Thanks For Everything, Steve

Apple has updated their home page to reflect the news that had seemed inevitable when Steve Jobs decided to step down as CEO of the company recently – the visionary has passed away at the age of 56. Along with being the face of Apple, he was instrumental in the foundation of Pixar Animation Studios.

Apple has placed the following statement on their website:

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and inspiring mentor. Steve leaves the company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

As both Apple and Pixar are close to my heart, seeing the passing of Steve Jobs is tough to contemplate. There are no words that can possibly summarize the effect that he had on the world. While he will be missed, his legacy will live on in Cupertino, Emeryville, and all across the world.

R.I.P. Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Enrique Guyzman

RIP Steve
Guest

As a former Pixar employee, I will say one of the highlights of working there was being able to interact with Steve on a semi-regular basis in meetings, company lunches, wandering the halls or in the screening room on occasion. I cannot imagine a world without Steve. Pixar would have never created these movies or the great charachters and stories, The technology woud have been sold to General Motors, to help build cars, or another company I can no longer remember to do high speed chip manufacturing validation. Really, it could have been the fate of the group if it werent for Steve throwing in almost all his money on this crazy idea to make movies. He forever changed the film industry and changed the way they are made and now watched.

Steve always instilled this idea in you that you wanted to ’do something great’ and we all worked hard to do it. We mostly we wanted to please him by doing cool technical things, as if he was the proud papa. I remember the day Steve told us he was going to be Apple iCEO, and later showed us the iMac, iPod and those were wonderful days as he was so proud of these products that he and the Apple team created. He was the proud papa showing this extended family his new ideas of what he could do, as he mostly stayed out of the movie making at Pixar as it wasnt something he fully understood. He once even tried to have us render some of the full res movies images on some of the g3 and g4 desktops even though we told him it couldnt work. He pestered the team until we tried. It didnt work out, due to technology issues (our datasets were waay too big) but it was worth a shot, and you couldnt say no to Steve He really wanted to make the movies completely on a Mac. Steve finally had to throw in the towel on this idea but its the only time I have ever seen him back down from one of his ideas as he never asked again.

I remember joking with him about shaving off his beard and the speeding tickets he got in his silver car to come see us up in the north bay and having a good laugh about it. He came off as a normal person in these times, and not the tech megastar he was. I learned things about marketing and business that I wont forget and he taught us all not to be afraid of failure in business. Its ok to take risks and fail, as its the things that succeed that you will be remembered for.

I wish Laurene and family the sincerest of condolences as he will be greatly missed by all.
Rest in Peace Steve.