On Steve Jobs

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I got my first home computer in 1982. It was a present for my ninth birthday. My dad picked it out.

It was not an Apple computer. It was a TI-99/4A, from Texas Instruments.

A few years later, we got a home computer for the entire family.

It was not a Macintosh. It was a PC.

I was never a Mac person. I grew up on PCs. When I went to college, my dad got me a Windows box, a 486. In law school, I got a laptop with Windows 95 on it.

In 1999-2000, I used a Mac while working as an editor. I worked at a very small company — four employees — and my boss was totally a Mac person. The Mac I used at work had OS 8, or maybe it was OS 9. See? I don’t even know which OS it was. I didn’t particularly like using it. I was a PC person.

When OS X came out, it looked really pretty. I started to think I might want to get a Mac someday. But I was a PC person, and it seemed like switching to the Mac would be a pain in the ass. Plus Macs were so expensive.

I didn’t get my first iPod until December 2005 — the 5G, the first video iPod. I got my first iPhone, the 3G, in November 2008.

Finally, just over a year ago, in the summer of 2010, I bought my first Mac — the 21.5-inch iMac.

And I love it.

I wish I’d grown up on Macs. I’m free associating in my head right now: the mid-80s, the Macintosh, the 1984 Summer Olympics in L.A., Diff’rent Strokes and Family Ties, Ronald Reagan, the Star Wars trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, a booming economy, optimism, being a kid, elementary school, computer labs, the Smurfs and the Superfriends on Saturday mornings, G.I. Joe and the Transformers on weekdays after school…

It seemed clear when Steve Jobs stepped down from Apple six weeks ago that the end was near. But it was still a shock to see the headline. Right there on the screen of my iMac, of course.

He was 56? That’s way too young. And yet sometimes I couldn’t believe he was only 56. He’d been around forever, for so long, that he had to be older than 56.

I’m sad that he won’t get to see how technology develops over the next few decades. He should have lived another 20 or 30 years. He should have been part of it, inventing the iTeleporter (nah, too long a name: the iPort?) or something nobody can even think of today.

But then again, he wasn’t an inventor. He didn’t create things out of thin air. He just made certain things the best things they could be.

The future was supposed to be about flying cars, and jet packs, and Dick Tracy-ish wristwatch communicators. Well, we still don’t have flying cars or jet packs. But we do have those crazy futuristic communicators, although we carry them in our pockets, not on our wrists.

I am not in love with my iPhone. But there are times when I use it, or just look at it, and I think: wow. Look at this elegant little device and the dozens of things it can do.

We are totally living in the future.

Thank you, Steve Jobs.

4 thoughts on “On Steve Jobs”

  2. I am not a mac person. I use them when I have to. They are good machines. But I will never be a mac person. I have issues with Apple as a company and how it treats its IP and how it treats its third party developers. I have issues with many mac people and their proselytizing nature. I do not own any Apple products, nor will I buy one any time soon.

    BUT

    I have enormous respect for Steve Jobs. (Not necessarily Steve Jobs the person — there are plenty of stories about him as a person that make it sound like he’s a man I would not have liked. But Steve Jobs the business man.) He managed to put his finger print on an entire company, and he took that company to a place where his finger print is firmly implanted upon American culture.

    The man was not an inventor , as you said. But he was an incredible marketer — the best in modern times, if not history. He did not invent portable digital music, but he refined it and marketed it better than anyone. He did not invent smartphones, but he made it sleek and with mass appeal on a personal level. He did not invent the tablet, but he managed to convince America against what was previously thought — that it was a useless technology that wasn’t quite phone and wasn’t quite computer. He did not invent the letter ‘i’, but he used it better than Shakespeare could have ever dreamed.

    I do not need to like Steve Jobs or Apple to appreciate what he did for technology, culture, and entrepreneurial aspirations. I do not need to every own any of his products to respect him. And I do respect him. And he will be missed. Nobody is out there like him. He leaves a large void, and I optimistically await to see what fills the gap. His sad, untimely departure leaves the door open for others to follow in his stead and innovate. I think he would have wanted it that way.

  3. I bought a Mac for my first computer – in 1990 – because two friends had them and loved them. I figured if I had any problems, I could go to them for help. But I never really needed help. It came with a 400-page manual that I doubt I ever opened more than once or twice.

    In those days, Apple was very much a niche company. Their products were more expensive. You could hardly ever go into a store and buy software, it usually had to be ordered from a catalog. I always said I’d stay with them down to their last percent of market share!

    I’ve always had Macs and I’ve been a very satisfied Apple customer over the past 21 years. PCs, with their different labeled drives, seemed kind of confusing to me. I never even used Microsoft Word until a few years ago, when we got PCs at work.

    It’s true that over the years Apple held its third-party developers on a very short leash. But in some ways I felt like that was a plus – it meant there would be a certain level of quality control and ease of use.

  4. Inventor, who never really invented anything. Might have been his biggest marketing stunt after all. As if having his name on patents out of “his” company means he did any “inventing”.
    Visionary, maybe. A business guy who understood how to sell technology, certainly.

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