Apple, Steve Jobs, and Me
11.01.2011 | My Thoughts, Stuff I Like!
As far as fanbois go, I arrived pretty late to the game. I grew up with PC’s, went to college with a few PC’s, and it wasn’t until when I almost turned 30, that I finally started to “think different.”
If you ask anyone that knows me, computer have definitely shaped my life. I knew from a very young age that I like gadgets and that I could easily dissect and reassemble electronics – much to the dismay of my mother who would rather me be a doctor and cut open people instead.
I hung out with nerds, associated myself with geeks, and ran a 2-node BBS out of my parents home. (I still don’t think my parents understood why as a teenage boy, I ended up hogging two phone lines. Luckily with immigrant parents who loathed speaking English and hated telemarketers, me hogging the lines was usually a non-issue.)
Surprisingly, I was against the Internet at first as its popularity stole away my BBS users. I never got into CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL – they looked cheesy.
In college, I was introduced to the LAN. While moving into the dorm, I saw my entire hall playing a networked game of Need for Speed, together but separated. I was in heaven! Still, no one in my dorm had a Mac – maybe we were all hackers or gamers at heart.
I bought an iPod Mini with the click wheel. Looking back, it feels weird but at the time, I thought it was the greatest thing ever for scrolling through hundreds of songs. (STILL have no idea how it works.) 6 months after the iPhone came out, I replaced my Treo with it. I was a bit weirded out by the lack of keyboard but I loved the big screen.
While working alongside designers at my day job, I started noticing the various cool widgets that Macintosh’s have that Windows lacked. The designers seem to draw with ease on their Apple computers while I struggled with my POS work assigned PC that was probably just a couple of years old, but felt slower than grandma. While I never liked Macs before, the glow of the iPod and iPhone experiences changed me. I became enlightened.
All MBP's except one.
I finally bought myself a MacbookPro after starting my own company. It was recommended to me by a few entrepreneurs whom I respected. Okay, I may have done it to be cool. Even though it took me an entire month to unlearn my PC ways of doing things, I ended up falling in love with the experience. Something about it, just works… I no longer have to convince the PC to work for me, with the Mac, we were working together side-by-side.
Over the last few years, we replaced every single laptop in the house with a Mac. We replaced our phones, point and shoot cameras, and mp3 players with iPhones. We never got a GPS cause we ended up not needing one; thanks iPhone. We replaced our cable box with the Mac mini; our wireless network with the Time Capsule. Gadgets communicated and things worked in harmony. Best of all, the software never slowed down even years after the purchase. This was how I imagined the future would be, except it was happening now.
Productivity is up. A fanbi was born.
Up until these past few weeks when news of Steve Jobs stepping down as Apple’s CEO, and then passing on, I never paid too much attention to the man behind my new lifestyle – I really should have. There is definitely something to be learned from his eccentric ways.
I am now reading Steve’s biography on his inventions – the iPad, iPhone, and iBook. When there’s a word I don’t understand, I tap and hold the word to bring up the dictionary definition. When the book mentions early Pixar shorts that were before my time, I bring up Youtube and watch it instantly on the device. When I get tired of holding the iPad, I switch over to the iPhone and it picks up exactly where I left off on the other device. What amazing times we live in.
It really is a shame that all the brightest stars burn the fastest. I was really going to vote for him to be president in 2012 simply cause I knew he could get stuff done.
I guess the only thing to do is to thank Steve for his contributions to the world. In addition to the six industries he revolutionized, (i.e. personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing), he also help created new jobs in these industries that would not have existed otherwise. As an entrepreneur who works alongside these industries, thank you.
If you haven’t picked up Steve’s biography or have checked out his eulogy from his sister Mona, I highly suggest you take the time to read both. The book and the eulogy are beautifully written and who knows, it might just inspire you to think a bit differently about what you can accomplish in your own life.
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