Dengan pemergian Steve Job yang antara lain disebabkan kanser pankreas, hilanglah seorang tokoh utama perisian komputer yang bukan saja berjaya membawa Syarikat Apple ke mercu kecemerlangan, malah berjaya meletakkan kemajuan telekomunikasi dunia ke tahap yang ada sekarang, yang selalunya mendahului pesaing lain. Bagi diri beliau sendiri, beliau berjaya meletakkan diri sebagai antara jutawan ternama dunia.

 Ketika hayatnya, Steve Jobs yang cukup gemar mengenakan jeans biru, baju berleher tinggi serba hitam pernah dianggap sebagai jiwa dan raga syarikatnya, Apple Inc yang dianggap pesaing utama Exxon Mobil, syarikat paling berharga di Amerika Syarikat.

 Usahawan unggul Lembah Silikon ini berjaya mengubah persepsi masyarakat dunia terhadap industri pengkomputeran, muzik dan telefon mudah alih, sekali gus mengubah rutin lazim jutaan manusia secara global. Kekayaan Jobs dianggar mencecah AS$7 bilion (RM22.26 bilion) dan sejurus kematiannya Rabu (5/10/2011) lalu, dan belum diketahui bagaimana hartanya akan diuruskan.

 Pada tahun ini saham syarikat yang diterajuinya semakin tidak stabil sebagaimana keadaannya. Kita dapati terdapat beberapa tulisan dalam internet bulan-bulan terakhir sebelum beliau meninggal dunia menunjukkan betapa kesihatan beliau mempengaruhi pasaran. 

 Selepas bulan Februari, Steve Jobs sudah mulai merasa bahawa masanya telah hampir. Apabila keadaan itu disampaikan kepada rakan taulan, perkara itu semakin tersebar dan semakin ramai yang ingin menemui beliau dan mengucapkan selamat jalan. Namun sebahagian besar permintaan orang ramai dipintas oleh isterinya Laurene. Laurene mohon maaf dan memaklumkan bahawa suaminya terlalu letih untuk melayan tetamu.

 Steve Jobs yang memberi nilai yang tinggi terhadap kehidupan peribadi dan apa yang hendak disumbangkan kepada dunia - memutuskan untuk memilih orang-orang tertentu sahaja sebelum beliau menutup mata.

 Pendeknya Steve telah menghabiskan minggu-minggu terakhir kehidupannya - sebagaimana dia telah membelanjakan hampir keseluruhan hidupnya - dengan membuat pilihan secara ketat. Dia menjemput seorang rakan rapatnya iaitu Dr. Dean Ornish yang merupakan pendokong kesihatan preventif agar menikmati sushi bersamanya di sebuah restoran yang digemarinya, Jin Sho di Palo Alto.

 Beliau juga mengucapkan selamat tinggal kepada seorang usahawan kapitalis John Doerr, ahli lembaga pengarah Apple - Bill Campbell dan Robert A. Iger yang merupakan Ketua eksekutif Disney.

 Beliau juga memberikan nasihat kepada ahli eksekutif Apple berkaitan pelancaran iPhone 4S, yang berlangsung pada hari Khamis. Beliau sempat bercakap kepada penulis biografinya, Walter Isaacson. Dan apabila beliau mengambil regimen ubatan baru, beliau memaklumkan ada sebab-sebab tertentu buat menaruh harapan.

 Apapun, yang paling dihargainya ialah beliau berjaya menghabiskan masa bersama isteri dan anak-anaknya, pewaris yang bakal mewarisi 6.5 bilion dollar AS. Di sebalik kedukaan yang dihadapi, mereka juga akan mengambil tanggungjawab daripada legasi yang ditinggalkan oleh Steve, seorang yang dikagumi dunia.

 Kata Dr. Ornish, "Steve telah membuat pilihan. Saya pernah bertanya jika beliau gembira dianugerahkan dengan anak-anaknya, dan jawabnya 'ianya adalah 10,000 kali lebih baik daripada apa-apa yang pernah saya lakukan'."

