UPDATE: Stephen Fry has been talking to the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones. Fry (a huge fan of all things mobile and one of the first people to own a white iPhone) is the latest to comment on news of Steve Jobs’ resignation.
Stephen Fry: I don’t think there is anybody who has proved quite so conclusively that passion and taste and belief are more important than a hard business head… He understood that the object you hold in your hand – a device that connects you to people – isn’t just the sum of its functions; it’s something that should make you smile, that you should cradle, that you should love and have an emotional relationship with….People will look back on us and think: this is the era of Steve Jobs when he changed the world. He changed the cultural landscape, it’s not just a technological achievement….He turned computing into a really personal, enjoyable experience that you can have a direct physical encounters with, and took it down to small devices like the iPhone and whole new fields like the iPad. He did it with passion, he did it with taste….There are few more important people on the planet.’ Via: BBC
Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent : ‘Steve Jobs is a rare example of a chief executive who is synonymous with his company, a perfectionist who obsesses over every detail and has been the public face of just about every major product launch in the past decade.’ Via BBC
Howard Stringer from Sony Corp: ‘I think his brilliance has been well-documented, but what gets forgotten is the bravery with which he’s confronted his illness…. for him to achieve this much success under these circumstances doubles his legacy.” Via Wall Street Journal
Google head of engineering Vic Gundotra recalls Steve Jobs perfectionism regarding a Sunday evening call from Jobs about his dissatisfaction with the Google logo on the iPhone: ‘….when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I’ll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.’ Via 9-to-5 Mac
LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner : ‘He is the Michelangelo of the digital age. He is also the most insightful business speaker I’ve ever heard.’ via: Sky News
John Gruber of Daring Fireball: ‘Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself. Today’s announcement is just one more step, albeit a big and sad one, in a long-planned orderly transition — a transition that no one wanted but which could not, alas, be avoided. And as ever, he’s doing it his way.’ Via Daring Fireball
What do you think about Steve Jobs resignation? Do you think it will have any long-term effects to Apple’s sucesses? Let us know @recombu on Twitter and via Facebook.
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