Letter from Steve Jobs (August 24, 2011), to the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

The last five words of this statement really shook the world. Although it was followed by actual earthquake in Virginia but of course that is not what am talking here. But more than the impact that world felt that day, it has been what Steve did to world in his life that I would call earthquake.

There are not people in world who have strings of offerings which change the way world works. What Steve has done is the destruction of the present and bringing in the future – sudden, abrupt and accompanied by high earnings growth. Result? He not only forged ahead of the company he competed for most of his life (Microsoft) but became CEO of most valuable public company in the world (albeit briefly, and then it came back to its rank as #2). The reason? He dared to dream and dared to believe in his dreams. Steve will long be equated with the letter “i” – which has come to mean internet, innovation, inspiration but most importantly individual.  He leaves a legacy as our generation’s Thomas Edison: both proud, determined inventors who would not rest until they sparked equal technological and cultural revolutions literally empowering people to reach higher and dream bigger.

Being individualistic has drawbacks too, not many remember that Apple was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Woznaik and Ronald Wayne. But just after 12 days later Ronald sold off his stake to the two Steves for $800. Had he kept his stake, his stake would be worth about $22Bn today. But instead, he has never owned a single Apple product to this day. If his interview to Fox Business is anything to go by, he surely had a difference of opinion and felt overshadowed by other two founders. Even Woznaik had differences with Jobs. Before starting Apple, a recent Buddhist convert Jobs was working with Atari (a video game manufacturer). Jobs was given the task of creating a circuit board for a game. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest or knowledge in circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. At the time, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had only given them $700 (instead of the actual $5000) and that Wozniak’s share was thus $350. Jobs after all was a salesman and a marketer.

But Steve wasn’t as clear as today and had his share of mistakes, just that he kept learning from them. His biography shows how he absorbed and learned from whatever he saw. After having attended calligraphy classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends’ rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple; Jobs later said, “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.” Coming from a publishing industry background (I started my career with Quark) I can really appreciate what he did for this industry. While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple in early 80s, some of his employees from that time had described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. An industry-wide sales slump towards the end of 1984 caused a deterioration in Jobs’s working relationship with Apple CEO John Sculley, who eventually fired Jobs. (!!!) Jobs later claimed that being fired from Apple what the best thing that could happen to him; “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in Mike Moritz’s The Little Kingdom, one of the few authorized biographies of Jobs; The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon.

You may love him, hate him but surely can not ignore him. The term Reality distortion field (RDF) was coined in 1981 by Apple employees to be Steve Jobs’ ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of superficial charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. RDF is said to distort an audience’s sense of proportion and scales of difficulties and makes them believe that the task at hand is possible. From 1978 to 1983, Apple’s compound growth rate was over 150% an year and a lot of it is attributed to Jobs.

As one of his ex employees put it, for now began the love affair we now have with technology – formerly cold, austere and beige and now sleek, reflective and affectionate. Thank you, Steve Jobs. For daring to dream, and bringing your vision to the world. For not being afraid to make changes, teaching us to Think Different.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” - Steve Jobs