 "Bagi Steve, apa yang dilakukan ialah menjalani kehidupan mengikut terma berliau sendiri, dan beliau tidak membazirkan walau sedetik waktu dengan sesuatu yang dia fikir tidak penting. Beliau sedar bahawa masa hidup di bumi ini amat singkat. Beliau mahu menguasai apa yang hendak dilakukan daripada pilihan yang ada."

 Pada bulan-bulan terakhir, Steve dikatakan tinggal di sebuah rumah besar berbatu bata merah yang dikelilingi oleh pengawal keselamatan.

Seorang yang mengaku mengenali Steve Jobs tetapi ditolak apabila diminta untuk menemui dan mengucapkan selamat tinggal kepada Steve mengungkap, "Setiap seorang sentiasa ingin mengambil sebahagian daripada Steve. Dia mewujudkan semua lapisan ini bagi melindungi dirinya daripada peminat, rancangan-rancangan orang tertentu dan gangguan serta kelalaian yang telah memusnahkan banyak syarikat."  Tetapi "Apabila kamu meninggal, kamu menjadi milik dunia."

 Apabila Steve ditanya oleh penulis biografinya yang bakal menerbitkan bukunya dua minggu lagi, beliau mengatakan, "Saya ingin anak-anak saya mengenali saya. Saya sentiasa tiada di sisi mereka, dan saya mahu mereka mengetahui kenapa dan mengapa saya buat begitu."

 Seperti rakan saingannya Bill Gates, Steve Jobs juga tidak pernah memiliki ijazah dari mana-mana kolej. Meskipun beliau telah meninggalkan Reed College hanya selepas berada di sana selama 6 bulan, namun pada tahun 2005 beliau telah diminta memberi ucapan di majlis konvo di Stanford University.

 Di waktu itulah beliau memaklumkan bahawa beliau telah mengidap kanser yang mana tempoh baginya tinggal adalah sangat singkat. Namun beliau juga memberitahu audiens di waktu itu bahawa "Kemungkinan besar kematian merupakan ciptaan terbaik kehidupan. Ia adalah agen perubah kehidupan.”

 Jelasnya, kebaikan daripada kematian ialah anda tahu bahawa kehidupan ini tidak harus disia-siakan dengan cara hidup mengikut pilihan orang lain.

 "Jangan biarkan suara pendapat-pendapat orang lain menenggelamkan suara hati kamu. Dan lebih penting lagi ialah harus punyai keberanian untuk mengikut kata hati dan intuisi."

 Walaupun Steve telah menolak banyak permintaan orang ramai dan rakan-rakan sewaktu akan meninggalkan dunia ini, Dr. Ornish menyatakan "Beliau amat berperikemanusiaan. Dia lebih prihatin sebagai manusia berbanding dengan apa yang diketahui umum. Itulah yang menjadikan beliau hebat.”

Sedikit Sejarah Steve Jobs

 Berikut, saya kutip tulisan ringkas yang dipaparkan oleh Utusan Malaysia selepas kematian beliau.

Zaman kanak-kanaknya:

 Diceritakan mengenai Steve ketika kecilnya bahawa beliau adalah seorang kanak-kanak yang nakal.

 Pada waktu usianya masih muda, Jobs tidak menunjukkan tanda-tanda memiliki kecemerlangan seperti mana yang dilalui bersama syarikat yang dibinanya.

 Ketika meniti alam persekolahannya, anak kelahiran San Francisco, California ini dikatakan seorang murid yang malas. Gurunya terpaksa mengupah beliau dengan gula-gula dan wang sebanyak AS$5 (RM16) untuk menggalakkan beliau belajar.

 Malah Jobs digambarkan terlalu nakal dengan kerenah pelik. Antara kisah tentang kenakalannya itu, disebutkan bahawa beliau pernah melepaskan seekor ular di dalam kelas selain pernah membuat letupan kecil di dalam kelas ketika menghadiri kelas sains.

