Remembering Steve Jobs
Last night I found out about the passing of Steve Jobs. It was sad news, although not entirely unexpected. Steve has been battling pancreatic cancer and the complications that result from it for years, and about a month ago he stepped down as Apple CEO, indicating that his health has taken a turn for the worse.
The news of his death has spread like a wildfire, and as of this writing is one of the top news stories on Google News in terms of the sheer number of sources covering it. There is nothing I could add to this information deluge that has not already been mentioned countless times, except perhaps a few reflections on how Steve Jobs and Apple have influenced my life.
The first time I came across an Apple computer was in mid eighties. My mom took me and my brother to en exhibit called "Design in America". There I came face to face with the best that American design has to offer. The products that were showcased were very functional and solidly built, yet classy and elegant. In one corner of the exhibit there was a presentation of a Mac computer. The man who was showcasing it was playing with MacPaint, and I still remember what he was drawing: an electric trolley car. The impression that this experience had left on me was profound: for the first time I glimpsed into the world where computers could be used for creative and artistic purposes.
Over the ensuing years I had very little experience with Macs. The computers that induced lust in those days were Commodore, Atari, Amiga, and a few others. I had learned to use PCs and managed to navigate the arcana of DOS. Nonetheless, somewhere in the back of my mind I had the notion that the center of the computer universe was in Silicon Valley, and the culture that made that place great was in large part shaped by the spirit of Apple.
When I arrived at Stanford in the early nineties, I discovered to my surprise that it was a Mac-dominated campus. Almost all computer clusters that catered to students were Mac-only, and a few that weren't had some scary-looking UNIX machines. This was particularly interesting since in those days Mac market share was in low single digits.
When I started my MS program I bought my first computer: a really old Mac that nonetheless had all the basic functionality intact. I got it from the university surplus store and paid a whopping $70 for it. The idea was to use it in my room for checking e-mail and other light activities. What I didn't realize was that it was a Mac that predates the widespread use of Ethernet and hence had no usable network card. A new card alone would have cost me almost twice as much as the computer itself, so that put a lot of cold water on my initial plan.
In grad school I was riding the Linux wave, largely because it had a lot of free software and as a graduate I didn't have much money to throw around. I however relearned the old truth that there is no such thing as a free lunch: what I couldn't invest in terms of money I had to compensate in the time it took to get various software packages running and talking to each other. Again, that wasn't much of the problem since as a grad student you have very little money and a lot of free time.
My years in the grad school coincided with what has been called "the second coming of Steve Jobs" – his glorious return to Apple, the company that he cofounded and from which he was unceremoniously exiled just a year after the launch of the first Macintosh. The "second coming" witnessed an unprecedented string of new and revolutionary devices, starting with iMac, though iPod, in late nineties and early years of the new century, to iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air in recent years. Each one of these devices, although not entirely new, dramatically changed the way that we interact with technology. After going through a string of mp3 players, I eventually decided that the higher price of iPod was justified in terms of the time it saves me managing and accessing my digital media.
Once I got out of grad school and started having more disposable income I gradually started acquiring more and more of the Apple products. iPhone has changed the way I think of accessing information, and iPad has completely changed the way I approach computing. All of a sudden computers are not any more these big boxes that sit in one place, and which you have to turn on and wait a while to get anything done. Now you can do all of that instantly. These days it takes my computer less time to start than my TV. I've come to realize that once you go Mac, you never go back.
Unfortunately I had never met Steve Jobs nor have I seen him in person. The closest I ever came to being near him was once when I walked by his house in Palo Alto. He lived in a relatively ordinary house on a relatively ordinary street, but in quite an extraordinary town. The only unusual thing about his house was that he and his family had converted almost all the space around into vegetable gardens. That was probably the most expensive produce in the world, but also a testament to his unorthodox interests and the lifelong commitment to vegetarianism.
The irony about this blog post is that it was written on a Windows laptop. This is due to the fact that the Microsoft Office for Macs still doesn't have a nice blogging support, so I have to put up with frequent program crashes and inabilities to save the document properly. The fact is that even though I am a huge fan of Apple and its products, I am not a fanboy that approaches it with single-minded zeal. Ultimately I like technology because it helps me get things done more efficiently and creatively, and will always look for the solution that best suits my needs. It just so happens that Apple is increasingly able to meet more and more of those needs, and for that I primarily have to thank Steve Jobs and the relentless vision that he pursued all these years. For so many reasons the world is a better and more fun place thanks to him, and his inspiration will endure long after his untimely death.