Professors Reflect on Steve Jobs' Accomplishments

The death of Steve Jobs on Wednesday shook Apple, its devoted customer base, and aspiring entrepreneurs. But as the world reflects on Jobs’ legacy, one Harvard professor says that remembering the iconic genius primarily as an innovator would be a mistake.

“I don’t think what Jobs did was so much innovation,” said computer science professor of practice James H. Waldo, explaining that many of Apple’s products—from the first Macintosh user interface to the iPod and iPhone—simply expanded concepts that already existed.

Instead, Waldo said, Jobs revolutionized technology by making it beautiful—and trusting the consumer to pay for that aesthetic.

“He had a deep-seated sense of design. [He] took things that others had done and made them far more elegant and more beautifully realized,” Waldo said. “People have talked about that as innovation, but really what it is, is a sense of art and craftsmanship.”

Other professors agreed that calling Jobs’ vision “art” is not an overstatement.

“He was one of the first people, in my opinion, that basically included design and his aesthetics in the thinking of technology,” said Visual and Environmental Studies Lecturer Allen Sayegh.

Today, slim white earbuds are ubiquitous in fitness rooms and on buses. MacBook screens glow from every other seat in the average Harvard lecture hall. Apple permeates the culture of any community with access to computers, but at one point, Sayegh said, even Jobs’ choice for the company name was a novel and bold move.

“Everybody was naming their products product numbers,” he said. “[‘Apple’ was] counter-intuitive at that point.”

But Jobs’ faith in his personal vision was one of his keys to success, according to Neal Doyle, coordinator of the new Harvard Innovation Lab.

“He was uncompromising in his mission, he had absolute certainty in his project, and an eternal drive and optimism for seeking the best,” Doyle said.

Since Jobs returned to the company in 1997, Apple has unleashed a continuous barrage of products that have changed the way people use computers, talk on the phone, and buy and listen to music.

“He’s one of the best public speakers ever,” Doyle said. “It was him selling the product as much as the product that made you compelled to buy it.”

This “consumerization” of computer technology is Jobs’ greatest legacy, according to Eddie Kohler, associate professor of computer science.

But Founding Director of the Harvard Initiative in Innovative Computing Alyssa A. Goodman said the pace Jobs set for frequent technology updates raises concerns about the longevity of information on computers—and necessitates the creation of new ways to preserve information.

“I don’t want to blame him for the culture that doesn’t care about it, but the extremely rapid pace of innovation—it’s sort of like politics. No one thinks about the long term,” she said. “It’s unpopular in Silicon Valley to talk about long-term longevity. His influence was to create more and more of this culture who wants to do the next great thing tomorrow.”

Members of that Silicon Valley culture are currently mourning the loss of a beloved leader in the way they know best—Goodman said her Twitter feed had been flooded with commemorations of Jobs’ life.

“It’s like a god died,” Goodman said.

—Staff writer Radhika Jain can be reached at radhikajain@college.harvard.edu.