Thanks Steve Jobs

I was a poor college student when the original Macintosh came out in 1984. I was studying graphic design and commercial art and I learned the old school way, setting type with a photographic typesetting machine, using X-acto knives and hot wax to do paste up and Rapiograph pens to draw lines.

While I was in school the entire graphic design business changed, the combination of Apple’s Macintosh computers and LaserWriter printers, Adobe PostScript printing language and Aldus PageMaker desktop publishing software threw out all those old tools. These new tools were cheaper, easier and let the designers have an incredible amount of control. My university added a Mac lab for the graphics students the year after I left school.

I graduated from school with solid fundamental skills on outdated technology. To continue in this field I needed to get a computer and learn how to use this new publishing software. So in 1990 I set out to buy a computer. I consulted with my future wife about the purchase. I didn’t have an opinion on what kind of computer to buy, but she did. She had been working for a designer in Alamo Heights and they used Macs. Mac SE30′s to be exact. And she was sold. As some might say, she drank the Kool Aid. She convinced me and we set out to buy the best Mac we could afford. We got a bank loan for over $5,000 and bought a fully-loaded Mac IIsi, a laser printer and 14-inch color monitor.

This computer was sweet. 20 MHz 68030 Motorola processor with an optional 68882 FPU (Floating Point Unit). The standard version of the IIsi came with 1 megabyte of RAM and a 20 megabyte hard drive. Yes, megabyte. But I wanted the best experience possible so I bought an upgraded model with 5 megs of RAM and a 100 megabyte hard drive. I even upgraded to the new System 7, not yet called the Mac OS, that had just come out. It was computing power of Star Trek proportions!

This was the computer that I learned on. I learned Adobe Photoshop and Aldus PageMaker, Quark Xpress and Adobe Illustrator, Fractal Design Painter and Aldus Persuasion. Using this computer, and my next Mac (a Performa 637CD) and my next (a Motorola clone) made me into the “Mac Guy”. I learned Macs well enough to get a job at River City Silver, a professional photographic lab that used Macintosh computers. People asked me questions about the hardware or the software and I could figure it out or find the answers. I was a true believer in the platform even at times when the prospects were dim for Apple and the conventional wisdom was that the company was a stiff breeze away from oblivion.

I was fortunate enough to go to the Mac World Expo once, in 2004, and see Steve Jobs do one of his signature keynote addresses before the Mac faithful. Even though there were no market-changing products the show was electrifying. Jobs introduced the iPod Nano ad Mac OS 10.3 Panther, the Xserve G5 and iLife with GarageBand. The energy and respect in the auditorium was profound.

The story of Apple and Steve Jobs is inspiring for those of us who remember the dark days when Macs were less than 5% of the market share and Apple’s name was a joke in much of the business world. That Jobs could turn the company that fired him around to be the second most profitable company in the United State after Exxon Mobile is staggering. The products that have become an essential part of my life and work: iPhone, iPod, Macintosh computers and the all technologies that Apple fostered have profoundly affected people’s lives for the better.

Jobs brought computers to the masses, popularized the mouse and the graphical interface of modern computers, killed the floppy disk, rekindled our love of music and changed the music industry forever, changed the face of animation through Pixar and so many more things that the list boggles the mind.

Thanks Steve. You were an inspiration on the level of Edison or Ford. Rest in Peace.