Thursday, October 6, 2011

Goodbye Steve

One does not have to use a last name to say goodbye to this American genius. Besides, we all called him Steve.  Now we have lost an American original... a great designer and creative genius who put his stamp on every techie move in two centuries.  We have lost a man whose ideas have circled the globe... who is known better in other countries than in his own... a man whose beautiful, intelligent products changed the life of this world. Nothing will ever be the same as it was when I was young... because of Steve Jobs. OK, I know life is not fair, but I just wish I could have given Steve my extra years to make he world a better place. We so desperately need genius like his at this time in our poor misbegotten country.

I am a writer. Steve Jobs changed my life. No more carbon paper, no more 'doing it all over,' no more whiteout. I worked in advertising, as a copywriter. We used mainframes and they were terrible. If more than four people worked on a mainframe at one time, the damned things slowed down to around 40wpm. For people like me, who typed 75wpm, it was disaster... to a VP in my office, it was hell. She threw the mainframe monitor into the hall, screamed obsceneties at the VP who bought the piece of trash and went downstairs and bought her own Mac in 1984. By 1986 every creative person in the agency had a Mac. The copywriters could cut and paste, change things around without redoing everything... and the artists, ah, every artist I have ever known... all fell in love with the Mac... so easy to work on... the perfect canvas for their work. Every creative person in advertising had a Mac in no time.

Having seen the wonderful "1984 won't be like 1984 anymore" ad, in 1985 I got my hands on the tiny 128K Mac,  I taught myself to use it, then taught myself PageMaker 1.0. I put a twelve page newsletter on one little disc... well, after switching discs... swap, swap, swap... first the system went in (the 128K didn't HAVE a system), then the program... then the disc I’d work on. I learned by doing... from the great manuals Apple wrote, with pictures of where you were, and what you were doing. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki, the original Mac Evangalist and one of the greatest salesmen in the U.S., the people who wrote the programs learned to make manuals in the 'Mac Style' and I learned easily. I work now on my huge  iMac, the latest of a long series.

Steve was the computer person with good taste and a sense of what the next thing should be... always far ahead of the field, nothing he ever did was done without his impeccable good taste. One of the people eulogizing him said: "Every time you use a computer, a smartphone, an ipad, any of the copies or any piece of technological wizardry... you are using something with a little bit of Steve it it, whether it is an Apple product or from another company.” So I write on this lovely machine with a terrible lump in my throat and instant thought of the man who created it.

I weep as I write... I shall miss you Steve, for I felt you were part of my family. There will not be another great design genius with such good taste in my lifetime... nor in my children's or children's childrens. Good bye and bless you Steve for what you have given us. My heart goes out to Steve’s family and I hope his children inherit his great good mind.