Farewell Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple passed away recently. I never met him in person and yet the news grieved me. I would have liked to have interviewed him, like I did his rival Bill Gates, and tell him that in the battle between the PC and the Mac, I know which side I'm on.
For example, I am typing these words on my MacBook. It has been in my possession for a few good years now. This sleek black laptop computer has seen the birth of many writings, proposals and presentations. It has helped me organise my digital photos that I’ve taken, put my book together and edit my videos. It has kept me amused and occupied for countless hours, keeping my being alone far from being lonely.

As a matter of fact I cannot remember the time when I didn’t have an Apple computer or an Apple gadget about me. I bought my first Apple computer well over two decades ago. It was a compact little white box with a screen and a mouse that moved the cursor around and enabled you to do things just by pointing, clicking, dragging and dropping things on the screen. Until then, using computers (and I was an avid computer-user) meant memorising lots of commands for the simplest functions such as underlining and capitalising. As for italicising, well, it was not an option. The screen meanwhile, was invariably black with pixellated texts in uninspiring white or unappetising green.

The Apple computer in contrast, was elegant with a colourful bitten apple as a logo and featured fonts that were pleasing to the eye. Then I dallied with a PC for a bit (probably the time when Steve Jobs was booted from his own company) but went Apple again when they came out with the Mac computer and laptops in the nineties. And once I went Mac, I never went back. It cost me an arm and a leg for my MacBook, but then it was in irresistible titanium, a beautiful design and felt good in my hands. Just switching it on and hearing the machine spring to life with its signature 'zing', I would feel my creative juices flowing.

Nevermind that most of the time I would only use it to play games, check my emails and browse the Internet, but I loved the idea that here, at my fingertips, was a machine capable of harnessing my creativity whenever I wanted. The computer accompanied me wherever I went. This was no clunky piece of technology with a utilitarian function, but an object of desire and a fashion statement that commanded attention and admiration.

As the years went by, and with them an additional laptop and a desktop, came the iPod that changed the way we listened to music. I put away my Walkman and portable CD player for good where they remain in the bottom of my drawer as strange relics of a by-gone era, relishing the fact that one could enjoy a thousand songs in a device smaller than the palm of one's hand and without having to turn the disc or the cassette over. Then the iPod developed a screen that also tripled up as a photo album and video player. And a touch screen for playing games. Each new gadget more covetable than the one before.

As his years came to a close Steve seized death by the throat and soared into immortality once and for all, by bringing the future into the present in the shapes of the iPhone and the iPad. Objects that are never far from my hands and without which I feel increasingly lost and incomplete.

Thus I will miss Steve Jobs. As will many people on this planet. Because Steve Jobs created products that not only delight the owners but also change the way we do things, how we communicate and how we conduct our business and our everyday lives.

Although he himself was a very private man, yet somehow his passion, dreams and creativity, the essence of what he was and what drove him as a person, remain close to us, at the tip of our fingertips, in our pockets and in our bags, in the form of manifested objects that have become extensions of our own lives. In this way, there is a piece of Steve Jobs in each one of us. Not just those who own his products but those who own the competitors’, because theirs are the results of having to keep up with Jobs’ innovation.

This is why the world mourns his passing. Not only for the beautiful and fun gadgets that are his legacy, but because he was the embodiment of that passion, creativity and courage to follow his heart and realise his dreams that is unique to heroes and to those who dare to be different. He was the visionary that gave us what we desired long before we even knew we wanted it. He was someone that the rest of us can only be grateful he had existed.

Jobs' endless creativity gave us the tools to express our own creativity. His inventiveness gave us the means to explore our own potentials in a fun and intuitive way. From the toddler playing around with an iPad to the business person presenting a proposal to impress; from the teenager updating her social network status to the ordinary consumer catching up with current affairs or the latest books, Jobs presented the world with a technology so user friendly that the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad quickly become physical extensions of ourselves.

It's no surprise that the words that come to our lips as we bid him farewell, are: Thank You, Steve.

(ps I started this article on my MacBook and finished it on my iPad).