Early morning news yesterday that the legendary Steve Jobs had passed away took a while to sink in – and then hit much harder than I would ever have imagined. I have never owned an Apple product and often had mixed feelings about the company whose name was synonymous with the man.
Early morning news yesterday that the legendary Steve Jobs had passed away took a while to sink in – and then hit much harder than I would ever have imagined. I have never owned an Apple product and often had mixed feelings about the company whose name was synonymous with the man.
Yet after pausing for a few minutes of reflection, it dawned on me that although I had never owned anything sporting an Apple logo, I had over the years acquired, and worked on, innumerable products that were dragged to market by companies playing catch-up with Apple.
The ubiquitous Windows operating system that drives almost all computers in this country was devised by Microsoft in a desperate attempt to match the advanced graphic user interface deployed by Apple in the 80s.
My first ever experience with a real personal computer – I had fiddled with Ataris, Commodores and Sinclairs before – was in December 1985 when someone allowed me to play on an Apple Macintosh for a night.
It completely redefined the concept of a night of ecstasy – pictures that could be manipulated on-screen with a mouse!
Jobs will be remembered as a visionary who could turn great ideas into reality.
Having ideas alone seldom takes anyone very far: it was his ability to make things happen that distinguished im from the rest of us. Ironically, his great inspiration was death – explained in this often quoted extract of a commencement speech he delivered at Stanford University in 2005:
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
There has already been a massive outpouring of grief and condolences for Jobs's passing. President Barack Obama, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and media magnate, Rupert Murdoch, are but a few of the high-profile individuals who have expressed their dismay at his death. The Google website carries a discrete link marked Steve Jobs: 1955-2011 on the front page of its search engine. The link takes users directly to the front page of the Apple website, which displays a large black-and-white photograph of the legendary innovator.
Perhaps the reason Jobs's death affected me so intimately was because we share a first name and he was just five months younger than I am.
Or maybe it was because he was such an inspiring thinker in a time when there is a dearth of inspiration.
