Man I lived that movie. I have it and have been scared to watch it for all the old memories it might unleash.

You mean, like stealing the entire idea of Facebook? :)

The sad part is he delayed his surgery for nearly a year when he was first diagnosed. If he had followed his doctors' advice he would still be alive.

Good info - thanks. I'd been wondering how he'd survived so long with pancreatic cancer...

Not pissing on his grave.

I'm just trying to figure out why this guy deserves candlelit vigils and all of the news coverage.

This is the most dead on accurate statement in the entire thread.

Though as much as I don't like the man himself, I won't undersell how influential he was because of his ability to market his vision of technology to the masses...

Oh, I didn't think you were in the least. However, there is a fair amount of urine in the carpet padding of this thread.

Didn't Gates steal Mac's idea for Windows?

After Jobs stole the idea from Xerox.

Yeah - RIP to a guy I didn't know and don't really care about, who had butt loads of money, invented pretty cool things, and was very smart...

This is pretty much it.

The definition of creativity is the ability to hide your source. :)

It depends on if you're open to new technology or scared of it. But Steve Jobs created the market for technologies that a lot of people are so heavily reliant on.

And he made the U.S. a much better place. That's for sure. Before Jobs, the U.S. was getting our ass handed to us in technology. Sony, Aiwa, Panasonic, etc... made our stereos. Our phones were 2-3 years behind the ones sold in Asia. Now they use our mp3 players and our phones, not the other way around.

In the global economy, the U.S. doesn't have a whole lot to be proud of. That's why losing a guy like Jobs hurts real bad. I'm not convinced that Apple can continue to be the force they were without him.

You have clearly not watched The Social Network.

I think you're short-selling how much of a business genius it was. He wasn't successful because he took other people's products and wrapped his Apple brand around it. He had a unique gift for bringing a product to critical mass in a split-second.

The iPod wasn't just a pretty version of an mp3 player. Jobs battled a music industry that was extremely resistant to using mp3s because they viewed them as largely pirated media, and they were too old-fashioned to recognize that this is what consumers wanted. He created a market for mp3s that was way too big to ignore and that was the tipping point for the music industry to finally wake up to the idea that music had to be sold on a different platform. The iPhone wasn't just a phone that could do smart stuff. It required coordination of a lot of external software developers who could rapidly create enough apps to make the iPhone cool to use. If you don't believe that, take a look at how Blackberry screwed the pooch with RIM.

What I disagree with is I think you're presupposing that had Jobs not been around, these innovations would have hit the market anyway. Maybe so, but it would have taken a really long time. The product life cycle isn't smooth. Most revolutionary technologies hit what's called a life cycle chasm and never make it across. And until you cross that chasm, the technology runs into a ton of obstacles.