I know, I know. Everyone seems to be writing something about the passing of Steve Jobs. While I never had the privilege of meeting him, I have used his products for almost thirty years. While some may argue about his ‘contribution’ to society, I don’t think there can be any doubt that he changed the way we communicate.
I’ve been using a Mac since 1985. A small business with which I was involved bought a Macintosh 512k, and I was hooked. In no time at all, I was ‘Mr. Computer Guy’, an ‘expert’ in everything Mac. The Mac was so different from anything else out there. And how incredibly useful: it had no hard drive, it only used single-sided (400k) disks, it needed an external drive to run any other program, but we did everything with it. We had System and Finder on one disk, and Microsoft Word 1.0 on the other. We made newsletters and brochures, did all of our correspondence with it, and using pfsFile we ran whatever databases we needed. I’ve still got that Mac in storage.
Later on, I got a PowerBook 150. What a cool laptop! After that, it was a Mac Classic. Still later, it was MacBooks for the kids upon entering high school. When The Girl went to university, we got her a MacBook Pro. I’m writing this on my iMac. And that’s just the computer side of things. I haven’t even mentioned the iPods, iPod Touches, iPhones, iPads . . .
Steve Jobs changed the way we work, listen to music, communicate, watch movies (don’t forget Pixar: Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars . . .). His products were cool, stylish, even sexy. His company was cool, stylish, even sexy. While he wasn’t the only one creating and building all the Apple products, he certainly was the driving force behind them. As the public face of Apple, he made people want to buy Apple products. His enthusiasm was infectious; I’m sure many CEOs envied the way he connected with people and made people want to buy things they probably didn’t know they needed. How many people do you know who bought the iPad AND the iPad 2, or who have several iterations of iPod or iPhone?
Steve Jobs was truly one-of-a-kind, and it is difficult to think of Apple without thinking of him.
R.I.P., Steve Jobs. Well played, sir.
pablospages 