# Steve Jobs' Death When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, the internet responded within hours with one of the largest coordinated tribute waves the tech industry had ever seen. Homepages turned grayscale, #SteveJobs blew past Twitter's rate limits, and by the next morning Tumblr and 4chan had spun up a whole genre of Apple-logo silhouettes, 'i-' prefixed puns, and advice animals built from his turtleneck portrait. ## Origin Apple replaced its homepage with a black-and-white portrait of Jobs on October 5, 2011, confirming that the 56-year-old co-founder had died from complications of a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor he had been fighting since 2004[2]. Marketwatch, the Associated Press and Gizmodo all filed at 7:34 p.m. ET, and Google News counted roughly 1,900 obituary articles within the first hour of the AP report[1]. A small private funeral was held on October 7, with public memorial gatherings springing up outside Apple stores in the United States and overseas[3]. Apple kept a grayscale epitaph portrait live at apple.com/stevejobs for two weeks, alongside a rememberingsteve@apple.com inbox where the public could send condolences[2]. - **Platform:** Apple.com / Twitter (viral spread on Tumblr and 4chan) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2011 ## Overview The visual language of the Steve Jobs' Death tributes leaned hard into Apple iconography. Videoblogger Ben Hughes posted a two-pane image of an old beige Macintosh next to a modern iMac on Tumblr the night of the announcement, and it pulled tens of thousands of notes overnight[4]. Copycats silhouetted Jobs's profile into the bite of the Apple logo, while puns like 'iHeaven,' 'iSad' and 'Only 56' ran through Twitter timelines for days[1]. The week also produced two long-lived advice animal series, Steve Jobs Says and Scumbag Steve Jobs, which paired his black-turtleneck portrait with jokes about pancreatic cancer and Apple's control-freak product decisions[7]. Athens-based designer Charis Tsevis released photographic mosaics of Jobs assembled from Apple gadgets, originally sketched as a 'get well soon' gesture during his medical leave and redeployed as tributes[3]. His 2005 Stanford commencement address suddenly picked up more than 15 million fresh views in the weeks that followed[3]. ## How to Use The tribute format typically works one of three ways. Creators add a lowercase 'i-' prefix to a death or afterlife word ('iHeaven,' 'iSad'), silhouette Jobs's profile into the bite of the Apple logo, or drop his turtleneck portrait into an advice-animal template with a punchline about Apple products or his diagnosis[7]. Grayscale portraiture is the common convention for sincere posts, while the Steve Jobs Says and Scumbag Steve Jobs series carry the darker jokes. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Steve Jobs' Death? It refers to the October 5, 2011 death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs at age 56 from complications of a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, and the online tribute wave of grayscale portraits, Apple-logo edits, 'i-' prefixed puns and Steve Jobs advice animals that followed within hours[2][1]. ### Where did Steve Jobs' Death come from? Apple confirmed the news on its homepage on October 5, 2011, with Marketwatch, the Associated Press and Gizmodo filing at 7:34 p.m. ET[1]. Tribute imagery started that same night on Tumblr, notably with Ben Hughes's two-pane old-Mac-versus-iMac post[4]. ### What does Steve Jobs' Death mean online? It became shorthand for a specific style of tech-industry mourning: grayscale portraits, Apple iconography, and 'i-' prefixed afterlife jokes like 'iHeaven' and 'iSad' that trended alongside #SteveJobs at up to 72,000 tweets per hour[3]. ### How do you use Steve Jobs' Death formats? Creators typically add a lowercase 'i-' prefix to a death or afterlife word, silhouette Jobs into the bite of the Apple logo, or use his turtleneck portrait in the Steve Jobs Says or Scumbag Steve Jobs advice animal templates[7]. ### Is Steve Jobs' Death still relevant? The tribute imagery is still cited as a classic case of coordinated online mourning, and Apple itself set the annual pattern by publishing a memorial video and letter from Tim Cook on the one-year anniversary in October 2012[3]. ## References 1. [https://gizmodo.com/5838847/steve-jobs-is-dead]() 2. [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/statement-by-apples-board-of-directors-2011-10-05]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/steve-jobs-death]() 4. [http://obviouslybenhughes.com/post/11084110015/rip-steve-jobs-1955-2011-c-2011-ben]() 5. [https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/l2als/steve_jobs_apple_ceo_has_died/]() 6. [http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/05/video-steve-wozniak-remembers-steve-jobs/]() 7. [http://memegenerator.net/Scumbag-Steve-Jobs]() 8. [https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/05/president-obama-passing-steve-jobs-he-changed-way-each-us-sees-world]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/steve-jobs-death Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library