by Jimmy Marks
Wednesday night, my girlfriend and I were going to meet her sister and brother-in-law for dinner. I was blabbing about something-or-other, and my girlfriend said, “Oh, no…”
“What?” I said.
“…I almost don’t want to tell you this.” She was staring at a CNN News Flash on her smart phone.
“What?!?” I said, panicking.
“Steve Jobs died.”
I was instantly sad, but not entirely surprised. I had known about his illness for a while and the reasons he’d left his position at Apple. It was a bit of a shock at first, but for months the Mac-watching world had been eulogizing Steve Jobs, a little too early.
The Internet erupted. Twitter went bonkers with people commenting and dropping little unicode Apple symbols (). Even non-Mac users seemed to be upset by the news. We all thought he’d beat it again, since he’d dealt with his illness for years and had stayed pretty upbeat, pretty resilient. Nobody lives forever.
But their legacy can.
Now, I say all this as someone who wasn’t always a “Mac-ophile”. When I was seven, My sister’s Apple IIe was a masterpiece and I loved to play with it. One day, it broke and a repairman had to come to the house. I think it cost roughly $40 and my mom made a Draconian law that insisted I NEVER TOUCH THE COMPUTER AGAIN…unless my sister was there with me. After that, I was a little gun-shy on Macs.
I got brought up on PCs through Apple’s “dark age”, the years when Steve wasn’t behind the wheel and the company took a sharp downward turn. I got pretty good at using a PC, got my own tower computer that, right before I finished High School, was SO bogged down with malware and junk that it couldn’t be saved. I bought a Dell laptop after that and it, too, ran too hot and died too young.
My cousin, a Mac acolyte, got me to use a Mac (it was running Tiger at the time) and showed me all the ways it was a better machine. Drag an application to the “Application” folder to install it? That’s insane! It works with EVERY PRINTER?!? That’s insane, too!
And the Macbook I bought to replace my Windows Laptop? It’s still running, six years later (going on seven).
When I started at DigitalMailer, I got a Macbook to work on. After two years, I got a NEW Macbook and my “old one” went to Sejal, one of our HTML specialists. Jec, the Client Services Manager, and I watch every product launch, read the same live-blogs during WWDC and special announcements, and always talk about the NEXT Apple device we’re going to buy. We’re devotees, to be sure.
Do Macbooks make you more creative? More productive? No. But they help you not worry about the other stuff you normally have to worry about while you’re working. And after a few months of using a Mac platform, or using an iPod, or an iPad, you get it. YOU aren’t BETTER because of your Apple product, you just worry less which makes you FEEL better.
So, what’s the “Jobs legacy”, you ask?
- It could always be better – Sure, it’s good, but what else could there be? What’s the “one more thing” that would REALLY push it over the edge? Sure, Apple can make a phone, but what if that phone was a “PDA” AND a phone AND an iPod, to boot? What if, instead of a series of seven floppy disks or two CDs to install software, you could download it to your computer for as little as ninety-nine cents? Or free, even? What if you could touch your data, tap your documents, swipe to unlock?
- Talk to the people! – Steve was famous for his reply emails to people. Sometimes they were friendly and sweet. Sometimes, they REALLY weren’t. But isn’t it interesting that one of the most powerful men in technology took time to reply to people?
- Come right out and say it - Steve was pretty famous for saying whatever he thought about a topic. He wasn’t very forthcoming about proprietary info or company secrets, a competitive move that’s created a cottage industry of “guessers” – people that try and anticipate Apple’s every move. But when he had an opinion, he came right out with it. And when he needed to defend his decisions and his company, he came out swinging.
- Don’t worry about who WON’T buy it, worry about who WILL - Someone brought this up at a conference recently – guy walks into an Apple store, asks what’s the best computer he can get for under $1,000. The Apple employee explains there aren’t any computers for that price (after taxes, etc.), but the iPad is very useful and covers most of the bases. The guy insists what he wants is a “cheap computer”. The employee directs him to Best Buy. In a kind way, of course.THAT’S INSANE, RIGHT?!? No, it isn’t. Apple knows what people are willing to pay for their products and that their share of the market is willing to buy. If you want something low-grade, tough – you’re not going to get it. You pay what it’s worth or you go somewhere else.
- Sell the feeling – Most Apple product launches had the words “magical” and “revolutionary” attached. People aren’t sleeping with their iPhones under their pillows and insisting it’s an important part of their lives because of the chip set…it’s because the iPhone means something to them. They’re attached to it on an emotional level. Apple’s influence creeps into every corner of the market, every competitor’s product – heck, the news that Jobs had passed came to me via my girlfriend’s smartphone app. Without Jobs’ leadership, the words “app” and “smartphone” wouldn’t mean much.
Now, it takes all kinds in this world of ours – our Mac users here at the office still fire up the Windows boxes for testing and prototyping and a large share of the work is done on Windows machines. But we Apple-fans at DigitalMailer wanted to share our appreciation for a man who always tried to “stay hungry” and “stay foolish”.
Goodbye, Steve, and thank you.
