I remember my father buying The Apple II in 1980 and everyone thought he was crazy. I was just a kid of about 13 when I got onto my fathers new computer, and Jobs was 25– two years younger than Marc Zuckerberg is today (I compare them for the sole reason that they were both such successfull tech leaders at such a young age). Today, as I walk home from the office at 10PM, I will bring a lit candle and leave it outside the Philadelphia Apple Store, RIP Steve Jobs.
In 1984 I graduated from high school, the same year the greatest commercial ever made came out– everyone that saw it airing at the time, brilliantly using the famous George Orwell story as a metaphor, has images ingrained on their mind. Mac vs. Big Brother were inextricably linked with me vs. some of the @SkidmoreCollege kids of a sort I’d had little experience with: very rich and not very concerned with intellectual pursuits or being creative (sorry @BillGates). I could never have chosen a better college- it was full of fantastic, hard working young people. I do remember this small minority of college students when I think of the term Big Brother: they remind me of some senior executives using clever accounting to take home bank. And I’m not using bank in the slang sense: maybe a bank is more on target. Jobs will forever be famous for his $1 a year salary.
My memories of a love of computers developed through so many Mac product lines I don’t think I can count them. Steve Jobs was behind the best of them. In 1996, the year before Jobs returned to Apple, I did a final presentation for Advertising Management as part of my MS program in Mass Communication. I argued that the Power Mac should be the new business computer of choice, largely due to its ease of use and speed– this after originally preparing an argument for it as the center of multi-media for the home. My professor thought it was brilliant to describe why the Mac would propel interactive media consumption in the home, and the Web would be at the center. She thought I was silly to drop that idea and choose a different advertising strategy for the “client” I’d chosen. But she still gave me an straight A. Silly me.
Steve Jobs was made into an idol in the tech world at a time when we needed one– from Philadelphia to Phoenix. My first visit to a Mac store was in Baltimore. The minute I walked in I knew Steve Jobs– once again– got it right . If Richard Branson could figure out how to make an airline succeed with experience in the music industry and record stores— Steve Jobs could certainly do retail and in fact re-invent the retail experience
It took me weeks this year to accept the fact that Jobs made Apple the highest valued company in the US. Having lived through Apple and Microsoft fights of the 80s and 90s, when Apple seemed the loser so often, it was difficult to digest the monumental growth the company has seen over the past 6 years thanks to Jobs. He had plenty of faults. I can’t help but think of him in glowing, effusive terms right now, of course. He did, for example, have a temper that many would describe as unfairly captious.
We all wanted him to be the visionary in his retirement, the wise sage! How completely unfair to take him away at a time when he was at the pinnacle of his life. How unfair that he couldn’t watch us tech industry junkies pick up where he left off, from the sidelines. He would have jumped onto the playing field to chime in like the soccer dad at his son’s Saturday game. The Iphone and MacBook Pro kept everyone happy at a time when the world faces one crisis after another. Light a candle everyone. The Apple store on Walnut in Philadelphia seems the appropriate place.
RIP Steve Jobs.
