Steve Jobs is dead. He was one of the most successful business man in the world, had amazing presentation skills (have a look at his keynotes, if you don’t believe me) and influenced the life of many with his computers, iPod, iPhone and iPad.
I understand that even people who didn’t know him personally can feel affected (like people did when Princess Diana died). But I am not sure to share the massive hysteria, tears, candles and other “iGod is dead”. I watched few months ago his speech at Stanford University and like it. It was inspiring but with his death, it took another dimension.
We are frequently told to study hard to have a good job. To work hard to have a good career. To find a spouse to have children with. And then what? We can die with the satisfaction of having children and money? Maybe Steve Jobs’s message is to focus on the satisfaction and pleasure of building, rather than on the pleasure of admiring what we built. Focusing on the journey rather than on the final destination.
Or maybe we want to believe he was a bright wise man, when he was just an amazing seller. Maybe …
September 2011: A cow about to be slaughtered in Abu Shouk IDP camp, North Darfur.[Click on the picture to enlarge it].
Olivier Chassot 
The mass hysteria following Steve Jobs’ dead was somewhat a surprise to me. I must have underestimated to which extent our society has been affected by the iphone and (to a lesser extent) by the ipod and the ipad, and how much people associated these products with Jobs’ figure. Obviously, if these products never existed, people would have reacted way differently, and mourning would have been relegated to computer geeks, instead of being the society-wide phenomenon we are witnessing right now.
From a perspective of someone who stopped using apple products in the 90’s, it is kind of sad that Steve Jobs will be remembered for the various i-products: While their widespread adoption was the result of one the most clever marketing campaigns in history and of an amazing degree of vision, Apple is certainly not the inventor of smartphones, mp3 players, or tablets.
Rather, I see Steve Jobs’ pivotal role in the invention of the Apple II, the first Mac, reinventing Pixar to what it is right now, and also for creating NeXTSTEP (even though nobody remembers the latter, people tend to forget its impact on modern OS design). Too bad these technological milestones played a secondary role in these last days.