Ode To Steve Jobs.
The first time I touched an Apple product was in the summer of 1991. (I thank my school, The Indian High School, a trustee run school, for its phenomenol outlook. We also had yoga classes then and no I didn't take them.) We had joined the summer classes, and I had taken Computers as one of the options in the camp. I'm trying to figure out what model the computers were. I guess it was the Apple II even though the Macintosh was out by then. But I could be wrong too. Either way it didn't make any difference because all we ended up doing was BASIC programming. Simple stuff. Add. Subtract. Display names. That kinda thing. But I was hooked. More than to computers, to the concept of machines helping you automate things.
I didn't know of Steve Jobs then. I didn't even know of him, when through University following a Computer Science degree we hammered on Windows machines. Gates was the man. The hated man. The man whose machines we worked on that crashed too often. The only other option, the then emerging Linux, was too archaic. For me the concept of mounting a CD drive before being able to play a CD was a nonsense user experience. Yes, I had Red Hat Linux for like two days.
My re-connection to the Mac, or the brand Apple came first then with the decision of a friend to buy a Macbook Pro after doing some research. We wanted to start a collective together and he was getting a few photography gigs. So he paid the money, while I helped in the decision making that it was the Macbook Pro we were going to get. And we got it.
And then I fell in love with it. It was beautiful. The user experience of working with it, was so simple, that I knew I had to get one. So I got a white Macbook. And I fell in love with the Apple the brand a bit more.
It was right about the time I started doing my MBA, and I started looking into Apple the brand from a business viewpoint and Apple's leader Steve Jobs (it was difficult not to since Marketing was my major) from a purely strategic viewpoint. And then I realized why he was the best head in the business world. Because when Apple made a product it was mostly a win-win situation for consumers. All the Apple haters(and there are scores of them) would have to agree that every product Apple made, even if it did lose money, upped the game. Made the industry improve. Be it a computer, a music player, a smartphone, a tablet. You could hate Apple for the attention it was getting, but you had to love the product in your hand that had improved thanks to Apple.
Then I happened to go to MOMA and saw Apple designs, designed decades back, but still classically cool, that could still adorn shelves and corner stands. It further strengthened my appreciation of the brand.
Then I got to know how Steve Jobs worked. And thought. I read this rare Wired interview from 1996. Read it. I beg you. It'll give you an insight into his mind. How he thinks. How dead right he was about things. His loss. Apple's loss. What was wrong with this society. About the political system and processes. About education. Celebrate his honesty. His non-sugar coating of his losses. Or successes. How design trumped every other decision he would eventually make. That interview where anyone with an iota of intellect and interest in technology, society and its grand convergence will value. And I did. It was like an epiphany for me. I truly got what Steve Jobs was all about. And how great he was.
Then the more I got to know him, the more my reverence for the man increased. Forget the Stanford speech. Watch this keynote. Him addressing the developers in 1997. How he answered every question, thinking, so that every word added some kind of value. How he This was a classic case of how to hold a keynote. How to hold a presentation. How to enchant and to engage your believers. How to be transparent. I sat a whole hour watching a address from 14 years like it was some exciting sit com. That was the moment I realized his loss, which finally came about, would be a tragedy, probably not to the whole of humanity, but to the scores of lives, to whom his vision made a difference.
So when lots of debates of why his death is being mourned for weeks after his death, when people are dying of hunger and disease across the world. He would be the first to tell you, of the great cycle of life and death. Of ushering in the new. He and his followers would mourn for every other life lost on this planet. But even after that we'll miss his charm. We'll miss his curated artifacts. The buzz of his keynote. His vision that has come true from fifteen years back and that will come true fifteen years from now. We will all miss the true inspiration he was. And the mourning will continue, because his shoes are going to be nearly impossible to fill.