I literally posted that “Finding Nemo” item this afternoon just as the news hit that Steve Jobs had finally lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. Spooky, that. Jobs backed Pixar early on, going back to 1986 when he bought the company (then called The Graphics Group) from LucasFilm. After failing to really catch a headwind as a high-end graphics hardware developer, the company partnered with Walt Disney Pictures and the rest was history.
But that’s just how Jobs brought us one of the most critically and financially successful film studios of all time. His legacy and his influence on the film industry stretches far beyond that and will be felt for years to come through the countless innovations he made in the world of computing, going all the way back to the development of the world’s first personal computer in 1984. The iMac, iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad (which Francis Ford Coppola was using to edit his experimental film “Twixt” in real time at Comic-Con), the impact of these devices on the film business is considerable to say the least.
So, for pushing the industry forward, we thank you. For Pixar, we thank you. For your enthusiasm and your creative vigor, we thank you. And we hope that legacy empowers the entrepreneurs of the future to carry the baton onward.
“Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote not a half hour ago at his Facebook page. “Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.”
Here is a classy montage of Jobs’s keynote addresses via CNN that provides a nice trip, not only down memory lane, but through the timeline of technological innovation: