Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011

I’ve never looked back since I got my iPhone in Dec 2009. It’s ease of use and that sense of delight when it just got things right, is unsurpassed.  Apple affirmed for me again why I love the organic and the intuitively logical approach when it comes to art, science, technology and life.

Steve Jobs once said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” And he went on to give us – or at least the Apple fans – exactly what we never knew we wanted so badly.  Many people said they don’t need an iPad because they already have a notebook computer, and it’s hard to explain to them they are two different things.  But let them have an iPad, and they’ll see it.

Steve Jobs’ Apple devices carried their own logic and appeal with them. It has always been hard to explain to people why they are so popular – you only realize why when you use or own one for a time.

Similarly, it is excruciatingly difficult – but perhaps a pleasure of a challenge – to explain to people why Sibelius’ music is unique and ingenius. To explain the concept of organic development, or Sibelius’ particular brand of logic – where “The symphony must always be internally compelling and inevitable.” – is in many ways the same challenge as explaining Steve Jobs’ almost magical ability to make his devices logically usable and user-friendly, which to me is a different way of describing “internally compelling”.

When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.

– Steve Jobs, 2006

Amazingly, this is precisely what Sibelius kept doing with his music. He wrote something, and unsatisfied with it kept revising – kept peeling more layers off, kept excising extraneous notes, cutting off entire movements, until he arrived at nothing short of elegance.

Mr Jobs, thank you for all that you have done for technology on earth. As this tweet from Matt Galligan so “app”ly puts it:

RIP Steve Jobs. You touched an ugly world of technology and made it beautiful.

Wherever you have gone now,  Mr Jobs, I hope you have found what you never knew you wanted, and that you will forever be happy for it.

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