The iPod. The Mac. The iPhone. The iPad. The Apple TV.
Steve Jobs did it all, and with his passing Wednesday at the all too young age of 56 after what now makes sense as an abrupt departure from his CEO job at Apple, he changed technology, home computing, telecommunications and music.
But lesser known is his major hand in pioneering the 21st Century in film.
In 1986, Jobs bought and formed Pixar out of The Graphics Group from Lucasfilm, and with his encouragement and insight turned Pixar into the innovative minds and kings that now rule over animation and digital film.
Jobs was an executive producer on 1995’s “Toy Story,” the first fully digital film ever made and arguably one of the most influential films of the last century of movie making.
Pixar has thanked him on 10 of their features and shorts (he was given “very very special thanks” on Pixar’s first short “Tin Toy” from 1988), and now they thank him one last time.
“He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined.” This was a statement by John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, who began Pixar along with Jobs. The full statement by the current Pixar execs as reported by the Huffington Post can be found here.
And this is true of everything Jobs did. The Washington Post said in a video dedicated to him and a Tweet, “Steve Jobs knew what we wanted before we knew it ourselves.”
He knew what the potential of digital film could be, he knew what the potential of digital music could be, and he knew what the potential of a digital world could be.
Could we say that the thriving instant streaming services that Netflix, Hulu and even iTunes offer would still be possible were it not for the pioneering Jobs had in radicalizing the music industry?
We know Steve Jobs changed the world, but we only now realize how widespread his impact truly was.
Image courtesy of The Huffington Post
iSad
“Steve Jobs knew what we wanted before we knew it ourselves.”. How true!