I should probably start out by stating this column was already in the works before the untimely death of Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple’s creation of the popular iTunes, iPhone, iPod and iPad.
His death last Wednesday evening did not come as a total shock, given the health problems he has battled in recent years, but it was met with wide-sweeping grief among the Apple community and far beyond. There is no disputing the fact that Jobs had a major impact on the development of technology over the past four decades.
For fans of Pixar Animation Studios, which has generated some of the most loved animated movies in the past 20 years, Jobs was the man who believed in what this up and coming movie company was trying to create. His purchase of the company in 1986 help set into motion two decades of technological advancements in the field of computer animation.
I am not by nature a computer geek but I will admit to wishing I was married to such a geek. Whenever something goes sideways I wish I had that gene- the one that makes you able to understand the language spoken only by those natural born computer geniuses.
While I may not have all the latest and greatest when it comes to tech toys, I do love a good thing when I find it and right now this column is being written on an iBook. A handy little white laptop that I will not be giving up until it utters it’s last ping. I’ve had it for more years than I care to admit. It has been to several countries with me including a journey to Holland where it developed a crack in its case, due to some rough handling of my carry on luggage, and was accidentally magnetized for a short time but it still does the job.
Some of my more technologically advanced friends and family like to make jokes about my little iBook with its little screen but it fits my hands just perfectly and I could swear sometimes it writes my stories for me. More times than I care to admit a reader has commented on a specific story and said how they liked this or that and when I go back and read what I supposedly wrote, I am a little surprised that it doesn’t immediately seem familiar.
Our IT guys like to laugh at me when I say my iBook has a mind of its own but, just between you and I, it really does. There are times when I have wished it into not freezing up on me when I am just moments away from finishing up the last paragraph in the last story of the week. It listened and held on for me to save my story. There have been times when I didn’t show it the respect it deserved and it froze up on me and taught me a valuable lesson in patience and the benefits of saving and backing up your work. That’s the sad fate of our little pieces of technology. When they work we take all the credit and when they don’t they get all the blame. It’s a little weird to imagine where I would be right now without my little iBook. I remember having to write my stories on a little Radio Shack computer that only allowed you to see three lines of type at one time.
I realize to those who started their writing careers back when type was hand set those first laptop computers seemed like a whole new world but thanks to the vision of people like Jobs we have come so far in such a short time that frankly, we’re the technological version of spoiled brats. We have so much available to us, literally at our finger tips 24/7, that we don’t stop and realize often enough just how far technology has come in the last year let alone the last two decades. The passing of Jobs has allowed us a moment to reflect on just how far we’ve come and just how much we have because people like him don’t know how to take no for an answer and are continually asking, why not? Thanks Steve, my iBook and I will never forget you.