Steve Jobs, and the influence his products have had on me

I started grade school around the time that computers were beginning to be widely used at schools.  Limited to a computer lab in the library, those brand new Apple ][e computers with their green and black monochrome monitors began my long and sordid love affairs with computers.  By the time I was in third grade we had a Macintosh+ in our classroom.  Marking my first go-round with a Mac.

All through the elementary school years and middle school years I had access to Apple products, from the IIe’s in the lab where we played “Oregon Trail” to the Macintosh LC-II which I was allowed to check out and take home to work on programming hypercard presentations.  In eighth grade I took my science project to the state science fair, a Lego™ car powered by an Apple ][e that could navigate a maze.

Thank you for providing the technology, Steve.

In high school and after, I shied away from Apple products, until one day in 2005 when I, after using other people’s iPods to play pre-show and backing tracks, decided to buy my very own iPod, thus rekindling my love affair with Apple products.  Through high school and until a few years ago when I bought a MacBook Pro, I had exclusively been using Windows machines.  I needed a machine with the flexibility do edit audio, video, and graphics without lagging and crashing constantly like all of my past windows machines were prone to do.  Since the conversion started, I have acquired an iPhone, iPad, and an older G5 powermac tower to use for recording at home.

Some might call me an Apple fanboy, to which I call shenanigans due to the fact that I don’t run out the first day of a release and wait in line to buy the first version of a product that still has problems to iron out.  I’m also not that rich…  If I bought a new laptop, ipad, and phone every year I’d have to build a home out of the cardboard boxes they come in due to the fact that I would be broke.

To Steve Jobs:

Thank you for co-founding Apple Computers.

Thank you for Pixar.

Thank you for going back to Apple in recent years and changing the world.

Rest in peace, good sir.

–The Soundmonkey