Steve Jobs dies aged 56

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Grum79
1 year ago
I'm 32 years old which puts me in a very fortunate position. I've grown up with personal computing, I remember it from the start. I remember the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, my father had one at his office and eventually I had one in my bedroom.
I remember typing commands in Basic to get games to load. Then as I grew older I started to create my own games in Basic. As I went through school I discovered the BBC Micro and could finally draw pictures on the screen by typing a series of commands or I could get the computer to draw things automatically by creating a string of commands and getting it to repeat theses commands. I could program a computer.
Pretty soon I was given an Atari ST and my whole world changed again. A world of creativity opened up that seemed amazing to me. Apart from the much improved gaming and the more rugged 3.5 inch floppy disk. I could connect a keyboard to my computer through MiDi and create music (although it would have helped if I had some musical talent) and I could finally use a mouse to do it rather than a keyboard.
Then I got to high school in 1991 and my entire view of personal computing changed forever. I discovered the Apple Macintosh. At first I thought it was a fairly silly looking machine with a tiny screen and a monochrome display, even my Atari was colour.
Then I was taught how to use the Apple Mac. I was shown a world where you no longer needed to type commands. You just used the computer to do what you needed to do. The Apple Mac allowed people who knew nothing about Basic or logic or programming to create drawings in minutes that would have taken me days in LOGO. Yet still the programming existed in HyperCard.
With HyperCard I learnt to create what would go on to become known as a website. A graphical environment that allowed people who had never used a computer to easily interact with a machine to gain information they required.
While I was at school I witnessed the introduction of the colour Apple Mac and the creation of the Apple Newton, a device that recognised my handwriting and turned it into text. Imagine that, no longer would you have to type using a keyboard, you could simply write what you wanted to say and the computer would turn it into a nicely formatted professional looking document.
Sadly, my time with the Apple Macintosh passed all too quickly and when I left high school and entered a world of Windows 95, a world that seemed so backwards it was unreal. Why would people use these machines? Hadn't they heard of Apple? Everything was slow, nothing seemed to work as it should the whole experience was, at best, kind of "clunky".
It was a long time before I was earning enough money to be able to afford my own computer and during this time I almost forgot how good Apple Computers were. In 2001 I purchased my first laptop, a PC and instantly wished I was back in 1994 at high school using a Mac. Things were so much better then.
As time moved on and my earnings increased my ability to purchase new and exciting shiny electronic objects improved. I purchased my first iPod, a 30GB version. At last I could carry my whole CD collection around with me. I could go to work with prepared playlists and know that I had music suitable for almost every occasion at my fingertips. Not only that but if I didn't own a song or album I could purchase it legally on iTunes and download it at home. I had access to almost every song I could ever want. Within minutes I could go from deciding I wanted a song to listening to it in my car through my iPod.
Finally, after all these years computers were  assisting me in my daily life in ways I'd only imagined in my childhood. It was a couple more years before I finally purchased my first Mac but believe me I wish I had done it years ago. Not only was everything so much slicker than in windows it also WORKED. That's not to say I couldn't get it working in windows but with Apple I didn't need to spend hours trying to figure out how to make it work, it just happened with no conflicts and no error messages.
Within less than a year I had made massive improvements to the way I worked. Multi-touch gesture control allowed me to perform tasks instinctively almost on a subconscious level. It wasn't long before I changed my whole technology experience. It started with the iPod, then came the MacBook Pro followed quickly by the Time Machine a device that would back up my computer without me telling it to. Never again would I have to worry about losing weeks worth of work  because I'd been too busy to back up my machine.
After the Time Machine came the iPhone and Mobile Me. A package that meant my phone and computer were always in sync. I could keep essential documents on my iDisk giving me access to them all the time. I could be out on a bike ride and get a call from a client and send them a link to a file right there and then. Now computers were not only making my work easier, they were freeing me from the office, allowing me to make my life more enjoyable.
These days people mock me for being a Mac obsessive. Both my wife and I have MacBook Pros, our Time Machine sits in the corner running our network and backing up our computers, our Mac Mini sits connected to the living room TV and stereo giving us access to our collection of films, TV programs and music. Our Apple TV is hooked up to the bedroom TV so we can watch a film in bed. I've still got an iPod which I carry everywhere, I can connect it to my car stereo and listen to the music I want to hear, not what the radio wants to play me. Our iPhones give us access to the Internet when we want to quickly look something up, they let us know when we've received an email and if we need to we can answer it straight away or wait until we're back at our desks. Not only that but our iPhones allow us to control our entire home entertainment environment, the Remote app means I can access the iTunes Library on my wife's computer and have a song play from the office speakers while she can use hers to tell the Apple TV to play a TV show from the Mac Mini.
Finally after all these years computers have integrated into my daily life to improve it, to make things easier and they do it it a way that is so easy you forget you are using a computer.
None of this would have been possible without the vision and determination of Steve Jobs. As I sit here typing this on the iPad I purchased just days ago I am filled with sadness that the man that did so much to improve my life will not see the company he created continue to grow and improve in ways I cannot yet imagine.
Thank you Steve, thank you for everything you have given me.
Sent from my iPad
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Esat Dedezade
1 year ago
A nice read and a fitting tribute, thank you.
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