Real Business

My first serious job, in 1989, took me to a small TV production company in London's Notting Hill. The programmes were hardly award-winners, but the tools of the trade were memorable.

For there, in the cramped offices beneath a modelling agency, were these white cubes of possibility. The few computers I'd experienced up until then had been Amstrads, with their eery green digits blinking out at you.

The Apple Classic, however, was something quite different. For Steve Jobs, the man behind their creation - and so much since - had a vision of what computing could be. To Steve Jobs, PCs were not just a product to be flogged to as many people as possible; to Steve Jobs, these were liberating forces that could unleash the world's potential. Most computers at that time were sold out untidy outlets on the Tottenham Court Road, with white vans parked outside. The Apple, by contrast, had style.

What's so extraordinary about Steve Jobs is that, 22 years later, after two decades of transformational velocity in the technology sector, he was still out front; still the man setting the trends; still the big beast; still the trend-setter.

And, tragically, today, he's gone. His death, at only 56 after a long battle with cancer, was announced this morning.

Martin Leuw, former CEO of Iris Software and one of the UK's most successful technology entrepreneurs, said this: "No words can do him justice. He was a giant whose legacy is to have humanised technology to make it intuitive, sparking a
global revolution that has and will continue to enrich the lives of so
many people rhrough greater accessibility. A very sad day."

Only this week, the latest iphone was unveiled by his successor Tim Cook. The reaction was, predictably, muted. Without Steve Jobs' oratorical sweeps, some of the magic of the presentation had gone. "Modest" has been the most common description used of this week's iphone 4s.

Yet, in its way, the new release still bears all the Steve Jobs' hallmarks. While it retains the shape of the iphone 4, beneath the hood its power is awesome. With decisiveness, it moves Apple into the world of messaging.

Again and again, Steve Jobs reset the boundaries: the purity and intuitiveness of the early Apple interface; the joy of the experience; the still-breathtaking domination of the music industry, through itunes; the wondrousness of the iphone that ripped the heart from the old mobile phone sector; and the still-evolving story of the ipad, which - in my view - will embed the Apple finally into mainstream board-level behaviour.

I've met many of the world's great business leaders: Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson, Steve Ballmer. Sadly, I never had the opportunity to interview Steve Jobs. He was legendary as a quietly intimidating presence, his sheer visionary genius clearly overwhelming many interviewers.

No doubt he wasn't an easy man. But, then, the world is built by irrational people. 

Was Steve Jobs the greatest business leader of his generation? Does any other entrepreneur of the past 50 years stand comparison? Any personal experiences or encounters? Please post your comments below.