A Visionary Passes

Today the great technological visionary and the co founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, passed from this earth. A man who together with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded Apple in 1976. This is man that teamed up with technology and who had a vision and a love of what he held dear in life. He had the drive and skills and leadership to make his vision a reality and change our lives. But there was more to life than that in his life for he was a great family man that loved his family who will miss him more than most.

This is my story of how this man and the company he helped form has affected my life. Over the years I have introduced my love of Apple products to other people and many of them have been converted. Once you use a Apple product there is no going back. The vision of there leader has ensured that. He helped create and design products that people wanted and wanted to use. It was a gift he had to understand the people that brought the products Apple manufactured. What the company will do without him and his drive has yet to be seen but I hope his legacy won't be wasted and the company can find a new visionary to replace him.

My first exposure to the company he founded was when I first started to work after I finished my degree. There on my desk was an Apple IIe computer hooked up to some scientific equipment. It was a computer I use to look at in magazines and wished I had the money to own one and there it was for me to use on my desk. Soon I was using it for more than the equipment it was used to control and get results from. It became a new tool for the company I worked for as I started writing programs for it to improve productivity of the things we did in laboratory. It was a lovely machine and so well built, something that has been true of nearly all the machines produced by Apple.

After leaving the work and going back into education I didn't get to use another Apple product for over two years. It is while I was doing research at Durham University we acquired a Apple laserwriter printer that we connected to our IBM personal computers. It never really worked that well until one day a Mac Plus turned up and we connected it to the printer. Our world was change gone was the command line interfaces of the IBM PC and we fell in love with the graphical user interface offered by the Mac. Everyone wanted to use it and everyone loved it. It changed the way we worked and the production and the professionalism of the academic papers we produced owed a lot to that little machine.

It was at this time I really fell in love with the products Apple were making. I loved the fact they understood both the hardware and software to create complete machines that worked and did what you wanted. It is like the they had a feel for the whole system and they exploited this to the full in the design of these computers. What is more they made them to last. All this I understood from building computers from scratch and writing the software for them myself. They provided the whole package unlike the competition in the market who had one company providing the the hardware while another bolted on the software. It was this vision that Steve Jobs stuck with that made the company he headed so successful. He kept control over the whole product and kept it fresh and new.

Once I left the University of Durham I hardly saw another Apple computer for years and years. Those I did see were produced by the company after Steve Jobs was forced to leave. Although I still had my love of Apple products they didn't really impress, the company seemed to stagnate. Something was missing. I guess you could call that the Jobs factor and it didn't return to the company until Steve Jobs himself rejoined what was then a struggling company. Once back in place he once again imposed his vision on the company and with it the fortunes of the company once more started looking bright. It seemed to me that after he took over people started talking about Apple again and their products became desirable.

My next Apple purchase was a first generation Mac Mini. A little silver box that is no bigger five compact disc cases staked on top of each in size. It was a impulse buy. I just loved the look of it and I had the spare money at the time so I just went ahead and bought it. After I plugged it into a monitor, a keyboard and mouse up came OSX. It was so simple to use and within a week of using it the whole thing made the Microsoft Windows machine I had been using look and feel so outdated. I just started to hate the Microsoft Windows user experience compared to the that of the the Mac. It was easy to see that Apple was leading the way and Microsoft were following. The other thing that stood out was the quality of the core of the operating system compared to that the Microsoft products, although the processor speed of the machine was slower than that of the Microsoft Windows based machines it was actually faster. Apple where and still are light years ahead.

From that moment I was hooked back into Apple. I really didn't want to use computer running Microsoft Windows and when I had the chance of using a MacBook I jumped at it. It was when I was with Lucy's mummy and we had some spare cash we decided to buy a pair of MacBook's.. Unfortunately they were both stolen when the house I was living in was broken into. Thankfully the insurance company replaced both of the them. It was interesting that Lucy's mummy became just as much for a fan of Apple Macs as I was was within days of using her machine. They have that effect on people it seems. Although more expensive than there Microsoft Windows counterparts, they are better designed and last longer. The HP laptop I got at the same time the MacBook was replaced is no longer works while the MacBook is still going strong. The HP is a useless pile of non working plastic and silicon due to poor design and a company that couldn't careless about its customers. It is here where Apple scores, when I had a design defect on my MacBook show up the part of was replaced for free and if it happens again I was told they will replace it again for free. That is customer care.

The final Mac I brought was for me to lug around for work. I could have brought a Microsoft Windows machine for what I needed, but given I work in an environment were computer viruses are common place then I needed a machine that was immune to them. The choice was simple to had to be another Mac, but not wanting to spend a fortune on a machine I went and brought a secondhand iBook G4. It wasn't as fast as a new Microsoft Windows machine but I didn't need the machines speed. It still runs Microsoft Office, emulates a standard personal computer, and it could handle email and browse the internet. I didn't need it for playing games or watching video off the internet, after all it is a work machine not a machine for home use. This machine is now seven years old and still running like it was new and the original battery still holds charge. This is a testament to the legacy that Steve Jobs has left us with. Things we want use and things that last.

Like many I have other Apple products dotted around here and there like a ipod which is great for plugging into the car radio on long journeys or just listening to music on the move or around the house. Many people will have this experience of Steve Job's vision in terms of computer related and technological products such as the iPhone and recently the amazing iPad. Even if we don't actually own an Apple product we will find ourselves using something derived from the design and technical skills of the company Steve Jobs created. You just have to look at the number MP3 players based around the iPod or the Android Phones and Tablets. What Steve Jobs did was to keep Apple innovating and moving forward and leading the technological race in a market were being second is an option. 

The world will miss him. He had a dream and he went for it. He could see the whole picture. He keep driving the company he founded to design innovating products that people wanted to use and he had a business head that was second to none. He was more than Apple and at times headed the other companies that he gave his vision too such as Pixar Animation Studios. He was a true leader and innovator, a man of vision, and what is more a family man too. Although we might morn the passing of his former attributes from this world you have to remember the later because that is most important thing he did in this world. Have a family and value it and not give up when times got hard.

Finally as an aside, one odd thing that happened that was rather strange was all this happened on the night the last apple fell from the tree in the neighbors garden. It had been hanging onto the tree for dear life and when I woke up like Steve Jobs it was gone. It is at time like these we have memories that we hold onto for years and when someone asks what happened the day Steve Jobs passed I'm sure I will remember that falling apple.