Steve Jobs’ Legacy for Builders

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact—and that is: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. - Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was objectively cruel. Time and time again he demonstrated a capacity for brutal coldness that is hard to read about. He abandoned his daughter, casually discarded people he called friends, and had a staggering amount of self-obsession. 

Steve Jobs was objectively brilliant. He revolutionized personal computing three distinct times (the Apple 2, the Macintosh, and the iPhone). His lectures on product and design demonstrate a unique empathy toward people’s needs. He helped build a technology giant in Apple and a cultural giant in Pixar.     

Talent and terror. Cruelty and compassion. Genius and narcissism. To accept Jobs (and by extension every person who changed the world) you have to accept this duality. 

Still, when Make Something Wonderful was published on Tuesday, April 11th, I found myself accidentally slipping into fandom. The ebook is a compilation of emails, interviews, and lectures that Jobs gave. One part oral history, one part product design ethos lecture, the book was designed by Jony Ive’s creative agency LoveFrom and has a foreword from his widow Laurene Powell Jobs. It is exquisitely done and I devoured it all in one sitting. Perhaps unsurprisingly given who created it, the book does not delve at all into the complications of Job’s past. Instead, it revels only in the godlike powers of Apple’s cofounder.