Connecting the dots!

Initially I thought of naming this post "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish", then I remembered ,Rashmi Bansal have already used this phrase multiple times in many of her posts and she had recently written her first book with the same name. So I thought of changing the name of the post to “Connecting the dots”.

People who follow ramblings that happen in and around Apple and Steve Jobs, might have got from where I picked both the phrases. I took them from Steve Jobs commencement speech to the graduates of Stanford University in 2005 where he told three thought-provoking stories of his life namely “Connecting the dots”,” Love and Loss” and “Death”. I used to hear this speech from youtube during my night shift days in office. Somehow it gave me a push to keep it going through those tough periods. Till today whenever I feel dispirited and depressed, I use this as my reference point.




Just some time back before writing this post, I finished watching “Pirates of Silicon valley” a movie, which I have been eagerly waiting to see for a long time. Somehow there were not enough seeds for me to leech this movie from torrent previously.But finally I got the ‘piarted’ version of the movie from one of my colleague recently. Pirates of Silicon Valley is a 1999 film ,written and directed by Martyn Burke which documents the rise of the home computer through the rivalry between Apple Computer and Microsoft .This movie potrays how apple computer created its initial computers Lisa and Breakthrough Macintosh using the concepts which was pirated from Xerox Palo Alto Labs.Similar to this Microsoft pirated the stuffs used in Macintosh to create its revolutionary Windows(I wondor why Microsoft ramble so much on Piracy then). The movie establishes that Bill Gates tricked Apple into sharing its proprietary code, enabling Microsoft to seize the business market for a graphical operating system (and, by way of that, the emerging market for personal computers).

There were some very riveting scenes in the film which I am not very sure whether all of them are true.The movie makes a significant point that when IBM purchased MS-DOS from Gates and Allen, they had no actual OS .They went to Seattle to purchase it from a designer for $50,000 that the film curiously neglected to name.Then there was a scene where Steve jobs fires a candidate from interview after asking him ,”Are you a virgin?” and finding he is. There was another, where HP president mocks Steve Woznaik first computer saying, “Steve, you say this gadget of yours is for ordinary people .I don’t understand what ordinary people are going to do with Computers”. Then there was one where Steve Jobs ignores Bill Gates completely in San Francisco Computer Fair 1977 when Bill tries to allure Steve for a deal. Then the whole episode between John Schully and Steve Jobs was also very interesting and well filmed.

I believe, what set apart, Bill and Jobs from others, inspite of all these piracy stuffs, was their beliefs and passion for their Ideas that it will surely bring a revolution for generations to come and rest we all know is history. There is a very interesting dialogue at the start of the movie which Steve jobs says to the Ridly Scott, Director of Macintosh first TV commercial. This perhaps tells about his passion and craze for what he was upto.

“I don't want you to think of this as just a film, some process of converting electrons and magnetic impulses into shapes and figures and sounds. No. Listen to me. We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here? We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist or a poet. That's how you have to think of this. We're rewriting the history of human thought with what we're doing.”

I would like to end this post with a small excerpts from Steve’s Commencement Speech at Stanford 2005.

“…you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life….”