It's sad to know Steve Jobs' passed away when I started working in office in the morning. It made me feel empty and re-think about life and death.
"The best invention is death" - Steve Job's best words I never forget and put in my mind deeply. Here i'd like to express my deep condolences to Steve's family and the best team in Apple. Steve Jobs, brings us many innovation products and services to revolutionize our way of living and changing our habit. I'm pleased to present the "10 reasons to make Steve Job's a Legend" to let someone not familiar with Steve to understand why Legend is a Legend. Let's go through the contribution from Steve and may he rest in peace.
1. iPhone
3 Big ideas or products are putting together. iPod, Mobile, Internet Device, which turns out to be "iPhone".
iPhone, iPhone3G, iPhone3Gs, iPhone4, iPhone4s
Before the launched of iPhone, there was no such mobile in the market to make user-friendly, app-rich, internet connected mobile phone. To review the history of Smartphone development, we have to know the past well-known manufacturers.
Palm was a briliant PDA manufacturer which offered nice PDA OS and handware. It provided a easy-to-use and natural Graffiti pad to write your alphabetic into the PDA. With it's rich experience in PDA, it evolved into a Smartphone based on the PalmOS. Unfortunately, since it's slow in development and propreitory in the OS and hardward. It started to lose it's market shared until aquired by HP, and finally abandoned by HP with the final product WebOS phone & tablet.
Then, Windows Mobile, Symbian, they were some well-known mobile platform before but still far away from user-friendly and letting people enjoy the mobile experience. Until iPhone was launched in 2007, the story was changed dramatically and turned out to be user-centric mobile internet device age.
Here is the list of affected industries by iPhone.
Smartphone - Competitors like HTC, Samsung, LG, Android, Windows Phone, they are inspired and influenced by iPhone and came up with iPhone-Like user-interface and appstore. Rare people realize that users of Android or iPhone-like devices are indeed sharing the iPhone's experience.
Apps - It encourages Apps development based on a well-developed platform and a widely distributed channel for selling your apps. Many business are starting to have it's own app and having it's mobile app development over different platforms, especially in iPhone.
Mobile Telco - Due to iPhone's publicly acceptance in the society and world, it's insanely sales even drives the Mobile Telco to offer reasonable data usage plan for public. People love to get online anywhere to do anything like sitting in front of your desktop. It dramatically changes our way of doing things, shorten the boundaries between people, friends, colleagues and your family. Per HK's experience, all mobile Telco enjoys the explosion of the data usage by iPhone and iPhone-like smartphone. It really changes and saves the ecology of the mobile telco industry.
Affected industry: Smartphone, Apps, online marketing, Mobile Telco
2. iPad
Astonishing 3rd devices between Smartphone and Laptop. User-friendly, nice for reading books, gaming, web browsing. Occupy for almost 90% market share.
iPad even affects the sale of netbooks, notebooks and even desktop. The reason is simply due to iPad can easily do what people wants for web browsing, music and gaming, less maintenance over complexity of desktop. When you want it, just use it anyway.
Affected industry: Notebook
3. iPod
A great product to store your media content, playback in a smooth environment. Handheld in size. Long battery life. Beats Sony Walkman series devices and lead the market from physical CD and into digital age. iPod nano & shuffle even pushes to the physical limit with only 20 something grams. Since it is very competitive in price and functionality, many competitors quit the market finally. One of the best example is Zune, Microsoft's music player, which quit the market officially recently.
Affected Industry: Music
4. Macbook Air
It offers a great experience to users, letting them enjoy the slim, sleek, super fast, long lasting battery, big screen, light weight notebook for your daily use. It's weight is similar to iPad but still has the same power of macbook, and it is somehow faster than the original macbook per SSD speed in booting up the machine, starting the application, opening the files, playing the media files, songs, video etc. Many competitor are trying the imitate the similar design as macbook air, however, they still can't beat macbook air in terms of price, performance, design, popularity. It's the tread of the next generation of notebook.
Affected Industry: Notebook, Desktop
5. iMac
it's a All-in-One Mac. Starting in 90s, it designed with a built-in CRT of different color, surely a minimalist design. 1 piece of screen and desktop, 1 mouse and 1 keyword can let you starting the machines instantly. No complicated PC configuration.
Later on, it offered an even slim and sleek LCD built-in with the mac machine, very large 20s inches screen, superb performance. People is no longer working with a boring PC. HP, Samsung, Lenovo launches it's all-in-one design PC but attract a lot less users due to lack of popularity.
Affected Industry: Desktop
6. iTunes
With the strong sales of iPod, iPhone & iPad, iTunes is the strongest backbone to provide the apple devices endless media contents, songs, videos, podcast. It encourages people to buy media content online, give up the illegal copies over the internet. It brings back the audience to store to buy music and contents and to respect the copyright owners. It is one of the famous and successful media content provider. It also provides many free media contents, like podcast, iTunesU, sharing the precious public and university media over the internet and the mobile devices. You can enjoy them anywhere in the world with a few clicks per your iTunes account. It simplifies the purchase flow and user experience. It proves the concept of online media store works.
Affected Industry: Music, Movie, TV, Books
7. Appstore
Before the age of Appstore, Smartphone users can only download mobile apps into the mobile through the messy desktop/notebook. That means you have to use a 3rd machine to act as a medium to transfer the apps to your devices. Until the launch of Appstore in iPhone, people is starting to understand the old way of using mobile apps was a past tense. We can start to enjoy the new apps anywhere as long as you have a working WIFI or 3G network. Only 2 to 3 clicks could give your iPhone something new, give your devices new functions, interesting camera, game, drawing app etc. Still not enough?
Industry: Apps, Marketing, Gaming, Education, Publishers, software
8. Apple
You may not know that Apple nearly went to bankruptcy in 90s. With Steve Jobs' vision and leadership, Apple was back to life and launched many newly design and breakthrough products. Apple is a world-wide respected corporation with a series of simple and powerful products to attract the crowd to enjoy the new ideas. Steve Jobs did a marvelous job to bring back Apple to life.
Industry: Hi-Tech Corporation
9. Think Different
Design is not only about look, but how it works.
True. Steve Jobs is the first person who truly understands the meaning of Design. Because it's him to bring technology products from something mystery to our daily life. He lets all understand that technology can be user-friendly, approachable for everyone, your mum and dad, sisters and brothers, friends, colleagues. He takes action to prove "Think Different" can make money, meanwhile, can give contribution to the society.
Industry: Design
10. Entrepreneurial Spirit
Starting a new corporation is a tough business. It's not a matter of money but courage and vision. Steve Jobs does his best in growing his lovely Apple. Finally brings Apple to a history-high stock price, a nearly biggest corporation in the world.
Thanks Steve to bring us so many things. We all miss you!
R.I.P.
Jack
