There
are already many tributes to the genius and sweetness of the recently
deceased Steve Jobs. This is as it should be.
His
work (and play) in bringing into the world the Apple Computer brand
is worthy of note.
Over
the years I owned and used a parade of Apple products and learned to
dance with their strengths and deal with their quirks.
IBM
and primitive diskware (160K, 5.25 floppies that were written on both
sides and were really flipped to get work done) was my first exposure
to Personal computing. That was 1982 and about $5000 for the 8086
processor and a handful of 4K Ram chips. It would remember what I
wrote, hammer out ink from the 9-pin IBM printer and later on a cool
and noisy daisy-wheel.
The
IBM was efficient, effective and expensive. I later zoomed into
another level of power with an ITT 386 (running Lotus 1, 2, 3 &
Wordperfect) that had a true (sad, but true) color monitor.
The
business computer was everything except personal.
Then,
the Apple rolled onto the scene. (There was a knockoff Orange, but
you had to be there to really laugh about that with me.)
My
first was a IIe and then a Mac and later, for pictures and publishing
a PowerPC with SyQuest and Zip drives. These things were more approachable
and fun that the other PCs.
I
also bought a Unix-based machine that did a lot of work, was fast and
powerful, but had no bell, whistle or gong. Compuserve connected me
to a raw idea called internet and databases and email. (Appreciating
Unix and Linux, I now tip my cap to Red Hat, a corporation that has
gotten things right. Professional support for Open-Source ...Yes!)
The
Apple co-founders were idealists and kept refining their machines and
building relationships with software vendors. There were corporate
battles and separations and periods of making up.
Adobe
loved Apple and tolerated Intel/AMD powered machines. Corel was there
for EVERYONE.
Today
we can have in our hands more computing power and resources than was
available to NASA, while putting humans on the moon.
A
dear friend knew I liked significant history and made a gift to me of
something that today is a rarity.
I
OWN a screen-print image of an ITT 4116 chip design. This chip was
big and hot and could handle 4 whole K of info. K's
turned into megs and megs into gigs and gigs into terabytes. (Time To Revisit the PP "Power Of Ten" presentation.)
Every
sermon I ever preached can reside with every lesson I ever taught and each of the books and magazines I created on a single flash drive.
Apple
forced business computers to turn toward a GUI and that made the
hardware more fun and less expensive.
However,
remember that user-friendly does not mean user-effective.
WYSIWYG
is, for many a dream because what people create may not approach what
they have imagined.
Steve
Jobs saw what he saw as practical, profitable and fun. His WYG is
really what WE got.
He
forced our thinking out of any boxes, coloring outside of any lines
and merging tech with life.
Humans
discover fire – ouch. Humans learn to use fire constructively –
OK. Computers move beyond the realm of business applications – Yes.
Humans
adapt computers to their uses and computers light the path to a
smarter, better, more connected and more tolerant humanity … we pray.
Thanks,
Steve, for the work and the laughs. ©
Tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com
