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RIP Steve Jobs

October 5, 2011 in Technology

Personally, I’ve never purchased anything made by Apple because I’m a: A poor and b: I like building my own computer boxen and c: I don’t like lock-in, no matter how well-designed it is, but that doesn’t stop me getting a right case of the sads on hearing that Steve Jobs has died at the even-sadder age of 56. For many – especially folks who love their IT stories – he was the genius thrown out of the company he started, only to return to it a conquering hero, with a new operating system and a mostly unerring ability in making consumers lust after electronic equipment. For many as well – he wasn’t Bill Gates – which was enough to justify the adoration in itself. The man made computers sexy. He changed the ecosystem, and in many ways, changed the world. From his barefoot, drug-experimenting past to the shiny glass boxes of the future, he will be remembered, and not just by geeks like me. RIP, dude.

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  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/militantrubberducky/ MilitantRubberDucky

    Very sad. He broke the Microsoft chokehold on the consumer technology industry and inspired a generation of people to build and create technology that inspired them. Taken far too early.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/latterdaylenin/ Latterday Lenin
  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/curly-q-tips-2/ Curly Q Tips

    My favorite Shuttleworth quote, on resigning from the SCLC, was “only God can revive the dead.” This from a man who survived bombings and attempted murders and the madness of his era; damned meetings and infighting were more than he could stomach.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/curly-q-tips-2/ Curly Q Tips

    Steve Jobs was the master of merchandising, we’ve not seen his match since J. Peterman or J.C. Penney. And 56 is far too short a ride.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/uncivily-obedient-2-2/ uncivilly obedient

    Rest in peace.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/jamaica007/ jamaica007

    I must say I like innovators. I liked what this man represented and the shift in technology that has inspired. He will be missed. RIP.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/katekate/ katekate is squared

    If there is one positive thing to take away from this, it is that Steve Jobs dying is WAY bigger news than Sarah Palin not running for president.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/uncivily-obedient-2-2/ uncivilly obedient

    jobs

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/dahlelama/ DahlELama

    I just keep trying to imagine what it must be like to spend years literally changing the world, all the while knowing that you’re going to die at some point along the way, long before you’ve done everything that’s in you to do. The sheer amount Jobs accomplished in his 56 years is astonishing, and despite the fact that pancreatic cancer is almost unilaterally a death sentence, it’s still a little shocking to find that he wasn’t immortal. May he rest in peace.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/chillbearlatrigue/ Chillbear Latrigue

    My heroes are mostly writers. When I read written words and they make me think of things that I could never have thought of before— well, I admire those people.

    Having said that, my father is an engineer. Brilliant.

    He, and men and women like him, put other men on the moon. They weren’t artists. They were something that my life’s choices ensured that I’ll never be: scientists. Steve Jobs was also a scientist.

    I watched the first iPhone unveiled on CNBC. We all knew it was coming. The iPod and the Shuffle had crushed Creative Zen. (I felt bad about that at the time, but that is the evolution of things.) I didn’t know what it would be—none of us did—but it would be something that we had never seen before. Apple had taught us to expect it. I remember him, on stage, talking about a phone, a computer, and an MP3 player—and then repeating the words a few times, while a primitive looking graphic rotated in the background.

    When it was over, everyone had to have one.

    In the twentieth century, people decided that they wanted something and then companies provided whatever that thing was: cars, steel, refrigerators with built in ice makers—

    Apple Computer and then later Apple invented things and THEN WE WANTED them.

    If that isn’t genius, then there is no genius.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/militantrubberducky/ MilitantRubberDucky

    My version of a wake. A fellow ladygeek and I made sweet, sweet Steve Jobs fan fic. Or something:
    https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2566670127488&id=1276200377&notif_t=feed_comment_reply

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/azirel-fallen/ Azirel Fallen

    I’ve been off lurking in a corner somewhere for a while now but this made me come back into the world a bit last night.

    I remember my school had Macs back in the 80′s (it was a private catholic school) & my grandfather telling me it was a fad that IBM would rule the world forever (he built his own computers so it is easy to see why he would think that).

    I remember the old OS on the old beige box that was a little clunky & looked similar to what Bill Gates would eventually put out in color with Windows 3.0

    Then no one heard from them for a while. You couldn’t find an Macintosh computer if you didn’t know where to go. They almost became cult like.

    Then Suddenly Mac was everywhere. They started to name their OS after animals (Snow Leopard is still my favorite)& buy programs that they made exclusive to the Mac platform (Thank you Steve for making my college expenses rise by about 5k just so I could have 2 programs to do homework on)

    Then it started to get weird. They started coming out with these cross platform applications that would allow you to run either Mac programs or Windows programs on any computer. So now you have people with MacBook Pro running Microsoft office and running previously PC only games. It made people think “Hey maybe I don’t need 2 or more computers to run everything I need”.

    Then Steve came back again, this time giving people an outlet for the latest trend, illegally downloading music off the internet. We were given the iPod. I fully believe that his success with the whole family of Apple entertainment devices has to do with the fact that he saw what was happening with digital downloading & decided it wasn’t going to be a fad. While the device itself is expensive, the whole principle behind it is cost effective. Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year buying a physical product that may include several thing you don’t want when you can spend a fraction of that on exactly what you want?

    Steve Jobs was the Techie Oracle. His passing will throw the tech industry into a frenzy to find someone with the same vision & ability to sell you something you didn’t even know you wanted. Some good will come out of it, innovators who’s ideas had been shot down as being “too much like Apple” may get some play in their companies now but I see bad coming too, too many companies trying to make a fast buck and pitch whatever they can spew out by comparing their inventors to Steve Jobs.

    My iPad is charging after a day of hard use. My iPod woke me this morning when the alarm went off & I awoke to a world that suddenly has a huge unfillable hole where Steve Jobs once stood tall in that black turtle neck & made you decide to buy 2 of his latest creation just by saying “Oh and one more thing…”

    Where ever you are right now Steve, I know you are showing someone a trick or two with the iPad 2. You will be missed & the Church of Apple will never be the same.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/renesance/ Rene Sance

    Does this mean Apple will stop denying his health problems?

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/chillbearlatrigue/ Chillbear Latrigue

    @ Chillbear Latrigue: You really shouldn’t comment when you drink.

    @ Rene Sance: Yeah, I used to love that. I had bought April calls a few years ago the day before he announced that he was taking one of his surprise leaves of absence. I was more than a little pissed. I think it was in a February.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/fracturedacetabulum/ FracturedAcetabulum

    RIP Steve.

    56 is way too short.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/chillbearlatrigue/ Chillbear Latrigue

    It might be a little irreverent to have a FNFF here, right? I mean not Rene Sance irreverent, but irreverent none the less.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/belltolls/ Belltolls

    This is why dedicating oneself to the pursuit of cocaine and hookers is a legitimate way to go…I mean if you are going to create empires.