It took me longer than most, but this October marks year four.
It also marks the time of no turning back, of what was I thinking?, of I can’t wait to see what’s next, and above all, a heartfelt thanks. I loved computers again. No, I loved getting things done, again.
You made my life immeasurably better…well, so did Bill, but you seemed to do it with so much more style, elegance, and just plain fun. I dunno, like a paper delivery route in a red Ferrari?
May you never rest, but instead live on in everything Apple does.
Update: I think I agree with just about every word of this.
Amen.
My first computer was an Apple IIE. My favorite computer is the one I’m on now, a 13″ Macbook Air. Steve’s work and vision affected my life almost right from the start, through today.
RIP Steve, thank you.
It was nearly a year ago I traded in my 15″ MBP for the top of line 13″ MB Air with the solid state drive. Where I used to have 3 PC boxes in different locations and a notebook, this is my only computer and I simply have the 27″ LED cinema display, Bluetooth keyboard and magic mouse both here and at home.
I played my first computer games on a IIE and a TRS-80 at a community college in 1980.
A lovely eulogy – even if my first computer was a Radio Shack TSR-80.
Jesus, I’m old.
I feel like he was a member of my family. My husband and I have a software business and are just a tad younger than Steve and Bill. What a man. So sad.
There is a tear on my Macbook.
Yes, it is mine.
Apple Powermac Peforma (forget the model number) was my first computer. A whole 8MB of RAM. :D
He was a remarkable man who founded a great company with outstanding products, and employed a great many people. A sad day indeed.
OK, but what about his diet? From my quick research this AM, he went vegan/vegetarian/pescadorian (take your pick) in 1974. If, indeed, he has eaten little or no mammal meat – hey, fish is flesh, right? – for some 37 years, and he still got and died from cancer, what does that say about vegan/vegetarian/pescadorian eating? And we can be sure that treatment cost was never a concern.
The very first computer I ever used was a gf’s Apple III so that I could access a data base via 300 baud modem. You could see each letter pop up on the screen, it was that slow.
I respect Apple and its products immensely, but I’ll never own one, I’m sure. Way outta my cost league. The reason the computers work so well is not any kind of magic or higher quality level, it is the “benevolent dictator” hand of Apple. You may get a Mac OS to run on your PC, that’s not a problem. What is, is that chances are you have no drivers for many functions. If Apple never used the Brand XYZ wifi card, there is no driver for it. And the whole OS series came from FreeBSD, a free Unix fork. What Apple geniously did with it, however, is make it non-Geek friendly in many ways that the Linux community still doesn’t “get.”
As my brother said after putting a Mac OS on his Toshiba laptop, “I have new respect for Bill and Windows. Getting Windows to run SO many pieces of hardware.”
Anyway, here’s to a visionary and world changing man!
Paul, yes, this is something I have long recognized. I used to wonder why Apple refused to go open source hardware in order to compete head to head with MS, but now I understand why. By controlling the hardware they have a finite and reasonable set of combinations a given OS and apps have to work under and they are not shy about limiting backwards compatibility either.
Windows has to run on what’s effectively an infinite combination of hardware and results are sometimes predictable.
I really do like the coolness factor of Apple products, as well as the high quality. That top of line MacBook Air is the most impressive computer I have ever owned, and on many levels.
Not to hijack this into an OS discussion, but over the last few months I’ve really immersed myself in Linux. I must have looked at some 20 different distros including the flavors of them. I run XP on The Mothership (my desktop) and Windows 7 on my Netbook.
I have concluded this: All OS’s suck to some degree. My favorite Macaholic friend is having serious problems with Lion on his desktop. All OS’s are amazing. Although there are a number of things I don’t like how 7 does certain things, I’ve come to respect it more.
But just like religion, each to their own. And if someone starts sounding religious about their favorite OS, slam the door in their face. It doesn’t take a god to have religion.
Lion my my MBA run noticeably faster. As an early adopter I always elect to have some issues here and there. The biggest so far is that I get the spinning beach ball a bit too often in Safari, and a couple other minor things, but all in all things work fine.
