RIP Steve Jobs
I don't know what to write, and don't feel like I have a lot to write, everyone has written so much already. I suppose all I can do is write about how I feel.
This morning I learned of Steve's passing. At first, as you do.. I thought it was a hoax. No. No hoax here. The likes of Leo Laporte and Chris Pirillo are already mid-live-stream talking about it. I was shocked. How can I be shocked when we all knew Steve was sick? Maybe I thought he would pull through it all. Or is that the image he portrays? The guy that just pulls through. Is Steve too big for death? My ride to work on the Vespa this morning was normal, I was smiling, thinking how awesome the day is, sunny, spring, nice. When I learned of Steve's passing, I started to think about my life with Apple. My first computer was an Apple IIc that mum brought home one day, I think 1986, I was about 9, in grade 4 of primary school, and was possibly the first kid in my primary school to hand in word-processed and printed (dot-matrix) home work! I thought it was the best thing ever, it took floppy disks, was quite integrated, just awesome. Eventually I got a joystick for it, and was playing games on it. Such fond memories of that machine. To think I sold it so I could buy an Amiga 500. *sigh* Mum brought home a number of Apple machines, Mac plus, Mac SE, and others, until one day she came home with an IBM clone, what a banger. It was horrible. Things didn't change much, except we eventually had windows, it was a very long time until I returned to Apple. I'd have to say, when I started making enough money to buy my own. Like many, I bought an iPod. Steve announced the iPod as an "ultra-portable" music player the size of a deck of playing cards. You can go anywhere with 1,000 songs in your pocket, and listen to those songs for 10hrs non-stop. Incredible right!? I must admit, I didn't jump on the bandwagon straight away, but it didn't take me long. I've had a number of iPods including mini's and nano's. I still have some of them, although now just use my iPhone 4 for music. Steve's keynote announcing the iPod was interesting. The crowd at the event must have thought the guy was on crack talking about music. Apple was becoming a music company. What the? Enough Apple history already…. I spent today moping around at work, watching Steve video's, watching twitter, reading web sites, posts, articles, watching live feeds, and so on. I will admit now, I didn't get much work done. I couldn't. It was an emotional day for me. Sure, I'd never met Steve, but I've been a big Apple fan for a long time, and just loved how the guy was so committed and such a visionary. Last month when Steve stepped down as CEO and Tim Cook took over, I was worried. I was waiting to see what would happen with the company. Not much really. Nice. I'd wondered for years what would happen if Steve stepped down. The internet was full of "oh no, this is the end of Apple". Hardly. People said "it's cool, he's still there, he's on the board, all good" right? Sure, why not, I can dig that. But now what? I have no doubt the legacy will carry on. Apple is a well-oiled machine with some of the finest, most talented humans on earth behind the beast that is. But you do have to wonder about the next technological break through's and industry headliners. Where once, the team could work closely with Steve, now they cannot. Even with Steve on leave, I'm sure they could have phoned him for advice, but no more. I'm quite sad that Steve has passed, but at the same time, happy that he can now rest in peace. I know what it is like to lose someone to a terrible disease. Rest in peace Steve.
