Thank you, Steve Jobs
All of us here on the Office for Mac team are sad to hear about the passing of Steve Jobs.
Our thoughts and condolences are with Steve’s family and with everyone at Apple.
Steve was an inspiration for us. For more than a quarter century we’ve built Office for Mac. Many of us on the team have built our Microsoft careers working on software for Apple devices, working closely with Apple to engineer products that serve our mutual customers – our people.
I’ll always remember meeting Steve for the first time in a small meeting at Apple. He joined us for a meeting about web browsers. We had been talking about standards and engineering details and complex technical tradeoffs, and Steve completely changed the conversation by focusing only on what mattered: what happens when someone sits down in front of their Mac every day?
What’s the story for that person, and how is any of this going to make their experience great? For me Steve’s inspiration and his legacy is about technology that simply works for people. In every keynote speech and every small meeting Steve brought that same laser focus on technology that changes people’s lives.
The last time I saw Steve up close was at the iPad 2 launch this March, where he battled his illness to come on stage and capture the attention of everyone in the room and around the world. As he told simple, powerful stories about how people use technology he inspired all of us, just like he has been doing for so long.
Steve, thank you for inspiring my team through your focus on people and for providing visionary leadership to our industry. We’ll all miss you.
- Eric Wilfrid, General Manager, Office for Mac team
Steve’s creative genius and laser focus on creating magical experiences has driven entire industries to make themselves better in their efforts to keep up. The world has lost an icon … we’ll miss you Steve.
- Craig Eisler, former General Manager, Office for Mac team
When I worked as a Mac Genius at an Apple retail store, people were surprised when I would tell them that MS Word and Excel were originally Mac products, and that, outside Apple, the company that employs the most people to develop things for the Mac was (I think) Microsoft.
Thank you for telling this story on this blog.
I met Steve informally going back 11 years in the halls of PIXAR where one of my brothers works.as an animator. My brother introduced me to Steve as “my brother from New York who works for Microsoft” so Steve gave me a few light-hearted jabs about that. Steve spent 10 minutes talking to my brother and me about movies, where we store the pictures we take, where we buy music -just random stuff (seemed random 10 years ago!). On my way out his assistant gave me an Apple “Think Different” poster that Steve signed for me, that I framed and hangs over my desk at home. I feel proud to say I worked in the era of Bill and Steve -two guys who have done some much to inspire and change the world.
Mac team -Thank you for sharing your stories about Steve.
Steve inspired me in more ways than I probably realize.
This sad day made me think back of my relationship with Apple and Mac products in general and how they influenced my professional and personal life – from my first taste of computing on the Apple IIc to discovering the Mac; meeting with Michael Mills and talking about Quicktime; Hypercard, Pagemaker, Mosaic, Photoshop… My first Powerbook (145)… to the more recent iPod, iTunes, iMac… The aesthetic and ease of use of the platform and hardware… The Wow moments at certain keynotes… Seeing Steve at the Microsoft booth at Apple Expo Paris…
I am proud of my contributions to various Mac products… From CorelDraw and Photopaint to the various Microsoft products I’ve worked on (all the way back to the IE and OE days!)…
In a way, Steve made it all possible!
Thank you Steve… for everything!
Steve had vision, the ability to dream and imagine, a synergy of art and engineering that was contagious as we all had a part in that dream.
Apple and Microsoft
Apple 11e ran Microsoft Basic
Apple Mac ran Microsoft Excel & Word
Excel 1.0 first windowed environment on PC
Yes windows came from Excel
Well Said Craig!! I have only recently come to (re)-appreciate the OS X & iOS platforms however Apple has impacted me greatly throughout my school years by Apples generous donations to public and private schools (Learning how to eat my veggies on a Performa while playing a game influenced by Dole LOL). While I never met Steve and I refuse to ignore the 10′s of thousands of engineers that drove his visions into reality, I can say without doubt that his contributions to humanities progress are, to say the least, immense.
We will miss you Steve. Stay Hungry!
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When I first saw and used an Apple ][ it was the day I decided to study Information Systems. That instant I realized that the personal computer would be a part of our lives. This was back when IBM S/34 ruled the ‘mid-market’.
I have lived and suffered the good times and the bad times with Apple, and lived an suffered the ups and downs of the Apple-Microsoft relationship. Today, while an avid Apple-device users, it happens that my company is a Microsoft Silver ERP Partner and I am happy to see that as both companies matured, so has the relationship.
