I’m somewhere in the middle of the Arctic Sea right now, approximately 78°05’N, 28°45’E, but even through the thin pipe of an intermittent satellite connection the ripples were felt of the announcement that Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. Jobs, or the idea of him, has had a profound impact on innumerable founders and CEOs. My own tribute to him (and Apple as an organization) is in the essay 1.0 is the Loneliest Number, where reviews of the original iPod punctuate a story of the messy act of creation. Moments like this give us an opportunity to take a step back and contemplate the bigger picture, so take a moment to read the post and think about what you’re launching next.

12 thoughts on “On Jobs

  1. Somewhere between the extremes of ‘anal retentive perfectionism’ and ‘let’s get it out as is or we’ll lose the holiday season’ … is the ‘let’s do right by our customers’ credo. I think there’s a lot more tolerance with open software if the consumer finds a few hiccups or the glaring absence of that ‘one more thing’. That’s the nature of the beast. However, your expectations are always higher, when you have to plunk down the cash you really can’t afford on a product that (1) falls way short of it’s marketing campaign hype and (2) is released with the full knowledge that 6 months down the road it will be phased out.

    At the end of the day, breeding brand loyalty by showing respect for your customers’ investments in time, energy and money, speaks volumes about the worth of your products. I think Automattic / WordPress has done a fine job in this respect.

    By the way, Love the tricorder analogy, Matt. 🙂

  2. Well written. Fun to read.

    Oh btw, in “State of the World” you said something about your new look. But your own blog still shows the old you 🙂 So, change the picture. Or shave 😀
    The new look is better.

  3. Why these days every CEO is resigning, first Mr. Narayan Murthi and then Mr. Steve Jobs?

    Are they planning to start budget cut off before one more cyclone of recessions (when america got his new credit rating)

    I wonder!

  4. Your attribute is really insightful. However, few companies are willing to do so. Most of them prefer spending endlessly on market study.
    Question: why it is more common in I.T than other industries?

  5. This post that you link to is my favorite of yours, ever. I think about it a lot.

    Also I need to set up a new Google Reader with my new email address–I’ve forgotten about ma.tt! Won’t make that mistake again. 😛

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