Steve Jobs recently stepped down from his position as CEO of Apple, giving us a chance to reflect on the career of one of the most brilliant men of the computer revolution. Amid the glut of lists enumerating Jobs’ technological and business accomplishments, perhaps a reminder is in order of the humanity that informs Jobs’ work. He fought to make the inaccessible world of early computing more human. This mission continues, as seen in the intuitive interfaces of Apple machines (see iPad and iPhone) and the sensuous, minimalist aestheticism of Apple hardware design (see, again, iPad and iPhone). In danger of sounding like a Mac cultist, one gets the unfailing sense with Apple products that the best minds were marshaled to build the machine, always with the human (or “end-user,” in the jargon) in mind. And Jobs was the visionary bringing all this talent together. The man’s leadership will surely be missed.
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