After ten years, Jobs returned to everyone's vision.
People are expressing remembrance in various ways. Former colleagues talk about the past of working with Jobs, memories shine; today's business leaders have returned to ten years ago, recalling the moment when the world was changed and ignited; Apple's official website released a video of less than three minutes on the evening of October 5, using countless real clips of Jobs himself to string together the life of the Apple founder; the domestic second-hand trading platform turned around, and even made an H5, so that everyone can call Jobs. There are many more ordinary people, in various ways, picking up their own seeds that have been hit by Jobs.
This year marks the tenth year of Steve Jobs' death. We called out readers and talked about the imprint Jobs had left on them. 125 people gave the answer.
At some point in their lives, they were all touched by a certain charm slice of Jobs, and then some kind of change occurred. Reader @ You Cat Cat Tells us that when Jobs died, she didn't know why she was crying, but I would think about what impact I had on the world, to feel the more constant beauty, in this era of rapid change.
Reader @ Lixin tells a moving story. He is 53 years old, and after experiencing a disease that has faced death, he decided to find another possibility of life. One of Jobs' speeches at Stanford inspired him. Under the question of what you want to talk to Joe if you have the opportunity to call Joe, he wrote: Joe Helper, you said that you have to change the world by living, and you really did it. I can't do it, but I'll try to change myself.
When we miss Jobs, what are we missing? When a man leaves, his life will sow grass seeds in the hearts of those who miss him. Nostalgia is not about following, but growing into your own garden. As @Frank Ma writes, Jobs was my lifelong idol and what I wanted to be, but I don't want to be the second Jobs, I want to be the first "myself."
Text | Lin Nian
Edit | Lu Ying
Let go and do the right thing
The success of Apple's ecology has given birth to countless iOS developers who have taken this industry, and Zhu Ting is one of them.
She became a software development major in 2009. For them, whether to work on Android or iOS after graduation was never too difficult to choose between the two sides — the vast majority of them would have chosen the more mainstream Android system at the time.
Like other freshmen, Zhu Ting did not hesitate. Until her sophomore year, she tried out the senior's Mac computer once, the white slim body, the metallic texture, you will feel, as if the design of electronic products, can also be like this.
After that, she became the first of her classmates to use the iPhone 4. The day she got the courier, she took her phone to the classroom. In that class, the iPhone 4 was spread throughout the classroom, and everyone touched it.
The iPhone 4 was also the last new phone released by Jobs himself, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011, and the iPhone 4s released that year became his legacy.
Ten years have passed. Jobs's successor, Cook, took over, and today Apple is the most profitable mobile phone company and one of the most expensive companies in the world today. But worries and doubts still surround Cook: If it were Jobs, he would have... If it were Jobs, he wouldn't... But Cook always remembered the advice Jobs gave him: No matter what difficulties you encounter, don't think about what Jobs will do, and let go and do the right thing.
After graduation, Zhu Ting became a minority among her classmates. She chose to become an iOS developer, because she thought it should be interesting to do development on such a product.
Apple welcomes creative young people. It will provide a lot of advanced technical support, and when AR first emerged, Apple's open technology platform was available for developers to try out some new products. The annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is the Spring Festival Gala for R&D personnel. Similar support opens the boundaries of developers like Zhu Ting, and sometimes I think wildly, if I make an app, I will add what makes these more fun and more attractive, she has tried to make a 3D small plane, load it on the phone, you can manipulate its nose at will.
Apple's encouragement of creativity has more profoundly affected Zhu Ting's career. In the third year of working as an iOS developer, Zhu Ting resigned due to not adapting to the company's management system and was deeply skeptical about whether she was suitable for research and development.
She began to tire of writing code and the complex and draining relationships. But even at her lowest level, she can't help but pay attention to what technologies Apple has updated and wonder what kind of products these technologies can develop.
This kind of attention and curiosity, which still flashes, became a little light when Zhu Ting sank in the dark night. She caught this light and regained the joy of being a developer.
Zhu Ting, who returned to work, changed, and she began to try to communicate with the company's operations and product managers, tell them the latest technology, and put forward her own suggestions for products. She thought of Jobs, who many people think that programmers can just let their programs have no loopholes, like tools to implement other people's ideas. But you will feel in Jobs that I can have my own opinion and persistence, and I can do what I feel is right.
