A small tribute to Steve Jobs
There are many people who remember where they were and what they were doing when they found out that John Lennon had died. Others remember the death of JFK with similar sadness, the memory sharp and untouched after nearly 50 years.
I will always remember where I was when I discovered that Steve Jobs had died (I was at JoAnn craft store buying Halloween supplies and my father called me to tell me, about five minutes after the Apple press release went live). Steve Jobs is to my generation as John Lennon - and JFK before him, and Martin Luther King, and all of those wonderful, amazing, awe-inspiring visionaries - is to previous generations. He changed us for the better.
Apple products are everywhere, from the iPod and iPhone to high-end graphics and video machines. They're the standard of the print industry, the video industry, and the music industry. Jobs made a computer that was stylish, trendy, and best of all - it worked, near-flawlessly.
I've used Apple computers nearly my entire life, although I also had exposure to Windows machines. I had an Apple IIe that I played Oregon Trail on, and an ancient Apple laptop the size of an electric typewriter, so huge that it required a built-in shoulder strap. When I worked in journalism, those were the only computers available. The same goes for photography and video production - it's all Apple, all the time.
Steve Jobs had enthusiasm. He was the ultimate salesman - not because he wanted to make money, but because he believed absolutely in the product he was selling. His love of his company shows in his death: his obituaries, published throughout the world on various news outlets, invariably include his 50,000 employees as survivors. He considered Apple, Inc. to be his family, and did his absolute best to make it the best family he could have.
Because of Steve Jobs, computers have font faces. Because of Steve Jobs, we have cellular phones that surf the internet and tablet computers reminiscent of Star Trek. Steve Jobs brought us into the future, and it is up to us to make that future every bit as awe-inspiring as he hoped it would be.
We'll miss you, Steve, and I really hope that what we make of the future is as amazing as you envisioned it.
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." - Steve Jobs