Chief executive officers are not often the recipients of worldwide mourning.
Women and men of great power and wealth in the business world sometimes are
celebrities, but its rare for them to be adored, admired or even considered
decent by the average human being. Their companies are their public faces, as it
often should be. The chief executives job is, after all, about making their
company an industry leader and economic force. But Steve Jobs was hardly just a
CEO . The man was very much the face of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ), but he was far
more an icon of technological ingenuity and a trailblazer in changing the way
that human beings consume information, communicate and experience art in the
21st century. Its no surprise, then, that powerful people have had powerful
reactions to his death. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ),
had a tumultuous relationship with Jobs. In the past decade, the chief
technologist at Microsoft watched his companys domination of the computing
industry weaken as Apple released paradigm-shifting products like the iPod,
iPhone and the iTunes digital music distribution service. Gates released a
statement sharing his condolences with Jobs loved ones and meditating on their
shared history, describing the experience of working with Jobs as an insanely
great honor. Given how the two of them changed the world during the past 30
years, even insanely great seems like an understatement. Gates wasnt the only
former collaborator eulogizing Jobs on Thursday morning. John Lasseter of Pixar,
the animation studio behind films like Toy Story that Jobs helped found in 1986,
released a statement alongside Disney s (NYSE: DIS ) president of animation, Ed
Catmulli. Their statement discussed how Jobs always would influence Pixars
creative endeavors, that he would forever be a part of Pixars DNA. They also
remembered the simplicity of Jobs creative ideals. The one thing he always said
was to simply make it great.
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