"I don't want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers."
The Onion said: "Jobs will be remembered both for the life-changing products he created and for the fact that he was able to sit down, think clearly, and execute his ideas - attributes he shared with no other U.S. citizen."
Google executive Vic Gundotra related a story about a call from Jobs on the Sunday before the release of the iPhone 4: '"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve."I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"
'When I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I'll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.'
Walter Isaacson, Jobs' biographer wrote:
"Because I assumed that he was still in the middle of an oscillating career that had many more ups and downs left, I demurred. Not now, I said. Maybe in a decade or two, when you retire.
"But I later realized that he had called me just before he was going to be operated on for cancer for the first time. As I watched him battle that disease, with an awesome intensity combined with an astonishing emotional romanticism, I came to find him deeply compelling, and I realized how much his personality was ingrained in the products he created. His passions, demons, desires, artistry, devilry and obsession for control were integrally connected to his approach to business, so I decided to try to write his tale as a case study in creativity."
Steve Jobs at a Stanford University speech in 2005:
"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."
Emma Barnett:
"Before iTunes, music executives had failed to be convinced about the success of an online music market. But coupled with Apple's hugely-successful iPod - launched just two years earlier - Steve Jobs proved it was a market worth exploring.
"The product was an immediate success selling one million songs in its first week and by December it had sold 25 million songs. In 2010 iTune song downloads hit 10 billion."
Jobs said:
"Death is very likely the single best invention of life"
He also said:
"There's nothing that makes my day more than getting an e-mail from some random person who just bought an iPad over in the UK and tells me the story about how it's the coolest product they've ever brought home in their lives. That's what keeps me going. It's what kept me five years ago [when he was diagnosed with cancer], it's what kept me going 10 years ago when the doors were almost closed. And it's what will keep me going five years from now whatever happens." - AllThingsD Conference, 2010
Conrad Quilty-Harper:
"The abundance of iPhones, iPads and iPods today makes it easy to forget that Apple wasn't always popular. If you owned a Macintosh before 1998, you were either a creative-type with expensive specialist software, a school or a member of the devoted but small 'Cult of Mac'. Before Jobs returned in 1997, the company was in a desperate state.
"In 1996 Michael Dell, Apple's historical rival in the desktop computer space, famously said he would 'shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders' if he was in charge. Gil Amelio, Apple's CEO for 500 days between 1996 and 1997, was said to have told Jobs that 'Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water'. And Steve Jobs himself said "the company had a decade in which it took a nap" between his ousting and his return."
Jonathan Moss:
"Steve Jobs was born out of wedlock, put up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college, then changed the world. What's your excuse?"
Alexis Dormancy:
"I met Steve Jobs a couple of times in 2005, to talk about mobile phones. This was two years before the iPhone was launched. At the time it was rumoured it would be within three months. He wouldn’t launch the iPhone until it met his standards. The experience changed the way I look at businesses and leadership.
"What was it about Steve Jobs that meant he managed to transform four industries? The personal computer (Mac), music (iPod), mobile phones (iPhone) and computing as lifestyle (iPad) will never be the same again – and that's before we mention his creation of another $7bn company in Pixar, which has won more than 20 Academy Awards. If he’d achieved just one of those feats, he would be one of the greatest business people of this era. To have achieved all of them is more than just talent and luck – it’s doing things differently."
Jobs, another excerpt from the now famous Stanford speech:
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
Barack Obama:
"Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.
"He transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.
"The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented."
Daniel Ek:
"Thank you Steve. You were a true inspiration in so many parts of my life, both personal and professional. My hat off to our time's Da Vinci."
Jobs:
"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful … that's what matters to me."
Bob Iger:
"Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor. His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined. Steve was such an “original,” with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started. With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Laurene and his children during this difficult time."
Steven Spielberg:
“Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison. He put the world at our fingertips.”
RIchard Blackden:
"'Where will we find another one,' Steve Wozniak asked of the man he co-founded Apple with 35 years ago.
"Jobs is among a handful of people who have built companies that both reinvent industries and change the wider world. Here in the US Thomas Edison and Henry Ford are others. Wozniak added that no one could have predicted the success of Apple, which he and Jobs established in a garage in Los Altos, California, at a time of great political and economic uncertainty."
Others have made varied comments:
Andy Arry:
He created the ugliest overpriced elitist status symbols ever created. But to be fair to him, no-one has ever sold the Emperor's new clothes better.
Anonymous:
Rich ill man dies... And rich because he discovered that people are stupid enough to spend huge sums on technology if it looks pretty. iDon't care.
Steve Paul Jobs died, aged 56, on October 5, 2011.