you will be thinking of him on that day, as I know I will.
I hope you'll take a moment to appreciate the many ways Steve made our world better. Children learn in new ways thanks to the products he dreamed up. The most creative people on earth use them to compose symphonies and pop songs, and write everything from novels to poetry to text messages. Steve's life's work produced the canvas on which artists now create masterpieces.
Steve's vision extended far beyond the years he was alive, and the values on which he built Apple will always be with us. Many of the ideas and projects we're working on today got started after he died, but his influence on them — and on all of us — is unmistakeable.
Enjoy your weekend, and thanks for helping carry Steve's legacy into the future.
Tim
Jobs died in 2011 at the age of 56 after a long fight with pancreatic cancer.
Earlier this year, on what would be Jobs' birthday in February, Cook posted a pair of quotes to Twitter in remembrance of the late tech luminary, one being the "stay hungry, stay foolish" line taken from a 2005 Stanford University commencement speech.
Since his passing, Jobs has been honored by President Barack Obama, government bodies, schools, commercial airlines, Hollywood and more. An independent biopic starring Ashton Kutcher came out in 2013, but failed to garner critical acclaim. Another Sony-backed project based on Walter Isaacson's biography "Steve Jobs" has been adapted for the big screen by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and is slated to start production soon with director Danny Boyle at the helm.
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57 Comments
Yep, the guy was definitely irreplaceable.
RIP Steve Jobs, we all can only ponder what could've been...
While I agree that Steve was one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable and the heart and soul of the company, does anyone else think that annual company-wide reminders of Apple's fallen leader on or about the anniversary of his death should be put to bed at some point? By all means, hold Steve's values in the forefront of your operating approach. In fact, please redouble your efforts to do so; the borking of user's bluetooth car connections with iOS8, followed by the borking of cellular connections with 8.01, the colossal failure of the live stream of the iPhone 6 / watch event, the missteps in the U2 album giveaway, all would have had Steve telling one or more parties at Apple that they should hate themselves and their teams for tarnishing Apple. I wish Tim would focus on managing the company to produce not only well designed but well executed products instead of writing warm and fuzzy missives about remembering Steve. Everybody remembers Steve. I'm sure those who worked closely with him are aware of the anniversary of his death. Time to shift the focus to the here and now.
Apple has done very well, probably better than anyone expected, since Steve died. Thankfully he told Tim not to focus on what he would have done. Walt Disney didn't communicate that well enough, the Disney company spent fifteen years telling themselves "it's just the way it was when Walt was here", and nearly went bankrupt because of it. As Kurt Russell told a Disney executive at one point, "If Walt were still here, things [I]would[/I] have changed."