Sad to hear that the world has lost one of its most important innovators, Steve Jobs. It’s difficult to tally the impacts he had on our lives, but I for one am a bit irked by the comparisons that are being made regarding Jobs and Thomas Edison.

The more I read about Edison and his jealous battles with a true genius, Nikolai Tesla, the more I think Edison was the lesser inventor, and almost certainly the lesser man.

Granted, he is credited with perfecting the incandescent light (and mass producing it), the motion picture camera, the stock ticker, the sound recording phonograph, and Direct Current power distribution.

But DC power was deeply flawed by comparison to Alternating Current – invented by Tesla – who also brought forth the AC induction motor, X Ray tubes, wireless energy transmission, radio, robotics, spark plugs, concepts for electric vehicles, and vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft.

Fortunately for us, Jobs’ genius was recognized during his lifetime, after it appeared all might be lost with Apple Computer in the 1990’s including a personal fave – the Newton, which was reborn a few times and finally ended up the iPad. Jobs’ string of brilliant products and industry changing concepts blew the doors off every other company, and executive, in America.

The best thing about Jobs was to him, technology products – which were beige and boring when dominated by the IBM/Microsoft team – could be remade to be beautiful, pleasurable, and fun. Through it all, Steve Jobs had a Walt Disney quality – creating things that make us happy.

~Christopher Smith