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With the news of Steve Jobs' resignation as CEO, several reaction pieces and stories have been circulating. One popular one is from Google's Vic Gundotra who posts an anecdote about Steve Jobs urgently calling him on a Sunday in January, 2008.
I laughed nervously. After all, while it was customary for Steve to call during the week upset about something, it was unusual for him to call me on Sunday and ask me to call his home. I wondered what was so important?
"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve. "I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"
The story was complimentary to Jobs, and Gundotra pointed out Jobs' attention to detail as a positive trait for a CEO:
But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I'll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.
Based on the date given, we determined that this was for Apple's 2008 Macworld San Francisco keynote speech which was delivered a week later by Steve Jobs. Jobs introduced webclips and custom home screen icons for the iPhone during that keynote. This was before the App Store was launched. The Google icon in question is pictured above.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)All those haters have no idea of the kind of person Steve REALLY is. From this post, the idea I get of Steve is a person who cares. The guy clearly puts his heart and soul into the company and when he is truly gone he will be missed beyond belief.
It was Steve who saved Apple and made them the company they are today. I wouldn't be typing on this particular iMac if Steve hadn't come back to Apple. I wouldn't be using OSX Lion. OSX wouldn't exist. In fact, if it wasn't for Steve Apple wouldn't exist at all. I, as a Mac user, owe much to him as I'm sure many of you also do.
On a side note, for the ones who call it OCD. It's that kind of OCD which resulted in the fantastic products you're now using.
There is nothing epic about this. This is borderline, dare I say, full, OCD on Steve's part.
Many designers would call it attention to detail.Micro-management on issues without any importance.
I see from your previous posts that you're into photography. I'm sure you've analyzed and critiqued many of your own photos. If you planned on submitting a photograph to a magazine or contest, wouldn't you try to make sure everything was the best it could be?
Given your relatively nice posts on the forum and the fact that you run your own business, I find it odd that you choose to openly question a successful businessman on his methods.
Can we go on now and resolve all these other ugly icons in the Lion Finder?! And please make this unspeakable "real world" appearance from iCal / Address Book go away!
Please have this fixed by Monday. Thank you.
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Any questions?
Hell yeah: can we now get our matte displays back? The glossy ones suck big time!
Steve rules! Imagine being the engineer assigned to fix this on Monday morning!!
This engineer was named in the post, and he appears to be the director of human interface at Apple.
http://www.jigsaw.com/scid7075483/greg_christie.xhtml?ver=5
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