I never met the man, as much as I wanted to it just wasn't in the cards. If I could have I would thank him for inventing my world from day one.
When I was a really young boy, my father was one of those people who would adopt new technology and constantly put it in front of me and my brothers. "this is the future." he'd tell us. Staring into the monochrome screens and the odd little box with a button on it next to the keyboard.
It was like strange dark magic. Tapping into a primal newness. It was an IBM knockoff yes. But it cost nearly as much as the real deal Apple II. It wasn't till much much later that I bought my first apple products. When looking at Apple in those days it was through to glossy pages of the early days of computer magazines. The magazines that would include pages of code to type in and play an ASCII version of Donkey Kong. I would read of this wacky band of creators. Every piece of newness that I learned to work with, they were steps ahead.
Going to school, first grade was my first time using an Apple IIe. Oregon trail an often pastime. The early paint program was the big eye opening moment. Sill monochrome but still so magical. Painting with a mouse, unthinkable. Going home to what I had there was jarring. At that point I started to tinker and experiment. Learning at that early age to learn this alien world. I had few friends but I had a working knowledge of how to put a computer together when I was 7. Inspired by that Steve Jobs guy from the magazines. He was this guy with his friends in a garage who made cool things that were just a step ahead. I wanted to do that, in a time a 7 year old should be playing with action figures and running from cooties.
Then my school got an early Macintosh.
It got real. More futuristic. The paint program was far and away better. Color. Insanity. Jobs and crew did it again. Of course this was a few years after it was introduced, my school was behind the curve. Still using those same Apple IIe machines well into the 90's.
Apple and the industry sparked a new amorphous form of my creativity. It forced me to see things differently. Unconventional new ways to achieve the same goals. A new set of tools. Steve Jobs and the Woz really started that and I owe a lot to their crazy devices.
My father in 2008 got pancreatic cancer. When he was diagnosed he died within the month. Steve Jobs had the same thing, just a rarer form that could be dealt with to a degree. I still can't help but get the same feeling today as I did when my father died. In the conventional sense I feel a loss, sadness. Then on the other side a thankful respect for all the new things they brought to my world.
I write this on my first generation iPad. I do a lot of my artwork on this. The entire blog you're reading is almost entirely created on an iPad. I use a MacBook pro to do anything else I do digital. I'm not speaking from the cult hive mind bullshit.
Steve Jobs. Like him and Apple or not. He was truly a visionary who created the modern world, and with his friends he changed the world. Things we now take for granted. He had a hand in. Like a modern day Edison.
Sorry for the ramble. You will be missed,sir.
Godspeed Steve.
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