Wednesday, October 5, 2011
CANCER SUCKS, VOL. XXXXI: The day after Apple announced the iPhone 4S, Steve Jobs finally succumbed to his long battle with pancreatic cancer. There are (as you'd expect), tributes galore, but Apple's own is just about perfect--simple and clean, just as the products Jobs pushed were--and we'd be remiss if we didn't note his passing.
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I thought at first I was oddly affected by his passing...but no, it's not odd at all. Jobs had a profound influence on our lives in how we generate content and how we consume content, for better or for worse, and I'll miss him terribly. All I can say is my thanks, Mr. Jobs, and my profound sympathies to your family and friends.
ReplyDeleteAnd c'mon, the man bought Pixar, gave them the reins and got out of the way with some minimal input. That's some good leadership there, trusting the people under him to do their jobs and demanding quality, quality, quality.
After the terminal patched in with an acoustic coupler modem they had in second grade, an Apple II+ was my first real computer I used in school. Learned to program BASIC on it, played Lemonade Stand, and the former in particular (in retrospect) really trained my mind how to think logically and construct ... anything. An Apple //c at home powered me through middle and high school at home, while god bless George Washington High School for having, like, the second high school Mac lab in the country when I started there in 1986.
ReplyDeleteWhere I am career-wise in a lot of ways is because of my early interactions with computers and being ahead of so many curves, and most of that work was on Apple computers.
<span>I was trying to think of what to say, but instead I'll defer to the President, who got it best:
ReplyDelete"There may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned about his passing on a device he invented."
As I sit here typing on my MacBook Pro, listening to a Podcast, with my iPod Touch on my desk...yeah, that about sums it up. </span>
Steven Levy: <span>His accomplishments were unmatched. People who can claim credit for game-changing products — iconic inventions that become embedded in the culture and answers to Jeopardy questions decades later — are few and far between. But Jobs has had not one, not two, but six of these breakthroughs, any one of which would have made for a magnificent career. In order: the Apple II, the Macintosh, the movie studio Pixar, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. (This doesn’t even include the consistent, brilliant improvements to the Macintosh operating system, or the Apple retail store juggernaut.) Had he lived a natural lifespan, there would have almost certainly been more.</span>
ReplyDeleteSteve's legacy is astounding when you start listing off all the devices, innovations, entertainment that he was a part of. And what can't be captured are the countless people who he collaborated with, who were inspired but what he did, and who are closer to their own breakthroughs thanks to his work.
ReplyDeleteI don't know who said it, but we've lost our generation's Edison.
Aside from all the products, AdAge recapped a lot of the music that Apple helped catapult into the mainstream.
ReplyDeletehttp://adage.com/article/news/10-songs-steve-jobs-apple-made-famous/229471/
Random tidbit--I had no idea the author Mona Simpson is his sister.
It almost became commonplace that Apple was going to come out with something new that was really, really cool. I was late the the MP3 game and just switched from a portable CD player to an iPod shuffle, which blew my mind. Now I rely on my iPhone more than probably any other technology other than electricity. I got stuck in an accident which closed the highway on my way to meeting just this morning and my phone allowed me to email my boss and the person I was meeting with, call another appointment to reschedule the time, and map my way off the highway, all while checking FB, Twitter, and some websites (hey, I wasn't really driving. I was sitting). Thanks a lot, Mr. Jobs, for making that situation a whole lot easier.
ReplyDeleteI'll miss his innovation and the confidence he inspired in and through his creativity. I've seen so many of his quotations about creativity on FB since last night and he just GOT it. His was a powerful message, both in word and in accomplishment.
One more thing...
ReplyDeleteI had long been a PC person, dismissive of the Cult of Mac, when I made the switch to Apple. I remember the disappointment I had turning it on. I was all ready for the hour(s) of installing and formatting and trying things over and over again before I could start, but with this, I just plugged it in and turned it on. This is supposed to be difficult! Then I realized what Steve Jobs had realized long before. No, it's not.
I used an Apple product for the first time in 1986, had my own Apple IIe by 1987, and never looked back. I proudly seat belted my Mac Classic into the passenger seat of my car for trips to and from college, then law school. I actually used a Macintosh portable (27 lbs! Portable, my ass...) for a month to see if I wanted to buy a laptop, then bought the PowerBook 180 that I had forever. I haven't been without an Apple product in my home since 1987, to say nothing of the shelves of DVDs from Pixar with which I am obsessed.
ReplyDeleteThe world needs more visionaries, and I'm inordinately sad that we now have one fewer. Rest in peace, Mr. Jobs.
I've long held the joking belief that Steve Jobs was an alien from a planet just slightly more advanced than ours, and in scouting for a new livable planet for his people (due to overpopulation or running out of resources or whatever) he came to Earth and decided to win the hearts and minds of Earthlings by slowly giving us bits of his planet's tech, which explains why Apple products are so far superior to anything made on Earth. So this whacked-out joke (but a little bit of me kind of wants to believe it) theory made me feel much better when I learned of his passing - he's not dead, he just went home to his planet. (You may laugh now, but when he returns with his alien buddies to take over, just remember who told you first... ;) )
ReplyDeleteIn 1984 my Dad bought his first MacIntosh. We had always been a technologically advanced household. My mother had been a programmer for the Fed in 1968. We had a Commodore 64. My brother programed in Cobal as a kid. So when the MacIntosh came out, we got it.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad's stpry was that he read through the whole manual to find out how to initialize a disk. There was nothing in it. He finally gave up, turned the thing on, hoped for the best, and inserted a blank disk. The computer put up a message, "You have inserted a non-initialized disk, would you like me to initialize it" It was love. We never looked back. By 1988 we had 3 Macs (4 when my brother was home) all "Apple Talked" to the Laser Printer. Steve Jobs did that.
I also wanted to point a link to this:
http://www.xkcd.com/931/
Cancer Sucks.
I think that all of you who know me, know how sad I was to learn of the passing of the giant. I can't really process it. I think I'm going to just pretend he is still alive as long as I can.
ReplyDeleteHe now stare out at me from my wallpaper. He lives on in my iMac at work.
ReplyDelete