Kaligrafi:

 Selepas tamat persekolahan pada tahun 1972, Jobs mendaftar masuk ke Reed College di Portland namun gagal melanjutkan pelajaran, melainkan hanya sempat selama satu semester.

 Namun beliau masih meneruskan kuliah tanpa sebarang gred (auditing) untuk beberapa ketika dan Jobs pernah menyatakan jika tidak kerana mengambil kelas kaligrafi ketika auditing beliau tidak akan mampu mencipta komputer Macintosh seperti mana yang kita lihat sekarang.

 Ketika melanjutkan pelajaran itu beliau meneruskan hidup dengan menumpang tidur di atas lantai dalam bilik salah seorang rakannya, mengutip botol Coke untuk dijual bagi mendapatkan wang perbelanjaan selain mendapatkan makanan percuma pada setiap hujung minggu di sebuah kuil Hare Krishna yang terletak berdekatan.

 Pada tahun 1974, beliau kembali ke California dan bekerja sebagai juruteknik di sebuah syarikat permainan video, Atari.

 Ketika berada di sana beliau juga menghadiri perjumpaan Homebrew Computer Club dan di situ bermulalah perkenalan Jobs bersama rakan baik dan juga pengasas bersama Apple, Steve Wozniak.

 Namun matlamat utama beliau bekerja di situ adalah mengumpul wang untuk menampung perbelanjaan bagi menghadiri perjumpaan kerohanian di India.

 Setelah cukup tabungannya, beliau bersama rakan sekolejnya, Daniel Kottke (yang kemudian menjadi pekerja pertama di syarikat Apple) menuju ke India untuk berjumpa pendita agama Hindu terkenal, Neem Karoli Baba di Kainchi Ashram dengan tujuan mencari makna hidup.

 Bagaimanapun, kemudiannya Jobs kembali ke California sebagai penganut agama Buddha. Dia juga telah membotakkan kepalanya selain sering memakai pakaian tradisi India.

Penubuhan:

Steve Jobs dan Wozniak ketika muda belia.

 Setelah kembali dari India, Jobs bekerja semula dengan Atari, namun pada bulan Mei 1976 beliau bersama Wozniak, Ronald Wayne beserta bekas pengurus pemasaran Intel, A.C. "Mike" Markkula Jr. yang menyumbang sejumlah dana, telah menubuhkan syarikat Apple secara rasmi.

 Syarikat tersebut telah mencipta dan membangunkan produk komputer peribadi pasang siap, Apple I pada tahun yang sama dijual pada harga pengenalan AS$666.66 (RM2133).

 Ini diikuti pengenalan produk Apple II pada tahun berikutnya sekaligus menjadikan Apple sebagai pemain utama industri komputer peribadi ketika itu. Produk Apple II juga menjadi simbol revolusi kepada industri komputer peribadi dunia berasaskan kesempurnaan spesifikasi teknikalnya termasuk perkakasan, warna grafik dan perisian yang digunakan. Produk ini juga telah mendapat sambutan yang amat menggalakkan.

 Sekitar tahun 1981, Jobs memperkenalkan pula komputer peribadi Apple Macintosh yang mana spesifikasi grafik pada produk itu telah menerima pengiktirafan di peringkat antarabangsa.

Dipecat Dari Syarikat:

 Steve Jobs telah dipecat dari Apple pada 1985 akibat perebutan kuasa dan konflik dalaman syarikat. Namun beliau kemudiannya menubuhkan syarikat NeXT Computer pada 1986.

 Syarikat tersebut ditubuhkan dengan wang yang diperolehi sepanjang bersama Apple berjumlah AS$7 juta (RM22.4 juta). Kemudiannya, beliau berjaya memujuk bilionair AS, Bill Perot untuk menyumbang dana dalam syarikat tersebut.

 Sepanjang tempoh bersama NeXT Computer, Jobs berjaya menghasilkan komputer peribadi termaju menggunakan cip pemproses isyarat digital antaranya NeXTcube, NeXTSTEP/Intel dan beberapa lagi.

