The word genius is often over-used but there can’t be many who doubt that Steve Jobs was a genius in his field.  Along with Steve Wozniak he started Apple and then was summarily kicked out of the company.  If any person who’s lost their job wonders if they could succeed in another field, then they should look no further than Jobs (who later said it was the best thing that had ever happened to him.) He brought Pixar from George Lucas  in 1986 and turned into hugely successful company  releasing animated films such as Toy Story, selling it to Disney ten years later.

In  1996 Jobs returned to Apple.  The company which he had founded was in deep trouble.  The company which had rejected him – now needed him and he went back.  And as they say the rest is history. It has often been said that Jobs had the ability to create goods that consumers didn’t know they needed, the Apple Mac,  followed by the ipod, iphone and the iPad.   But it wasn’t just his ability to make consumers want to purchase items they needed, it was also his ability to create beautiful items that people bought regardless of need – not just once but over and over again, when a new version came out.

I remember a friend of mine coming back from holiday in the States and showing me her ipod. An all white one, I was immediately entranced.  I’d not seen anything like it – but who had?  I immediately wanted one.  They weren’t available in the UK until some months later and when they were released I couldn’t  afford one, but  that didn’t stop me wanting one.  In fact the first apple product I bought was the iPod Shuffle (much cheaper)  and then not long afterwards the iPod Nano – one white and one black.

And today these items (still working), lay unused in a drawer along with my husband’s Nano. I now have an iPhone which I hope to upgrade to a 4s when it is released in the UK later this month and I’m still toying with getting an iPad. When a business associate showed me her hot pink one I knew that I had to have one.

You see for me, the genius of Steve Jobs was being able to sell items that people wanted to buy, even when they didn’t need them. (Why did I need 2 Nano’s?) Jobs knew that the aesthetic look of the products was as important as their functionality and it was this ability to be able to combine the two with his vision of what the ‘next big thing’ would be,  that put Jobs and Apple well ahead of their competitors.

Apple will continue because it never was a one man band and currently it seems we can't get enough of Apple products.  But no one can deny that Jobs’ early death at 56 is a tragedy for his family and an enormous loss to the company for which his name will forever remain synonymous with. Steve Jobs was a genius and an icon. What a legacy he has left behind.