Steve Jobs’ passing yesterday is a reminder of our fragility and the fleeting nature of time. Steve’s life, however, is also a reminder of how awesome it is to be alive, brimming with ideas and making the world a better place.
As Steve’s health waned over the past few years, I found myself becoming sadder and sadder over what appeared to be the inevitable: That we would lose an inimitable cultural icon who had touched our lives in a myriad of ways.
Stanley Bing’s column in Fortune a few weeks ago was prescient in capturing why we will miss Steve and could serve as a great eulogy: The Bing Blog: Thanks, Steve.
On a personal level, I will never forget watching my young son fall in love with his first iPod in 2003, cradling it under his pillow each night as he went to sleep. As a confessed music geek myself, the iPod transformed my travels by allowing me to take 25,000 of my favorite songs with me everywhere I went. And, after forcing myself to hold off until the iPad2 came out earlier this year, I walked around for days telling everyone in earshot that I was in love with that amazing gadget. In fact, it’s 8 months later and I’m still doing it!
What can I say? I love Steve Jobs and Apple in a way that is hard even for me to understand. But my life and the lives of millions of people around the world are cooler, richer and more fun than they would have been without Apple, Pixar and all the other miracles that Steve Jobs envisioned. And for that, I can only humbly say “Thanks, Steve, and Godspeed.”
