I was thinking about how great Steve Jobs is, and it dawned on me that you can really see his influence most when you compare the industries he's in to those he's not. In an industry that Steve Jobs is in, you can take any 5 year period and the technology you have at the end of the period would look magical to people living at the start. In industries he's not in, things might change slowly, but nothing seems even remotely magical.
Think about computers from 1979 compared to the Macintosh (1984) [just watch the tape of his Macintosh release – the crowd's reaction is the reaction you have when you watch a really good magician]. Or PCs in 1997 (when he returned to Apple) to 2002 (in 1997 computers were all white boxes; in 2002, think of the iMac), or from 2002 to 2007 (original iMac to the slick iMac with the flat screen). Or think of cartoons in 1990 when he was running Pixar to 1995 when Toy Story was released. Or music in 1999 (compact discs) to 2004 (iPod + iTunes) to 2009 (iPod touch). Or cell phones in 2003 to 2008 (iPhone). Or the iPad to the (what to compare it to? a book? a magazine? a laptop?).
Then think about PCs from 1986 (when he left Apple) to 1996 (when he returned). They're basically the same over that 10 year period (they just got incrementally faster). Or any 5 year period before 2001 in music technology. Sure you had LPs going to tapes going to CDs, but no one would regard that as magical, it was just more convenient each time. Or take a VHS player to a DVD to a blueray. Sure the picture improves, but it's just the same thing with a slightly higher SNR. Or even phones over any 5 year period before 2008. Cell phones evolved slowly from useless bricks to the Blackberry between the early 80s and the mid 2000s, but at no point in there was a 5 year period where you couldn't predict what the phones would look like 5 years later.
Really, over the last 30 years, nearly all of the magical things we now have came from Steve Jobs (I would put the Internet as the one thing he didn't directly work on, although that arguably took longer than 5 years). The world keeps evolving at a decent clip, but it's really just from Steve Jobs that you get those "holy crap, I never thought I'd see something like that" moments. I wonder if we'll ever get those again.
