Business Intelligence and Data Visualization presents: Steve Jobs
After an eight-year battle with pancreatic cancer, Steve Jobs is dead at age 56.
His influence on personal computing and consumer technology has been profound.
VP and Research Director at Ventana Research, David Menninger, contends that Jobs’ visionary creations even inadvertently shaped the Business Intelligence (BI) landscape.
Menninger: Steve Jobs and Business Intelligence
“His influence has had a huge impact on my career and on all of us who work with business intelligence techniques and tools,” wrote Menninger in a statement.
“About 30 years ago… I was sitting in front of an Apple II working on a VisiCalc spreadsheet. Now there are hundreds of millions of spreadsheet users whose activities can be traced back to Steve Jobs in some way. Spreadsheets… have many virtues that we have been trying to capture in other forms of business intelligence software ever since.
“The advent of the PC [with which Jobs and his Apple II is credited] was the original ‘self-service BI’ movement.
“Jobs and Apple always maintained twin focuses on design and innovation,” Menninger continued. “The design of the physical product was part of the Apple experience, but the design of the user interface was even more important. Our whole way of interacting with information systems, including BI, has been shaped by the graphical user interface (GUI) in part because of the Mac OS.”
Steve Jobs inspired Data Visualization
Jobs was forced to step down as CEO of Apple on August 24, 2011: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know,” Jobs wrote in his letter of resignation. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”
The below infographic – A Day In The Life – designed by Inc. demonstrates the extraordinary effort that Jobs displayed, managing to maintain his position as Apple’s CEO until just five weeks before his death.
The legacy of Steve Jobs
Jobs co-founded Apple in his parent’s garage as a 21-year-old in 1976, developing what is widely considered to be the world’s first successful PC, the Apple II. At 25, he was a millionaire. Apple’s board famously ousted him in 1985 (aged 30).
Jobs was reinstated as Apple CEO in 1997, responsible for the company’s resurrection and nothing less than meteoric rise, introducing Apple’s game-changing line of modern products, including the iPod, iMac, iPhone, iPad and iTunes.