I’m glad to have lived to see the way Steve Jobs changed our world.   By making personal computer technology powerful, simple and delightful, he inspired both the Macintosh and PC inventors to build better creative tools for everyone.  His work is driving a new way of life for my generation and beyond.  Like many people, I’m inspired by his model of focus and action.

I’m grateful to Steve for:

• Luring John Scully away from Pepsi with the question: “Do you want to make sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to change the world?“
• Taking the long view in pushing Larry Kenyon to make the original Macintosh boot up faster: “Well, let’s say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that’s probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you’ve saved a dozen lives. That’s really worth it, don’t you think?”
• For setting the example of trusting your heart, even when it takes you off the well-worn path
• For pushing through the crisis of being fired from the company he founded, only to give us Pixar
• For knowing when you need to change something, and then doing it.

Thank you, Steve, for telling Stanford’s graduates of 2005:

• “You’ve got to find what you love…  And the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  And if you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.  And don’t settle.  As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

Steve Jobs lost his life to cancer on October 5, 2011.  But he never lost his faith.  He didn’t settle for doing anything less than what he loved to do.  Thank you, Steve, for having the courage to follow your heart and intuition, and for providing a platform and the impulse for so many others to do the same.

Image credit: Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005, Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D1R-jKKp3NA#!