RIP Steve, Ya done good.

I know that everyone and their  uncle is got a piece to say about Steve jobs. But this man touched and influenced my life and today I'm very sad.

Some may disagree but Steve Jobs, to me, was an amazing heroic figure.

Steve changed my world in a very real sense.

The Macintosh and the LaserWriter allowed me to accomplish, in-house, what before only an advertising agency could do. This made for very quick time span between idea to campaign to results. There was many days when I would walk out of a Organizational meeting with a vision of what was needed and by the end of the day with the help of in house personnel have an ad in hand reflecting that vision.  This was a huge advantage over our competition and melded with an aggressive advertising philosophy nicely.  In fact, I named that first in house advertising agency "Advision".  But that advantage came to us in an affordable machine through the work of Steve Jobs and the Macintosh.

Jobs for me was also a model. He was driven by his ideas. He lived the customer experience. He knew what he wanted to do and didn't let to many people move him away from his vision. I tried to emulate that in my career but it's a lot easier to do when you run the company than it is to accomplish from within. But I had success at it.

How valuable was Jobs, when he left Apple for 12 years they almost went bankrupt. He left because the company he founded and the guy he brought in to run it had decided to veer away from Jobs  vision.  SO they fired him. This was a real trial by fire for us advocates of the Mac. But Apple brought him back. All he had done in the meantime is build the finest animation house in the country at Pixar and develop the NEXT brand computer. Next was literally the software that allowed networkability, a Jobs vision and the one that Tim Burners Lee built the internet on.
Jobs came back to Apple and took charge and the rest is history.  The Next OS became the basis for the Mac OSX. Great Products were released that didn't come out of committee, couldn't have come out of a committee but were the results of one mans passion to make the customer/user experience exceed their expectations. And with his passion and drive he changed the world.

You can argue that it would have changed anyway but think of how the personal computer as a home computer has changed your life, a lot of that was influenced heavily by Steve Jobs. Then Apple pushed the laptop market. Easy internet access, entertainment light business all done with style and an elegance just missing from competitive products. iPhone changed the telecom world bringing mobile computing to your pocket. The iPad took the step one more step making a bridge between laptops and phones. The iTunes store brought a whole new distribution model for electronic wares.

The recording industry, the advertising industry, the total publishing industry, the movie industry all had to change direction to adapt to the new way Jobs pointed the computer industry and the way it was sold.

This man in my humble opinion may just be the most important man in the last 100 years. Our lives for good or bad, but I think for good, have been ushered down the road of Steve Jobs insight and vision.

I used to be the only guy within a quarter mile radius with a Mac. A mile radius with a Mac portable.
Today Apple Computer is the most valuable company in the country. Today, in this coffee shop where I am writing this there are 8 laptops visible and 6 are Macs.

Rest in Peace Steve ya done good!