The occasion of Steve Jobs’ retirement as CEO of Apple has raised awareness of the power of one brilliant individual on modern society. He envisioned and gave life to the Macintosh, the IPod, the IPhone, the IPad and many other innovative products that forever changed the fields of computing, communications, entertainment, business, leisure and much more.
While all of these accomplishments have been important, Jobs should receive equal credit for his influence on modern creativity. His imagination, vision and drive to create the “insanely great” changed life on a planetary scale. Competitors were focused on building devices that were faster and cheaper. Conversely, Jobs was pre-occupied with next steps in advancing technology.
In 1979, Jobs and partner Steve Wozniak visited Xerox Parc, a remarkable corporate facility where scientists and engineers experimented with innovative new ideas and systems. It was during this visit that the Apple partners witnessed the first computer mouse, a bulky wired contraption that moved a cursor in any direction across a screen. Xerox executives also demonstrated an early “graphical interface system,” using of onscreen icons to open computer programs.
According to published reports of the visit, Jobs became excited and started jumping around the room shouting, “Why aren’t you doing anything with this? This is the greatest thing. It’s revolutionary.”
Xerox never recognized what it had discovered, but Jobs saw the possibilities immediately. He returned to his Apple headquarters and plunged his company into an intensive development project that created the revolutionary Macintosh computer. Not only did Jobs and his team design a sleeker, more easily navigated mouse for Macintosh. They also took graphical interfacing to the next level.
Macintosh debuted both of these innovations to the public and changed modern computing forever. Those of us old enough to remember computers that required typed operating commands understand the incredible advances introduced by the Macintosh. Once the exclusive province of businesses and hobbyists, the computer suddenly became truly personal.
Over the years, there has been a raging debate about whether Jobs “stole” the mouse and icon-based computing from Xerox. Regardless of where you stand on the question, all sides admit that Jobs saw possibilities that Xerox never understood. He also realized that user-friendly computers would extend beyond the business environment and become an important part of our everyday lives.
In the three decades that followed the Xerox Parc visit, Steve Jobs continued to envision technological innovations that would enrich our lives. That is the essence of his genius – imagining possibilities that others fail to see.
By David Stiefel
