For those of you with passion for the world of technology, today is without question a very sad day. Whether you are an Apple disciple (like myself), or someone with just a passion for technology, we all lost an inspirational figure in our industry and a remarkable human being. Of course the power of Steve was that he made the most innovative technologies accessible to everyone. The fact that my 75 year old mother (who loves her Mac) was one of the first people I called upon hearing the news of his death is testament to his legacy.
It is interesting talking to people today and the general sense that so many feel they lost someone they knew, although none of us have ever met the man. Few people in history have created that sense — JFK, Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Jerry Garcia. In all these cases the person’s mission and vision were almost indiscernible from the person themself. In the case of Steve, every time you hold or interact with an Apple product, you get a visceral sense that his personal stamp is on every aspect of the product. Those products are the technological incarnation of Steve Jobs, and thus we all feel we know the man because we know the products.
I read a piece recently that discussed some recent research concluding that we “love” our iPhones. Through MRI scans of the brain, it was determined that iPhone use stimulates the same regions of the brain associated with feeling of love. Love is a strong word, but I can assure you that watching Steve at a launch event or playing with one of his creations certainly has brought joy to my life — some of that joy will never be recreated in the same way.
We were blessed to have lived and experienced his genius. Over the past few months, anticipating this day, I will admit that at times I felt cheated out of coming decades of undiscovered joy that Steve would have brought us. But today we need to focus on the genius we were all able to witness and the path that he opened up for all of us. We were fortunate to be a part of it.