Apparently he became a Buddhist at some point in his youth so that could account for all the veggies in the diet.
Huh?
Apparently he went to India in 1974 where he picked up meditation, more than Buddhism, and veggie eating. Yes, he would have been 19.
Macs of various makes and models at home. Iphone in my pocket, ipads in my kids’ backpacks. His innovation and creativity are appreciated continually at our home.
thank you Steve
The popularity of Apple products is a striking reminder of the inspiring fact that people have the ability to recognize excellence and adopt it en masse, rejecting the old crap that does not work efficiently.
Now, if only we did the same thing with our government, education, and health care systems…
I know, even more because the fact is so fresh, it might be kind of mean, inappropriate to point it out.
Uhm, I hope it isn’t, together with my bad english, too much unpleasant, but whatever: I’m gonna say it.
I only recently discovered that Jobs has been Frutarian (“Apple”…) and then Vegan for quite some of his life.
Who knows… but I have to admit that I ask myself a lot if his diet is a big component of what lead him to his bad health.
From what I could gather on the intertubes this AM, Jobs was pretty private about a lot of his life. Just because someone says Steve did X, doesn’t mean he did it. I saw a good example of that a few hours, ago, “I didn’t know SJ was vegetarian! (link) The link was just some blogger saying SJ was vegetarian. No proof, no references.
No wonder Americans vote for so many fools. (“Someone said it, it must be true!”)
I think it safe to say that he probably, emphasis on probably, didn’t eat mammal meat. He might have eaten fish, shellfish, or not. Or, he might have been traditional ovo-lacto vegetarian. Or, he might have been full fledged vegan. I’d say all three are possible at different times in his 35 years of shunning meat.
Only his private chef knows for sure………….
It’s also safe to say that meat eaters die young too. Shit happens.
Yeah, but which of us has more fun on the way? A nice medium-rare porterhouse vs. baked tofu?
Yep, my first computer was an Apple IIe. I learned to program Basic on it. I have been a windows and Linux guys since the 90s, but I recently got back into Apple after I purchased my Iphone.
I programmed BASIC, PASCAL and FORTRAN on an HP 3000 “mini computer” (if you know, you’ll get the quotes). The manuals were 3″ thick, as was was the security manual for the HP. But it was cool in the sense that many people could work from terminals and code, compile and run online. This was at a community college and when I went to Oregon State, they were still on a punchcard system (1981), so I dropped CS and took up bus admin (minors in math, cs, naval science).
It was the iPhone that motivated me to drop PC and go to Mac. I want full integration. That goes for sex, too.
Both my parents were meat eaters….both died of colon cancer…my mom at 52 and dad at 86. I thought it didn’t help that he charcoal bbq’d his steaks every week. The steaks always had black on at least the edges as I recall. They also ate a lot of fruit, veg, breads, and pasta etc. …and drank homemade wine with meals.
Lucy, it sucks that anyone loses anyone they love. Older I get, the more that affects me. But I consider anyone who lives to 86, provided he lived relatively well up to near the end, a winner.
Paleo is no magic. Guess what? Some people will still die young, even on a perfectly Paleo diet. It’s only about odds. And Odds are, you’ll do better and enjoy your one and only life longer.
Lucy, your parents were a lot more than meat eaters. I’m not sure why eating meat is such a yes/no concept yet no one questions the carbs, the sugars, the grains. There’s a mounting body of evidence that cancers thrive on glucose. And, not sure why crispy meat is considered the guilty perp. If we evolved eating cooked meat we surely evolved ways to negate the crispy stuff, no?
Sorry about your Mom. Too young by today’s standards.
Well, here’s a bit of answer and a lot of irony: From the NYT today, “He invited a close friend, the physician Dean Ornish, a preventive health advocate, to join him for sushi at one of his favorite restaurants, Jin Sho in Palo Alto.”
So, at least late in his life, a fish eater. Maybe always. Not vegan. Not vegetarian. Pescatorian.
So, how’s that Ornish diet working out for you, Steve?
I personally find that the computer easily takes over my life. It all about balance I find keeping away from the computer harder then eating a good diet.