Whisky Van Gogh Go

I didn’t want to add yet another “what Steve means to me” to the noise but it’s on my mind so here are some unstructured thoughts.

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There were always computers around my household. I grew up on MS-DOS. I had some friends with Apple //’s and didn’t see what the big deal was. (I still don’t.)

I used a Mac in junior high for desktop publishing and “it felt like the future.” That’s a cliche that I’ve never really considered before just now. Stop for a minute and think about the last time you felt it.

A notion that something is both magical and will soon be commonplace. That the world will be different, and in a good way. It is an optimistic message about the future. Nobody has ever said “this feels like the future” and meant something dystopian.

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Before his return, I heard a story from a guy who knew a guy at Apple. He said that Steve Jobs was the kind of person who would walk into a random room and say, “There should be a door here!” The people would scramble to get the door made, and then he’d come back a week later and ask “Why the hell is there a door here?”

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I was one of those kids who was constantly tearing down and rebuilding his own computer, saving lawn-mowing money for new video card upgrades and processor bumps. It was like owning a classic car and tinkering with the engine. 

At one point I had a pretty slick 2ghz box, and acquired a 400mhz iMac for testing. It could run OS X 10.1 — horribly. And I found that I liked working on this crappy, slow plastic toy better than the bewilderingly fast and responsive Windows computer next to it. The iMac felt like the future.

I wasn’t interested in tinkering with my tools anymore. I had lost sight of the idea that a computer is a tool and a tool is not an end to itself. I wanted to be in the future and doing something there.

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A tool is not an end to itself, unless you’re in the business of making tools, of course.

Steve had a reputation for being a tyrant and a crank. Yet his stage presence was always gentle and confident. The reality distortion field even works over a video stream. 

That moment of touching the future, what would it be like to live in that moment all the time? To have a clear vision of it, and to have access to the talent and ability necessary to achieve it? To occasionally be thwarted but also be just successful enough to keep going?

I think it would turn a person a bit mad at times. I suppose being a Buddhist would help. 

I’m more familiar with the gentle Steve who reached into the coin pocket of his Levi’s to show the world the iPod Nano, but my favorite Steve is the crazy one who demanded doors where doors were not. 

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Steve eventually became a bona fide celebrity. I wonder if he hated that, or secretly loved it, or couldn’t care less. Or all three. 

Too many of our celebrities are entertainers. We need more heroes like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. (of note: both charismatic and slightly crazy control freaks)

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Some people say Apple won’t be the same after Jobs. Others counter that Jobs’ greatest invention was Apple, and the talent that he collected. A few people wonder if Jonathan Ives will ever graduate to CEO. They want a strong personality at the helm. 

Underlying all of this is a wish for a charismatic genius magician in our culture.