The black top and blue jeans are Zhu Ting's deepest impression of Jobs. In daily life, Zhu Ting is also a simple dress. The simple life allowed her to project more energy and enthusiasm into programming. The iPhone 4 is still housed in Zhu Ting's home. A water soaking accident and a bump caused it to malfunction and could no longer turn on the machine. But Zhu Ting was reluctant to throw it away, and it commemorated a small but most important node in Zhu Ting's career.
In 2010, Jobs demonstrated the iPhone 4's video calling capabilities at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference
Do you want to sell sugar water for a lifetime or change the world with me?
In 1995, Zheng Daming, who had been in the advertising industry for three years, saw the Apple computer called Macintosh at the company.
When he pressed the power button for the first time and started using the white desktop, he was shocked. Before that, the computers he touched were equipped with DOS systems, and it took a long time for users to type out the code on the black screen and then wait for it to slowly transform into an image and draw a circle.
But Unlike Macintosh, Apple had already begun to use graphical interfaces, and Zheng Daming became one of the first advertisers in China to use Apple computers to make images.
Zheng Daming studied industrial design, a major that combines engineering and aesthetics. But in 1992, just after graduating from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, he discovered a frustrating reality: Industrial design was too far ahead of the curve for the country — when China was still in the early days of reform and opening up, and mature products from the world market were pouring into the land, and it seemed that all industries were imitating it.
But after touching the Macintosh, Zheng Daming became interested in Apple. He rummaged through Apple's ads over the years, and one of them, called "1984," hit him completely—in a dimly lit room, a group of people ran in and sat down, looking at the big screen in front of them with a wooden expression, listening to the voice on the screen and saying, what is a PC (personal computer). Suddenly, a girl in a white shirt and red pants rushed in and threw her hammer at the screen, eager to crush it all. Apple echoed the real world of 1984 with this advertisement, computer giant IBM almost occupied the entire US PC market, Apple was dissatisfied with the status quo, to be an innovator.
The height of this advertisement has gone beyond the product itself, and it is to tell its own story from the perspective of the history of human development in the world. This is one of Jobs's great places, not talking about "bringing goods", not talking about sales. His mission is different, he is not satisfied with the world, he wants to change the world. Zheng Daming said.
In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh Computer Image Source Visual China
Because of an advertisement, he rekindled his determination to create and innovate. Zheng Daming became a complete jobs fan, looking for Jobs's voice from all over the place. And one of the details of Apple that impressed him the most was that in March 1983, Jobs asked Sculley, the president of Pepsi: Do you want to sell sugar water for a lifetime or change the world with me?
Since you want to change the world, nothing is impossible. Zheng Daming became an advertiser and was a controversial advertiser in the industry.
In 2014 and 2019, Zheng Daming established Z+ Outside Creative and Outside Marketing Consulting, respectively. He came up with many bold ideas, made a song out of the sound of 100 pulsars, and drove the car to a 440-meter-high tarmac, and at first, the company's executive department often shook his head with him: this is too difficult, no one has done it, it is impossible, it is general. Zheng Daming told them: Your task is to make the impossible possible, and innovation is like this. Finally, the executive department has to dig three feet into the ground to find a solution.
To say no to the impossible is also the philosophy that Jobs upheld in executing his ideas, the hammer of 1984, smashing the established reality that seems impossible to subvert.
On the tenth anniversary of Jobs's death, Zheng Daming and the team that transferred the second-hand trading platform had a bold idea to call Joe's boss. In this H5, users can choose a mobile phone, call the phone in San Francisco, and chat with Jobs about today's world.
Execution is hard. From restoring Jobs's voice to restoring Jobs's way of thinking and evaluating things, every step is difficult. Zheng Daming and the team sorted out almost all the public information about Jobs, and then transformed them into a three-dimensional person little by little.
The night the original version of H5 came out, Jobs's voice rang on Zheng Daming's phone: Hey, This is Steve. One of the girls on the team, when she heard Jobs's voice, instantly cried. Zheng Daming, who witnessed this scene, was shocked on the spot.
Although compared to Jobs, Zheng Daming always felt that he was still at the bottom. Our industry, just on the earth with imagination to do a little thing, did not let humans immigrate to Mars, did not change the world, nothing remarkable, but he knows that he is still climbing, the goal of climbing is not to make himself a Jobs, but by colliding with a little bit of innovative stars, so that the Chinese advertising industry can do a little better.
