The iNterface man

Steve Jobs may be remembered for many achievements such as the Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, but what differentiated him from other IT pioneers is that he came up with the interface for the common man.

In 1984, when PC users saw a DOS prompt, Jobs gave the world the point and click Mac.

Around 2001, the time of clunky music players, Jobs gave you the iPod. The iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010 both carried forward the tradition of an easy-to-use interface.

Jobs also proved that a usable interface means more than marketing hullabaloo, especially for non-tech-savvy buyers. As Mr Krishnakumar Natarajan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, MindTree, pointed out, “Each one of the products he has introduced made computing much more usable for people who were not familiar with technology.”

And this impact touched not just users but competitors too. Mr Rohan Shravan, Founding Director of Notion Ink, the company behind the Adam tablet said, “We started working on our tablet in 2007, before the iPad. But we were inspired by the iPod and the iPhone.”

Jobs was a great innovator, but can his company continue to innovate after he is gone? Mr TK Kurien, CEO, IT Business and Executive Director, Wipro Ltd, said, “I am sure his great work will live on through the millions that he has inspired.”

But while innovation will continue, there will no longer be a Jobs anymore. As Mr Phaneesh Murthy, CEO, iGATE Patni, said, “He was a genius. The only person I know who started three companies, all of them having multi billion dollar market value and all changing the world in their own way. Nobody else can do that.”

Mr Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice-Chairman of Cognizant Technology Solutions, said: “More than the novel gadgets he pioneered as breathtaking combinations of art and technology, his legacy will be the sheer brilliance of the myriad ways in which he helped the world experience and appreciate its digital future with a sense of profound expectation and wonderment. In many ways, he personified the power of dreaming big as an instrument of effecting positive, unprecedented change,” he said.

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