iSad

Steve Jobs died on my birthday. Which, I thought, wasn’t really fair to either of us.

The…umm…three of you following this blog know how I feel about Apple. So, even though I had never met the man, the news was difficult to hear.

Though the hundreds of news stories currently circulating the internet like to focus on Jobs’ apparent hard-ass-ed-ness with anecdotes about how if you wound up in the elevator with Steve and couldn’t express your value to the company, you might not have a job when you got off, I’d like to remember him as a man with practical fashion sense, who once referred to Up as his favorite movie. (I found this overwhelming endearing, until, of course, I found out that he founded Pixar.)

The words “genius” and “visionary” have been used lot in the past four days, and since I don’t pretend to have the knowledge or authority to assign those qualities, I’m not going to try and convince you that Jobs was both those things–though he probably was.

Apparently his managing style was a bit dictatorial. He made people nervous. He set the bar really, really high and frankly didn’t take any shit from anybody.

But, he also inspired people. His products are proof of that. And, the hundreds of memorials recently erected in front of Apple stores worldwide attest to that. And, when he gave a keynote presentation, his genuine excitement was genuinely infectious. And, I don’t think that was just a marketing tactic.

I once read in a funnier, more profound blog that: “You can always spot a show nobody loves or has ever loved.” The author was referring to the new Charlie’s Angels series on ABC, and her point was that it’s absolute trash.

My point is that it’s clear that Jobs loved his products. Like, a lot. I don’t consider myself a materialistic person, but the emotional attachment I’ve developed to my Apple products—especially the MacBook I’m writing this on now—is intense and… weird. That is the result, I’d like to think, of a product that was lovingly and carefully conceived.

Any rational person knows that Jobs wasn’t solely responsible for Apple’s success, so it’s not like the company will fizzle into obscurity now that Steve is gone. But, at the same time, I think most rational people are equally terrified that that’s exactly what will happen.