When the sad news was released by Apple, it was in the very early morning in China. But almost all the top nationwide news media covered the news on their frontpages hours later when the day in China started.
The way Jobs' death reported was basically the same with U.S. news media: memorizing his legendary life, honoring his innovative contribution to the world and learning from his spiritual leadership.
On social media sites, people spread the news out, grieved over this inspiring individual.Till 7:00 p.m. Oct. 6, there were 63,000,000 micro-blog users posted to give condolence to Steve Jobs. However, from my observation, not as many people mourning over Jobs' death know deeper than "he is the designer of iPhone I used to post my micro-blog." iPhone 4 caused a huge stir once it was launched, and it's becoming more and more indispensable among people who are into a kind of fashion, especially among younger generation. However, iPhone is too expensive for many Chinese people to afford, sometimes wrong values in comparing with iPhone caused drama -- a boy sold his kidney to buy an iPhone 4 for his girlfriend. This is an extreme case though, it's true that a lot of people decide to buy an iPhone not because they really know how convenient and effective it makes life to be, but due to the trend and peer pressure. Many people are disappointed that no one will possibly to bring surprise with iPhone 5 or other future products.
Still, many others thanks to Steve Jobs for bringing the change to the wold and our lives. There is a dispute among people who didn't think or expect Jobs deserved such massive coverage by the media and attention by the publics. It is known that although China is a big market for Apple products, Steve Jobs hadn't been showing interest in Chinese market and he had never been to China before. Based on the contribution to the country and its people, some individuals like Longping Yuan, who invented hybrid-wheat which saves a lot of Chinese people's lives to certain degree, deserved more respect and attention.
Another point of view which I believe is valuable indicates that Steve Jobs' death is provoking, and Chinese people especially practitioners in technologies and manufacture should learn from Jobs' innovative spirit, develop creative and useful product for people to improve their quality of life, to make their life as challenging and surprising, rather than following other patent and being a copycat. This advocacy is of great value in China now and eternally.
There are two things that I think Apple always do well: innovation and communications. People grant Apple such high value in their products partly because of their original ideas and design, yet mostly because of their powerful and effective marketing and public relations campaigns. Take the example of Steve Job's death, it was definitely a huge news. What Apple did smartly was to connect the death of Steve Job's death with the prospective launch with IPhone 4S and IPhone 5, which set up a good pre-marketing campaign for the new products.
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