Goodbye, Steve

On Wednesday, the world said goodbye to Steve Jobs. The co-founder of Apple, the man who returned to save the company, and the most celebrated chief executive of his generation died at fifty-six, at home in Palo Alto, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The tributes began within minutes and did not stop: from presidents, from rivals, from the customers who lined up at Apple Stores to leave flowers and notes. Apple had become the most valuable company in the world only months before, and now it faced the future without its founder. This is the October 2011 story, and the story is the lesson: ...

Goodbye, Steve is the subject of this article: the life that built Apple, the death that ended an era, and the question that a company faces when its founder is gone. The legacy is the anchor, the tributes are the chorus, and the lesson is about how a great company outlives its greatest leader.

1. The Man

He had stepped down as chief executive on August 24, handing the role to Tim Cook, and he had stayed on as chairman, a title that now felt like a farewell. The announcement of his death on Wednesday evening came with the same minimalism he had brought to everything else: a short statement from Apple, no details, no drama. The world filled in the rest, and the world had a lot to say. He was called a genius, a tyrant, a visionary, a perfectionist, and each of those words was true in the way that great men are rarely simple.

The tributes came from everywhere, and they came quickly. The president of the United States issued a statement calling him one of the greatest American innovators. The leaders of the companies he had beaten in the marketplace, from Microsoft to Google, offered their respects, and the words sounded sincere even when the history was complicated. At Apple Stores around the world, customers left flowers, candles, and notes, and the stores became shrines for a brand that had taught people to love machines. The scale of the mourning was unusual, because the mourning was for a businessman, and businessmen are not usually mourned like artists.

2. The Day Before

The timing was brutal. On Tuesday, Apple had announced the iPhone 4S, the successor to the most successful product in the company's history, and the event had drawn the usual crowds, the usual hype, and the usual disappointment that the phone was not called the iPhone 5. Jobs did not appear on that stage. He had been visibly ill, and his absence had been the subject of endless speculation. The next day, the speculation ended. The company announced that its founder had died, and the iPhone 4S, announced to sighs, suddenly became a memorial. The product was the same. The context had changed everything.

The press noted the cruel symmetry. Jobs had always controlled his message, and his last public appearances had been choreographed with care: the iPad launch, the iCloud event, the resignation letter. The iPhone 4S event was the first big stage he had missed, and the world read it correctly. The news of his death the next day turned the week into a strange double act: a new product that no one could focus on, and a founder who could not be ignored. The stock wobbled, the analysts wrote their notes, and the conversations turned from the phone to the man. The company had planned a product week. It received a funeral instead.

3. The Products

The legacy was written in hardware. Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak, and the Apple II made the company and the personal computer respectable. The Macintosh, in 1984, brought the mouse and the graphical interface to the desktop, and it changed what a computer could be, even if the market took years to agree. The iPod, in 2001, put a thousand songs in a pocket and rebuilt the music business around a white earbud. The iPhone, in 2007, collapsed the phone, the camera, the music player, and the internet into a single slab of glass, and it became the template for the decade that followed.

The iPad, in 2010, created the modern tablet category out of nothing, and the App Store, in 2008, built the economy of apps that made the iPhone and the iPad useful. Each product was simpler than what it replaced, and each was harder to copy than it looked. The pattern was consistent: take an existing tool, strip it to its essence, and sell the essence at a price the market would pay. The critics who called him a showman missed the point. The show was the delivery system for the product, and the product was the delivery system for the idea.

4. The Comeback

The comeback was the part of the story that made the legend. Jobs had been pushed out of Apple in 1985, after the Macintosh struggled and the board chose the managers over the founder. He spent years building NeXT, a computer company that never quite worked, and Pixar, an animation studio that changed movies with Toy Story in 1995. In 1997, Apple, near bankruptcy, bought NeXT and brought him back. The company was ninety days from insolvency by some accounts, and the product line was a chaos of boxes and names. The turnaround became the most studied rescue in American business.