Instead of subtracting, you do division
After the Mac computer product line gradually stabilized, Jobs extended his tentacles to portable players. In the 1990s, there were already mature MP3 players on the market. But Jobs thought they were all bad, unsightly, not easy to use, and he wanted to make a brand new one.
In October 2001, the iPod was born. It looked like a small, sleek white box the size of a playing card, with no battery cover, no power switch, and no screws. In terms of aesthetics, Jobs took it to the extreme.
I think it's beauty. Huang Wei recalled how the iPod felt in the palm of his hand.
At that time, Chinese technology was taking off with the pulse of the world, and each brand was showing off its most cutting-edge technology and rich functions. With that comes redundancy. In a product, 90% of the functions may be sunk under the iceberg and not be known by the user. But you get an Apple product, and you know it's making your choices. It's not about showing off how capable you are, it's about really finding ways to fit into your life. Huang Wei said.
Like many product managers, the surprise that Apple products brought to Huang Wei influenced many of his later choices to some extent. After graduating from college, he went to General Electric as a clerk, and he noticed that China's Internet was budding, new, young, and full of vitality, and the first generation of domestic Internet people were also building a new world.
The vision of changing the world, the pursuit of products that are most complex and simple, the pursuit of the ultimate user experience, and finally the need to speak with products - for countless product managers, these are like martial arts secrets waiting for cultivation and challenges.
Huang Wei worked as a product manager for Baidu Maps. In 2007, he ported Jobs's focus on hardware products to Internet products, and Jobs's insight into users was ahead of its time, just like Huang Wei's first feeling of getting the iPod: a good product is to help users make choices.
Huang Wei remembers a story. Jobs gave an interview in the final stages of his life. Apple is already as big as a whale, and Microsoft and Google are its competitors. In 2010, Apple banned the use of flash-related technologies on all devices, reporters kept asking Jobs questions about business competition, initially, Jobs patiently answered, and then gradually showed impatience: This has nothing to do with competition, we are doing a 2C consumer goods company, if the product is good enough, users will spend money to buy, we can continue to produce better products. We will not get a penny from competitors, but we should pay more attention to the user's demands, this is our correct philosophy of doing things, is everything really so difficult to understand?
In the years that followed, these words echoed repeatedly in Huang Wei's heart. After leaving Baidu, he entered 58.com, and later spun off the second-hand channel of 58.com and created a second-hand trading platform. The outside world expressed puzzlement, in this industry full of difficulties and challenges, why should we continue to do second-hand?
In Huang Wei's view, second-hand platforms have always been misunderstood, and in the public's impression, they are dirty and messy, they are pits and deceptions, and they are full of distrust. Huang Wei also felt confused at first, and then he stood in the user's point of view to think, he wanted to divide the industry: after the transfer was launched, he first promoted the quality inspection of the machine in the second-hand industry, and the transfer party was responsible for checking the quality of the mobile phone, improving the quality of the second-hand goods and the trust between users.
Huang Wei also made a bold decision, and the transfer was also the first company to launch a seven-day no-reason return in the second-hand industry, with a warranty of up to 365 days, as Jobs said, we are still spending such time, but we feel that this matter is correct. We believe that the cycle of second-hand will have a sudden change one day. He said. If he had the opportunity to give Joe a call, he might tell Jobs that he was following the philosophy of doing things right.
Image source Visual China
Remember that you are about to die
At the age of 48, during a physical examination, Jobs found a shadow hanging over his pancreas. The shadow slowly widened, forcing him to surgically address it in 2003. At the time, the world believed that Jobs had taken back an opportunity from the disease to continue to develop Apple. In the summer of 2005, Jobs was invited to speak at Stanford University. In the 15-minute speech, Jobs told three life stories and his perception and understanding of life.
Li Xin remembers that more than a decade ago, he read the speech in a digest magazine. In his early 40s that year, he had been a civil servant for decades, going to work in the unit step by step every day, and his life was like boiling water, and he had no taste.
One day in 2016, because of heart problems, he was pulled to the hospital by ambulance, and his death was close at hand. He lay on the operating table, looking at the overhead lamp, and suddenly recalled the exposition of illness and death in Jobs's speech, remembering that you are about to die. He counted his age, and in two years, he would be 50 years old, his physical functions were changing rapidly, aging was chasing him, and I suddenly felt like I had to do something.
