Steve Jobs : A celebration of Life

Brief Bio:

Abandoned by his own parents, given up for adoption by foster parents, Jobs dropped out of school to follow his instincts. At age 21, he founded a powerful computer company called "Apple" in 1976 - eventually to be thrown out by his own board in 1985.

Shattered, he goes on to make another tech company called " NeXT" and a breakthrough animation company called " Pixar ". Fate has it, NeXT was taken over by Apple and Jobs returns as CEO of Apple in 1997. He stepped down as CEO in August 2011- in the way, making Apple the best tech company in the world, overall, ranking only behind Exxon, the oil giant.
Death:

He succumbed to cancer on 5th October 2011. His official biography is due on 24th October 2011. For Jobs, timing was crucial. I Guess he also timed his own death to perfection.

Whole world is in grief over his death - shocked and broken hearted. He took his life as a celebration. He took grief as a blessing to rewrite his DNA and karma. He believed in him self, when the whole world backed down on him. He celebrated everything, from grief to product launches.

Da Vinci Code:

Isn't it the perfect time for us to smile and be happy, knowing that we were fortunate enough to touch him through his products.? He brought the whole world to our fingertips. He touched millions with products that only he could imagine. He cracked the code of Da Vinci in 21st Century. 

Following is the code he cracked:

"Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice." 

"We've never worried about numbers. In the market place, Apple is trying to focus the spotlight on products, because products really make a difference. Ad campaigns are necessary for competition; IBM's ads are everywhere. But good PR educates people; that's all it is. You can't con people in this business. The products speak for themselves."

"That's been one of my mantras -- focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

"Picasso had a saying: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas...I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world."

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

"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. ... Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

 "My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people."

“Design is not just what it looks like. Design is how it works.”

“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.”

“You can’t just ask the customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” 

“It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”

>> And finally this is epic to me..

“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.”