iCon

I've been thinking about what to say about Steve Jobs for the last few days.  I've heard him compared to Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison.  I think the Edison analogy is apt - both men weren't necessarily the ones doing the innovative work, but they were both heavily involved in the vision and direction of that work.  Steve Jobs' Apple didn't invent the personal computer in the same way that Thomas Edison's lab made the first light bulb from ideas and glass and wire, but the early Apple computers fundamentally changed the way that computers were perceived by the general public.  Jobs created computers that were for regular people, that were simple and intuitive to use, that had a consistent interface across programs.  That seems so obvious now, but at the time, it really wasn't.  It's hard to remember now how clunky computers were in the 70's and 80's, and how few people actually used them in their personal life.

I wrote my Master's thesis on a Macintosh SE 30, and I don't remember once having to look at a User's Manual while formatting it, creating the charts and graphs, or any of the programs I used during the process.  And then he did it again with iEverything products, revolutionizing what we assumed computers and electronics could do and what they looked like.

RIP Steve Jobs, and prayers for his family.