A Guide to Megalomania

Our tribute to Steve Jobs

Probably the biggest news in the last week was the death of Apple co-founder and CEO, Steve Jobs. You'd have to be Helen Keller on a deserted island in a coma to have not heard the news - so rather than rehashing everything the conventional media has spat out, I wanted to share how Steve's death has affected me. Okay, there will be some rehashing.

I was a computer geek from an early age. Sadly, my parents unable to afford an Apple Macintosh bought me a Commodore 64 - which while super cool, still didn't have the awesomeness of a Mac. From that early age Steve Jobs was always one of the heroes I aspired to be like. