I have been kind of numb to all of the news and posts by people over the death of Steve Jobs. He was a special human being. He was not perfect. TUAW sums up the feelings going through me. I never met Steve Jobs, but I use a piece of his genius everyday in both my daily job, academic pursuits, and my daily life. Geeks all over the world feel a sense of loss. Not just from losing the man, but losing the "what if".
It feels like companies do not innovate like they used to. They are all too worried about the bottom line than about what you make and how their users feel. Will that golden age of technology come again? I certainly hope so. In these short 15 or so years of Apple coming back from the brink, they have truly changed the way each of us live. If it is an iPod with you at the gym, or an iPhone with you at work, or a Mac in your home. It is hard to not find a piece of Apple and a little piece of Steve in each home in the world. I certainly feel a hole in my heart from Steve's passing.
We all saw his death coming when he suddenly resigned as CEO. We knew that pancreatic cancer is very deadly. And we all feel robbed of 20 more years of his creative mojo. We knew but we refused to accept that Steve was dying. We did not imagine a world without Steve Jobs. We couldn't do it because it is difficult to do. I truly hope we have more people in this world that endeavor to be the next Steve Jobs. To tilt into the wind. To change the world...
This video really made me wonder about his true genius. He really wanted everyone to "think different" and be different. RIP Steve Jobs.