zlacker

I'm surprised at how sad (devastated?) this news makes me. I use Apple products now, but I am not at all a fanboy of the company and for many years defended the other side. I really hate the proprietary nature of many of their products and only use them if there is nothing else equivalent in the "open" world. That I own a few Apple products speaks volumes in itself.

But Steve has been an inspiration for the past decade or so. Brilliant, passionate, energetic, and visionary in a way that no one else can ever be.

I don't believe any company in history has had the 10 year record of Apple in the 00's. He's a genius in technology and business... but you can't study him like any other company. Case studies on Apple don't work. Because other companies don't have Steve.

Sidenote: You know he had a profound impact when the news of his departure slows down HN this much. R.I.P.

>>pitdes+(OP)
Your comment really resonated with me. I'm no Apple fanatic, but I too am far more saddened by this news than I would have believed. I wonder what else he would have come up with if he lived another 20 years? I'm sad I'll never get to find out.

>>pitdes+(OP)
Same here, except for the surprise.

I've only ever owned two Apple products, but I am constantly inspired by Steve Jobs. No one else has had more of an impact on how I work as a designer and developer.

And somehow it wasn't just because he was able to create brilliant products. He had such an authentic character, that it somehow humanized the incredible work his company did and made it seem approachable and noble.

I will always be sad that I never got to meet him.

>>dos1+b2
Just wanted to add my voice to the chorus. I literally purchased my first Apple product a couple of months ago with great skepticism; I am a frequent critic of iTunes, and Apple products in general. I always viewed Steve Jobs as someone who I admired for his success and vision, but no more than any other notable figure in the field. But I feel a poignant melancholy at the news... when I saw someone's comment pointing out that the filename for the image on Apple.com was "t_hero.png", I found myself almost moved to tears.

Perhaps you really do never understand the gravity of losing something until you lose it.

>>pitdes+(OP)
Devastated. Forget hn it crashed twitter and slowed down Google plus. Think about donating 10% of your next hardware purchase to charity, possibly pancreatic cancer research. Think about what Steve Jobs has done for your startup (both technology wise and inspiration wise)

>>dholow+Sc
Do you know where and how to donate for cancer research?

>>johnx1+8d
Randy Pausch, another tremendous person who died too young of pancreatic cancer, had some recommendations: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

>>johnx1+8d
Most universities that do medicine and/or biotech have cancer research programmes. You could just drive down to the one nearest to you and have a look at what they're doing. They accept donations.

>>pitdes+Id
I was too reminded of Randy Pausch, specifically the last pages in his book "The Last Lecture." In my mind, there was an obvious parallel between the ending chapters going by much quicker than beginning ones, a lot shorter, more succinct, reading the words of a dying, and now-dead, man.

On one hand, we never experienced this with Steve, he never really gave an indication of slowing down (except for his resignation speech), and I never noticed the energy sucked out of Apple like I did from Randy's book. That's obviously because Steve made all the right moves in transitioning the company.

On the other hand, the empty-chair photo made me visualize how he was watching the presentation, and that in itself reminded me of the last pages of The Last Lecture. The fact he died the day after the presentation is Steve's version: The Last Keynote.

RIP Steve.

>>mcanto+B4
As much as I love what you said, I hate to break it to you that t_hero.png is actually named due to the fact it's the "Hero" graphic. This just refers to the fact that it's the main splash image of the page.[1]

You can see the hero image which was in use before the announcement of Steve's passing here[2] — look at the filename.

[1] http://www.med.unc.edu/webguide/policies/hero-graphics

[2] https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/home/images/animation/fallba...

>>tmgrhm+3M
Yeah, I read it in another comment thread shortly after making this one.

(In the industry, we call this "the art of self-trolling".)

I give you a sincere tip of my nerdhat for pursuit of accuracy even when it's kinda awkward.