The first act of the rescue was the iMac, in 1998, a computer in a colored shell that sold on looks and saved the company's cash flow. The second act was the retail store, which the experts said would fail and which became the most profitable retail space per square foot in the world. The third act was the iPod, and the fourth was the iPhone, and each act built on the last. By 2011, the company he had returned to save was the most valuable in the world by market capitalization, a fact that seemed impossible in 1997 and inevitable in 2011.

5. The Showman

The keynotes were part of the product. Jobs stood on stage in a black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers, and he spoke in a rhythm that made announcements feel like revelations. One more thing, he would say, and the room would lean forward. The reality distortion field, as his colleagues called it, was the ability to make people believe that the impossible was not only possible but inevitable, and it worked on customers, on employees, and on the press. The critics who mocked the theatrics were missing the point. The theatrics were the marketing, and the marketing was the strategy, and the strategy was the survival of the company.

The showmanship had a dark side, and the stories were well known. He could be cruel to employees, dismissive of colleagues, and ruthless with suppliers. The perfectionism that produced the products also produced the casualties, and the biographies that appeared over the years documented both. The lesson of the showman is that the same force can build and wound, and that the world tends to remember the building. The company he built was organized around his taste, and his taste was the product. When he was gone, the question that followed was whether the taste could be institutionalized, or whether it had died with him.

6. The Company

The question of the week was simple: what happens to Apple now? Tim Cook, the new chief executive, had been running the company for years, and the operations, the supply chain, and the launch rhythm were his. He told the employees that Apple was in the best shape of its history, and the statement was not just consolation. The company had cash, momentum, and a product pipeline that had been planned years ahead. The risk was not the next quarter. The risk was the decade after that, when the taste that had guided the company would have to come from somewhere else, from a group, a process, or a culture.

The analysts drew the obvious comparison: every great company eventually outlives its founder, and the ones that survive are the ones that turn the founder's instincts into systems. The doubters noted the other pattern: companies built around a single taste often lose their edge when the taste is gone. The truth was probably in the middle, and the middle would only be visible years later. What was visible in October 2011 was the strength of the institution: the stores, the supply chain, the developers, the brand, the cash. The founder was gone, and the company he left behind was the largest in the world. The test had begun.

7. The Legacy

The legacy extended far beyond Apple. Pixar, the company he bought and built, changed animation with Toy Story and turned the animated film into a mainstream art form. The music industry was rebuilt around the iPod and the iTunes Store, for better and worse, and the record labels learned to live with the new order. The phone industry was rebuilt around the iPhone, and every smartphone on the market, including the ones that beat Apple in volume, now carries the template he created. The personal computer, the phone, the music player, the tablet, the animated movie: the list of categories he either created or redefined is unusually long.

The less visible legacy was the standard he set for how technology companies think about the user. After it, the interface became the product, and the feel of a thing became a competitive weapon. The executives who copied his keynotes, his simplicity, and his secrecy were paying tribute in the most direct way. The word genius was used so often that week that it lost some of its meaning, but the record stood on its own. The products sold, the margins held, and the categories changed. That is what the tributes were for, and that is why they did not stop.

8. The Lesson

The lesson of the week is that a company can outlive its founder, but only if the founder built more than himself. Jobs built products, and the products were the message, but he also built an organization, a culture, and a pipeline that did not require him in the room. The test of the lesson is the years ahead, and the years ahead were already underway. The resignation in August, the product event in October, the succession that had been prepared: the company had been planning for this moment even while he fought the disease. The planning was the final product, and it was the most important one.

The second lesson is about the nature of legacy itself. The man was complicated, difficult, and sometimes cruel, and the record should keep all of it. The products were simple, and the simplicity was the result of endless complexity behind the scenes. The mourners were right to mourn, and the skeptics were right to keep their skepticism. The world will remember the keynotes, the products, and the comeback, and the memory will be a fair one, because the record is the record. Goodbye, Steve is the October 2011 story, and the story is the lesson: the builder dies, and the building stands.

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