 Beliau juga telah membeli syarikat The Graphics Group, yang kemudian diubah namanya kepada Pixar. Syarikat ini semakin berkembang maju apabila mengikat projek bersama syarikat animasi terkenal, Disney.

 Antara projek filem animasi yang berjaya memberi keuntungan lumayan selain meningkatkan penjenamaan syarikat adalah Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004) dan banyak lagi.

Revolusi:

 Pada tahun 2006, Disney telah mengumumkan pembelian syarikat Pixar pada harga AS$7.4 billion (RM23.6 bilion) dan Jobs merupakan pemegang saham individu terbesar dalam Disney dengan kepentingan sebanyak tujuh peratus.

 Pada tahun 1995 Jobs kembali menerajui Apple setelah syarikat tersebut membeli syarikat NeXT Computer pada harga AS$429 juta (RM1.37 bilion) pada 1997.

 Di bawah pentadbiran Jobs, Apple terus mengecapi kejayaan dan mengalami revolusi di peringkat tertinggi menerusi pengenalan beberapa produk pengkomputeran moden seperti Power Mac G3, PowerBok dan juga iBook.

 Pada tahun 2001, Apple telah memperkenalkan perisian sistem operasi pertama mereka, Mac OC X selain beberapa aplikasi pengkomputeran menerusi platform iApps seperti iMovie, iTunes, iPhoto, iCal dan iSync.

 Di tahun yang sama juga dunia menyaksikan Jobs merancang strategi untuk terlibat dalam industri hab digital merangkumi penghasilan produk seperti kamera digital, kamera video, pemain MP3, telefon bimbit dan peranti digital.

 Momentum kejayaan Apple terus dirancakkan menerusi pengenalan produk pemain MP3 dikenali sebagai iPod pada tahun 2001.

 Tidak cukup dengan itu, kejayaan dalam bidang telekomunikasi turut dicatatkan Apple pada tahun 2007 apabila memperkenalkan peranti telefon bimbit pintar iPhone dan komputer tablet iPad yang kini menarik perhatian masyarakat dunia.

Asal Keturunan:

 Ramai yang beranggapan bahawa Jobs berasal dari keturunan kulit putih walhal beliau mempunyai pertalian darah dengan keturunan Islam.

 Bapa kandung Jobs bernama Abdulfattah John Jandali dan beliau berketurunan Syria. Abdulfattah merupakan seorang profesor sains politik dan matematik.

 Sama seperti Jobs, Abdulfattah merupakan seorang yang kuat bekerja. Beliau dikatakan menyandang jawatan Naib Presiden di sebuah kasino yang terletak di Reno, Nevada.

 Bagaimanapun, Abdulfattah dikatakan menyesal atas tindakannya menyerahkan Steve Jobs kepada orang lain untuk membesarkannya.

 Menurut beliau keputusan itu adalah bukan keputusannya, tetapi keputusan ibu kandung Steve Jobs, Joanne Schieble Simpson yang berketurunan Jerman, kerana mendapat tentangan ahli keluarganya yang tidak boleh menerima menantu mereka adalah orang Arab beragama Islam.

 Oleh itu mereka menghantarJobs kepada pasangan Paul dan Clara Jobs yang menjadi keluarga angkatnya bagi membesarkan Steve Jobs sepenuh masa. Dikatakan bapanya tidak pernah berjumpa atau menghubungi Jobs dan begitu juga sebaliknya sehinggalah ke akhir hayatnya.

 .................Tamat..............

 Sehari sebelumnya, saya telah tonton video ucapan Steve Jobs semasa majlis konvo di Universiti Stanford pada 14/6/2005. Ucapannya amat menarik, bernas dan menyentuh minda. Kemudian saya telah menemui transkrip ucapan beliau di satu laman web. Justeru, saya masukkan kembali ke laman web ini buat tatapan pelayar. (Saya tidak sempat menterjemahkannya ke bahasa Malaysia/Melayu)

Transcript of Commencement Speech at Stanford given by Steve Jobs
 | 6/14/2005 | Steve Jobs
 

Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 7:18:09 AM by Swordmaker

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.