Why do I like Steve Jobs

Recently a friend of mine asked whether I could write an epilogue to his book on Steve Jobs. I could think of only one reason why he wants me to do it. He wanted a different perspective. Because I was always a critic of Apple and its products and I didn’t have any particular liking for Steve Jobs. We used to have long debates on why being an non- Appler ( Apple product users)  is better than being Apple user and vice-versa. But in the last few months, before his resignation and subsequent demise, for some strange reason I had developed a liking for him. Today if you ask me, my respect for Steve Jobs is much more than most of the others entrepreneurs I admire.

Why I didn’t like Apple products

I never used Apple products not because they didn’t meet my quality requirements. As a product most of them are excellent. But except iPhone (actually for us in India that exception is not really valid) use of Apple products meant inability to use many applications out there. Also I don’t prefer to pay a premium for quality. My philosophy is, if your product has high quality good for you, because you can make more money by selling more. I won’t pay you more for that. Secretly I also believed that Apple product users used them to show that they are different from others and obviuosly I believed that I don’t need assistance from any product to prove myself. Another hypothesis I had was that Applers buy them at a premium because they are devotees of Steve Jobs himself. I know that some of these beliefs are absurd and others don’t make any sense.

Then why do I like Steve Jobs

The simplest answer will be ‘for his speech at Stanford’. But I will rather give you a complex answer. I like him for Pixar. I like him for his launch presentations. But I like him most for the fact that because of his company and its products today I can convert any of my obscure ideas to an application and try to sell it across the globe. Yes, I love him because directly or indirectly he is responsible for the App market. And his company made programming look cool than geeky, so now I have some very intelligent programmers ready to program for me.

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