On his 50th birthday, his family celebrated Li Xin. When he blew out the candles, he shared one wish with the children who were about to enter the graduate school, and the other wish was that he had to make some changes.
Since graduating from college, Lixin has followed an established channel, buried my head in the past few years, and it feels as if my life has gone on like this, from section officer, deputy section chief, section chief, section chief, and then to retirement, pulling down. He thought that he used to like to write something, and when he was a child, he loved to read magazines such as "Harvest" and "October", always thinking that maybe one day he could also publish articles on them.
After his 50th birthday, Li Xin began his own experiment, and he wanted to live like he was about to die.
Every night, at night, he was at his desk, turning on the lamp and creating his own story. He wrote his first novel, which was about a hazy love affair. He submitted articles to many magazines in exchange for many rejection letters. He kept writing, and three years later he finally published two novels in the journal.
In the summer of 2018, he began to learn breaststroke again. Among a group of children, he was the oldest learner in his class. It took three months for Li Xincai to finally learn the complete movements, swimming from one end of the pool to the other. He insisted on swimming for three full years.
In addition, Lixin also has an idea that has been lingering in his mind for a long time: learning an instrument. The guitar is too heavy, and the threshold for other instruments is too high. He bought a 24-hole polyphonic harmonica and practiced with an online instructional video. When he was older, he couldn't remember the syllables, so he took a small white note and pasted it on the piano, this one was do, this one was re. Intermittently, he was able to play four tunes.
He had been reading the speech over and over again, and he could still recite the most touching thing about Jobs's speech: reminding himself that death was the best way I knew, to avoid the trap of worrying about losing something. You are naked, and there is no reason not to obey your wishes.
Lixin did not understand the distant terms of technology, the Internet, and products, but Jobs's words still inspired him in time at that juncture. Under our question about what you would like to talk to Joe if you had the opportunity to call Joe, he wrote: Joe Helper, you said that you have to change the world by living, and you really did it. I can't do it, but I'll try to change myself.
But Jobs's story ended with illness. Pancreatic cancer once again pounced on Jobs, who was knocked down again. In the last two years of his life, he invited a journalist to write a biography of him. In fact, for 25 years, Jobs was resistant to the media and journalists, and he hated that his private life was exposed. But this time was different, and he wanted his children to understand in his account what kind of father he was.
The Biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson is the only official biography that Jobs acknowledges. It is precisely because Jobs wrapped his private life tightly that people are more curious about his story. The Chinese Simplified version of the biography, published on October 24, 2011, features the slogan: Let's remember that jobs in this world came and changed.
Cakes, who were in the sixth grade of elementary school at the time, noticed that various book stalls were selling books. On a boring summer vacation, she finished reading it. Reading the story of Jobs dropping out of school and founding Apple in the garage, Pie thought that there were still people living like this in the world.
Cake's life would have been as smooth as her parents had planned for her, like a river that didn't flow, but Cake later almost stubbornly chose to major in programming and wanted to pursue a career in game development after graduation. Jobs may never have thought that even after his death, he was still quietly influencing the hearts of many people.
These influences are like thousands of grass seeds, sowing in the hearts of many ordinary people. Whether it is Zhu Ting, Zheng Daming, Huang Wei, or Cake and Lixin, they are more or less growing their own gardens.
For Jobs's memorials, they are more curious about what He would think of the world if he were alive today. A new era has begun, the world has a fusion and open side, there are also moments of fragmentation and opposition, what role can technology play?
In honor of Steve Jobs, the second-hand trading platform turned around and made an interesting attempt at outside creativity. They carefully studied the biography of Jobs, Jobs's speeches and video conferences, and collected the original texts of all the speeches. Using this as a raw material, repeated testing and modification, and finally simulating a real Jobs, through an H5 link, users can ask Jobs questions like a phone call, listen to Jobs talk about his views on current issues, including his views on iPhone 13, how to look at the current Internet, etc., he will even express curiosity about your city. Click on the link to feel the swipe unlock that came with earlier versions of the used iPhone.
When the phone was connected, Joe's helper did not seem to leave, he was still alive. The impact he has had on the world, the thinking he has brought to people, has not stopped because of death. And the seeds he sowed in people's hearts made people grow more brilliant flowers of life in the world.
(Intern Rao Tongyu also contributed to this article.) ）