When Steve Jobs passed away on Wednesday, it took me by surprise. I knew he was sick, but for him to pass away within two months of resigning was really unexpected. He really did keep working at the job he loved until the very end.
I thought back on my history as an Apple user. Way back in 1991, my family got its first computer. The Macintosh LC. Unlike most other people at the time, my father, for some reason, decided to purchase a Mac. He was in no way a computer person. I think one of his coworkers had recommended getting a Mac, and he went with it. And we stuck with Apple through the years. Even though all my friends had Windows PCs with cool games. Even through the dark days with Gil Amelio and the dozens of different computers they were making.
And then came Steve Jobs. And soon after came the first iMac. It was so different. Not that beige color that had come to be associated with Macs. And no floppy drive! At the time, I thought, that’s just crazy. How are we supposed to transfer files back and forth? And what on earth is this “USB” thing? I was skeptical. But then, I realized how little I had been using floppy disks. Software started to come on CDs, instead of on 27 floppy disks. Who wants to use these fragile square plastic things that only held 1.4 megabytes? We thought we all did. But Steve Jobs knew we didn’t need it. Other companies followed suit, and here we are in 2011. When’s the last time you used a floppy disk drive?
And then came Mac OS X. It was a completely new operating system. Developers would have to rewrite their programs to use new APIs. How were they going to get everyone to do that? But somehow, everyone did. You can’t even run pre-OS X programs as of 10.5. I never even missed it.
Steve Jobs then said that they’re going to switch to Intel processors in 2006, after using Motorola processors for decades. I was shocked. I always associated Intel with Windows. Now they’re going to be in Macs? But somehow, he made it work. Apple even seems to get the fast processors from Intel before other companies do. I thought it was a crazy change. But now hardly anyone thinks about it anymore. I’m typing this on my MacBook with a Core 2 Duo processor, using the same OS I’ve become familiar with over the past decade.
The iPad came four years after that. It’s just a big iPhone, right? Who would want one? It sold like hotcakes. And then other companies wanted to make their own tablets. It was another crazy idea that caught on like wildfire.
I never met the man, but somehow I feel this sense of loss. Fifty-six is way too early for someone so brilliant to die. Just think of all the crazy ideas he could’ve had if he had lived for the next 20 or 30 years.