Jobs’ boldness allowed him to think and execute outside the box and just as Apple’s Think Different commercial said:
“Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
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I saw Steve Jobs for the first time in 1980 at the Houston Area Users Group in Texas (HAUG). He was in his prime and could really rally people behind him with inspiration. His path was always so much different and sometimes ahead of the times.
I used office on a MAC for the first time in the late 1990′s when I was working on-site with the largest MAC network at that time, Liberty Mutual Insurance Group(LMIG).
The daily technology we use in Microsoft Office is a direct result of the trials and tribulations of Entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Programmers and people at Microsoft and Apple who share the sheer want and desire to improve the way people work on a daily basis.
Hats off to the Steve Jobs for inspiring those around him to have Chutzpah!
Does anyone remember when Steve returned to the Apple helm in the mid-90′s at its lowest moment, market share was 5%, and no one expected the company to survive much longer. That’s when BillG convinced his own board to invest $150M in Steve and Apple.
Long story short, Steve turned Apple around and repaid the loan early! Thanks, BillG.
My own experience with Steve was to have had the honor to design the activation and integration architecture for the iPhone (2007 & 2008). Although I didn’t work directly with Steve, we used his design criteria, which was to enable Customers to activate their iPhones from home AND to do so without even a single error. Who ever heard of such a requirement?
After the shock ebbed, we began rethinking our processes and asked ourselves why we had always thought the Customer should see our errors. Soon we were convinced we could do it and every meeting in Cupertino was charged with greater excitement at the prospect of super Customer satisfaction. Sad to say though, this was nothing new to the Apple team. And after one year, we reported that all activations had been completed successfully while no Customer had ever seen an error or exception during the process. Just stunning, when you think about it!
Thanks for the enlightenment, Steve.
I never met Steve and I’ve only had my hands on a Mac once. But I have to say Steve pulled off the greatest business comeback I know of with Apple. This commercial sums up the way I see his contribution to our world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX9GTUMh490
Never met the man once, yet, as a Mac user he had such a profound impact on my life. I remember I was just a young kid when the first computer I ever owned and used was a Macintosh Performa.
And boy, you sure get the feeling that human innovation has been somewhat set back with Mr.Jobs passing away. He was a technology titan.
He truly was a man who left his mark on this world.
Rest in peace Steve.
Dear Steve,
You were and are a true hero and inspiration for me and all of us.
Thanks for all you did for mankind.
May your soul rest in peace.
Thanks,
Shubham
We Will miss you Steve.. you have “Touched” everyone’s life…
We will miss you Steve ..He truly was a man who left his mark on this world.
To Steve Jobs,
Thank you for making life a bit more tasteful.
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I had the honor of working with Steve for 4 years when I was the General Manager for the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft.
Steve was absolutely passionate about building great products. He believed that our job as technologist is to make sure that technology enhanced people’s lives and never got in the way of people using the products.
Even though our companies were fierce competitors, Steve always treated me and my team professionally and respectfully. I enjoyed our interactions over those 4 years, particularly during the times when I had the privilege of sharing a stage with him during MacWorld keynotes.
Steve was gracious even at the end of our collaboration, taking a phone call from me on a Sunday evening to let him know that I was moving on to another assignment at Microsoft in 2007. That was my last conversation with him and I will remember that fondly. Like the rest of the world, I will miss seeing new achievements from his brilliant mind, presented with his inimitable passion and style.
we all miss you steve jobs.we all thank u for your help for this world.and we hope that god bless you.rest in peace
After reading other sites on Steve Job’s passing , this site has the best reverent passionate comments. I actually read most if not all comments. Reinforces my feeling that MAC aligned people are mostly down to earth! His memory lives on!
I am a end user of personal computers since the 1960′s. I have friends that brought the original PC’s, Apple’s, Apricots, Rainbow, MicroBee, Amiga, Atari ,and HP & TI calcualtors, etc, and have seen them transform office tasks to single user. I saw mainframe days in the 60′s and 70′s, replete with paper and punched cards, and wondered what use computers had in everyday lives! Wow. Steve and Bill and others had a leading role in R&D of PC’s to this end. I bow my head at his passing. He truly was a visionary.
While Steve had an interesting relationship with Microsoft I think he knew very well how important MS office for Mac was to his customers. He knew that pre-pages that word/excel and powerpoint were crucial to how his customers used the Mac as a powerful tool. His understanding of the power and reach Exchange extended to OSX and the iPhone plus mail/ical apps even among his users. I think there has to be some very powerful excel sheets running some of Apple and some to the tools that Jobs used that even MS would be amazed off.