Steve Jobs Inducted into Bay Area Business Hall of Fame, Eddy Cue Gives Emotional Speech

Apple SVP of internet software and services Eddy Cue accepted Steve Jobs' posthumous induction into the Bay Area Business Hall of Fame last Thursday, which recognizes esteemed business individuals with ties to the San Francisco Bay Area. In a video of the award ceremony uploaded by the Bay Area Council (via TechCrunch), a montage of Jobs' noteworthy innovations is followed by an emotional speech from Cue detailing how Jobs had become a friend and helped him as his wife battled cancer, going on to share several remarks about Jobs' relentless pursuit of perfection throughout his time at Apple.

In the speech, Cue recounts how he learned through Jobs to “do what you love“ for the first time when Apple was preparing to launch the original iMac in 1998. Cue recounts how Apple's representatives got into the venue at midnight on the date of the event for rehearsals, with Jobs furious at the angle in which the Bondi Blue iMac popped up from the bottom center of the stage during a practice run:

He taught me many things but none more important than ‘do what you love’. That’s what he did every day. It wasn’t about fame, it wasn’t about fortune, it was about creating great products. And not accepting anything less than perfection. As I was coming in today, I was trying to remember a story of the first time I learned that from Steve. We were launching the iMac, in Bondi blue…we were doing this at the Flint center in Cupertino. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the venue, Stomp was there the night before, we were launching it the next day and we could only get in at midnight. So we come in at midnight, we were going to do rehearsals…one of the things we wanted to do was have the iMac come out from the stage as he was introducing it. And we’d shine some lights. I was sitting out in the crowd…and the iMac comes out and the light comes on it and I said “wow, that is so cool!”

Steve stops the whole thing and says “stop, this sucks!” He says, “it should come out at the side where you can see the color, the light should be shining at this side and when it turns to the front that’s when it should turn on…30 minutes later we do the whole thing again and when I see it come out I said ‘wow, he was absolutely right, it’s incredible’. He had that level of detail for everything he did, and that’s what he taught us.

Cue also noted that Jobs' would have been favorable to the induction because of his strong ties to the Bay Area, including the fact that he grew up, started Apple and met his wife Laurene all in the area. Notably, the home where Jobs first began building computers with Steve Wozniak was designated a "historic resource" by the Los Altos Historical Commission in October.

Also honored during the event was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who was a close friend of Jobs. Ellison stated that Jobs was not seeking fortune or fame, but rather added that the former Apple CEO was “obsessed with the creative process and building something that was beautiful.“