steve jobs

The World on Steve Jobs [Updated]

The immediate reaction to the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs has been massive and somewhat overwhelming. Obviously, much more will be said about Jobs’s legacy, but here is a limited compilation some of the most notable and interesting tributes paid so far:

Barack Obama: “The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

Michael Bloomberg: “Tonight, America lost a genius who will be remembered with Edison and Einstein, and whose ideas will shape the world for generations to come.”

Google: A link to the Apple website titled “Steve Jobs, 1955-2011” appeared under the search bar.

Residents of Palo Alto: Flowers and pavement art outside Jobs’s home.

Brian Lam: The former Gizmodo editor interacted with Jobs both before and after his tech blog got a hold of a then-unreleased iPhone 4 (and subsequently posted about it). His takeaway? “Steve Jobs Was Always Kind to Me.”

Bill Gates: “Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives … For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”

Salman Rushdie: “He was one of the great architects of the real.”

The West Village: Internet outage! Coincidence? We think not.

Twitter: Jobs’s death provoked what social-media monitoring firm SR7 called “the biggest online reaction of any event in recent history.” Apple and/or Jobs-related Twitter posts appeared at the rate of 10,000 tweets per second.

Disney CEO Bob Iger: “Steve was such an ‘original,’ with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg: “[Jobs] explained that he walked each day, and that each day he set a farther goal for himself, and that, today, the neighborhood park was his goal. As we were walking and talking, he suddenly stopped, not looking well. I begged him to return to the house, noting that I didn’t know CPR and could visualize the headline: ‘Helpless Reporter Lets Steve Jobs Die on the Sidewalk.’ But he laughed, and refused, and, after a pause, kept heading for the park.”

The Onion’s AV Club: Sean O’Neal writes, “But all revolutionaries, once they actually change the world, become the de facto establishment. And it’s to Jobs’ credit that—no matter how many hubristic quotes there are collected on the Internet, or reports you will find of his difficulty as a boss, or the amount of exacting control he exercised over his products—he always, always strove to use his powers for good, and reward his followers for their incredible loyalty. And reward them he did, time and again.”

Wired: Steven Levy remembers Jobs telling him once that he hoped to create “a $10 billion company that didn’t lose its soul.”

Daring Fireball: John Gruber recalls the grass stains on the shoes of the genius.

The sky: A rainbow appeared over Pixar headquarters moments after the sad news broke.

This post has been updated with additional information.

The World on Steve Jobs [Updated]