Good grief: why techies shed tears for Steve Jobs

You could say the Apple founder just made gadgets, but that would ignore the creative vision of the world's only tech auteur, whose fans are loyal to the quick, writes DAVIN O'DWYER

THE INEVITABLE farewell, when it came on Wednesday evening, was typically minimalist and well-crafted: a concise letter from Steve Jobs announcing that he was resigning as chief executive of Apple, the company he cofounded in 1976, and becoming chairman of the board.

“I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”

Given his well-documented health problems in recent years – pancreatic cancer in 2004 and a liver transplant in 2009 have left him gaunt and fragile – the move seemed to confirm many people’s worst fears.

As Jobs is one of the most successful and innovative business leaders in history, his resignation was always going to generate oceans of online chatter and command acres of newsprint, but what was so remarkable about the reaction was its emotional tenor. As a lifelong Apple user, I found myself struck with a sense of fleeting melancholy, and I wasn’t alone: reactions on Twitter ran the gamut from sad to cynical, but the number of people who professed to have cried about Jobs’s resignation was extraordinary, an unprecedented collective expression of pre-emptive grief for someone who is still alive.

This sentiment was not limited to brief reactions on Twitter. The tech writer Om Malik posted an emotional essay: “It is incredibly hard for me to write right now,” he explained. “To me, like many of you, it is an incredibly emotional moment.”

Felix Salmon, a Reuters financial blogger, wrote: “I’ve got a bit of a tear in my eye.”

Of course, the legend of Jobs paints him as a messianic visionary with a quasi-religious following of Apple users. Seeing him forced to step down from his pulpit because of ill health was bound to prompt an extreme reaction, but the conspicuously mournful tone must have been astonishing to anyone who doesn’t follow the tech or business news: he’s just changing role, after all.

But many business figures inspire admiration, none inspire the same devotion as Jobs.

Warren Buffett is perhaps the next most beloved, but he has a sage-like, grandfatherly reputation. Bill Gates could conceivably leave a more enduring legacy than Jobs if his ambitious plans for the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation succeed, but even if he were to singlehandedly cure malaria, he would unlikely be mourned in such a fashion.

The cult-like symptoms of the Apple fan have been analysed, and mocked, at great length, but while it’s easy to deride the extreme devotion people have to Apple, and to Jobs, it’s not so easy to understand what fuels it. The collective sadness probably has a tinge of selfishness: the notion that we can no longer look forward to a stream of products of Jobsian genius is an unhappy one.

There is also a tribal element to it: not so long ago, when Macs were as rare as hen’s teeth, being a Mac user was a statement of identity and the sense of belonging to an enlightened community was quite real. The ubiquity of iPhones and the growing prevalence of iPads is a sort of vindication for early adopters of Apple products, proof that, given time, quality and good taste can win out over mediocrity and lazy design.

That sense of identity is perhaps akin to that felt by sports fans: I wager Manchester United devotees will be feeling a similar type of anguish when another singular, difficult genius, Alex Ferguson, finally steps down after years guiding his team to unprecedented success.

But perhaps the most relevant clue to the unique relationship Apple fans have with Jobs is in his description of the company’s core philosophy: “We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.” From this perspective, it’s possible to see Jobs as the world’s only tech auteur: as suggested a few years ago by the blogger John Gruber, a creative artist who works in the medium of technology rather than cinema. Jobs is like a film director, marshalling a talented team in pursuit of his creative vision.

Seen in this light, the devotion to Jobs is less an irrational attachment to a successful businessman and more the emotional affiliation of a loyal audience to a visionary artist. And just as the untimely passing of an actor or rock star can prompt viscerally emotional responses from fans, so Jobs’s resignation has elicited a surprising sense of grief.

Of course, in the grand scheme, although we get to interact with the fruits of his imagination every day, he just made gadgets, and nobody could puncture the inflated importance of our relationship with technology as elegantly as Jobs himself. In an interview with Wired magazine 15 years ago, Jobs offered a little perspective: “We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.”