We lost Steve Jobs yesterday.
I can speak from the experience of first learning how to write code...on punch cards! They were still around on a few college campuses in the early '80s.
Then...the personal computer morphed, evolved, changed: from a keyboard you had to attach to a television to see anything, to Zenith green pixel screens - to the Apple. The Internet soon followed.
It was the Apple computer that made the mouse a prerequisite. At first, it was seen as "good for graphics" only. Then PC computers gained "mice." Software that could not talk between the platforms "looked" similar. Now there's no difference in what you see; how you use it. The two platforms "talk" to each other.
I called him Roddenberry's child: we all were. Dreaming a future of communicators (flip mobile phones), computer pads, automatic doors, medical diagnostic equipment, warp drive, the triumph of science and the exploration of other worlds. These things didn't exist except in the imagination of science fiction writers. We now have I-phones, I-Pads, medical diagnostic equipment that look like it's from a Next Generation set, the Alcubierre paper. Steve, like the rest of us, dreamed of making a difference.
No, the world is not like Star Trek. But Steve Jobs' hands-on involvement drove Apple Computer to heights they probably would have never imagined. In an era where executives negotiate their "severance package" up-front (i.e. their "golden parachute" if/when they fail), failure was not an option for Steve. Each innovation was personal. Each product was a part of his soul he shared with the world. Chief Executives are not at the moment a popular lot of late, nor many as concerned about their company's...or their country's success.
Perhaps we lost a type of CEO that [maybe] sadly, doesn't exist anymore...
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| The two Steves: Wozniak and Jobs, founders of Apple |
Emperor Meiji: Tell me...how he died.
Nathan Algren: I will tell you...how he lived.
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