Today, Wednesday October 5th, we lost Steve Jobs. He was sick; pancreatic cancer, 56 years old. I'm sure that the tributes are coming, the videos, the documentaries, etc., but this is my tribute to him.
His direct influence on my life goes as follows:
Steve Jobs first made an entrance into my life in 2004. I was graduating from high school, and was due for a congratulatory graduation gift from my parents. At this point, my life was like any other. Plagued by Blue Screens of Death, Comic Sans MS, viruses, and all the other nasty things that are associated with living a life under the control of Big Brother Microsoft. It was time for entering a new phase of my life, and my first Apple product was purchased.
It was beautiful. The box was beautiful. Even the cables were beautiful. It was everything I needed it to be. A small brownie-shaped white box that held every song I could ever imagine. Every moment of my life from then on had a soundtrack, and it was at the control of just my right thumb.
I had only seen the tip of the iceberg.
Three months later, I started college, where I met Mac OS X. It came in the form of a PowerBook. It had a G4 processor clocked at 1.33 GHz, and 512MB of RAM. It was the most gorgeously built machine I had ever used in my life. It ran smoothly, the software was clean and refreshing. It was invisible, yet completely integrated into everything I ever did. I was able to focus on my content, and I used it as nothing other than a computer should be. It was my canvas as an artist. Being a musician and being able to use a computer where I had no worries of crashing, security, viruses, etc., I was able to really develop what was important.
Pretty soon, the Apple products in my life grew over the years. I had a Mac, an iPod, and used all of the Apple software. iPhoto, GarageBand, iMovie; these were all embedded into my everyday life.
And then, it happened: I got a job at the Apple Store.
And then, it happened: I got a job at the Apple Store.
I worked there for about a year. It was amazing. Selling Apple products was easy, because I believed in Apple. I was able to see how amazingly well their products worked for me, so spreading this gospel to the poor, lost souls in the Windows world was just natural. This was a phase in my life where I really saw the true beauty of what Apple was trying to do. Not only were the core aspects of Macs simply better (stability, ease of use, efficiency), but the things that one doesn't even expect to be improved, were given, like unexpected perks at a hotel.
It just works.
And it works really well.
This is the philosophy that Steve Jobs himself instilled onto Apple. I remember watching a video of him giving the Commencement speech at Stanford U. This big-time CEO literally spent a few minutes actually talking about fonts. He was enticed by calligraphy and typography. He was thinking about the parts of the OS that one actually spends most of your time looking at.
At this point, Steve Jobs has more than just physical pieces of himself lying around my house (an iMac, iPhone, three iPods, a MacBook, two AppleTV's, a Mac Mini), but his philosophy, his boldness, and the unshakable firmness in the quality of his life and his work, have laid immovable foundations in my personal character.
"Stay hungry, stay foolish."
-- Steve Jobs
http://youtu.be/UF8uR6Z6KLc
