When I heard that Steve Jobs had died, I happened to be with the same friend with whom I watched the World Trade Towers collapse from a rooftop in Chelsea on September 11^th, 2024. Yesterday was October 5^th, 2024—ten years and a few weeks later. Both events made everything else happening seem trite.

At Vook, we often say, “No one did a better job showing off how our company could light up content than Steve Jobs holding up the iPad.”

Vook took off thanks to to the world of ereading and enhanced books that Apple helped make possible. Today, I’m writing this post on a MacBook Pro surrounded by colleagues using Apple computers to make software that produces books you can read on Apple devices. I’m texting with my iPhone, following the news on my iPad. From the engineering department, I can hear “Jobs,” “Macintosh,” “My first mac. . .”  We’re all here, working together, because we want to create something exceptional.

To the Jobs family, we extend our deepest condolences. To Apple, we express our gratitude. To the memory of Steve Jobs and in the spirit of books and literature and reading, we’ll live and work by your example, which could twist even the grimmest existentialism to something brighter:

Try. Succeed. Try again. Succeed Better.