My mom got an Apple ][e when I was 9 years old. During these formative years she taught me BASIC programming on Apple DOS 3. I used that computer for games and learning and even as a presentation tool for my elementary school project that year. Over the years I played around with a huge number of personal computers in the fledgling home computer market. I used Windows because I had to and Linux because I wanted to.
Five years ago I finally got fed up with constantly having to fix my OS and reinstall all my software after a format to get things working again. I was tired of compiling packages and living in dependency hell. I could no longer stand the 11 fan beast I had built in the corner of my bedroom. So determined to change things, I looked around for an all-in-one and did my usual pricing comparison. The iMac came in hundreds of dollars cheaper than everything else I was looking at. So I ordered it with the intention of replacing OSX with either Linux or Windows. But when it came in, being a tinkerer and not having played with an Apple OS since the ][e days, I toyed with Leopard. Five years later I type this in memory of a visionary on my 2008 Macbook Unibody running Lion to be sent to you through my Airport Express that extends my wireless network from my Airport Extreme. My iPhone 4 is in my pocket letting me know that people are liking my remembrance post on Facebook. My iPad 2 will wake me in the morning so I can proudly wear my Apple shirt to work. In the mean time I will continue to watch streaming video covering the reactions of the world on my Mac Mini on my HDTV.
I am not the typical fanboy. I love what Microsoft has done with Windows7. I love my old Dell laptop running openSuSE. But when I just want to get something done, I will always turn back to one of my Macs.
To take a concept from the X-Men movie: Every now and then a visionary appears that takes the world in a huge leap forward. For our lifetime that visionary was and is Steve Jobs. A person like this only comes along once every generation or two and today we have lost ours.
My heart goes out to his family and close friends because as much as he had an impact on our lives as a technology visionary, he was a man. He was a father and a husband and a friend. He will be mourned by millions and missed most dearly by those that knew him when he wasn’t on stage.
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Michael Conguista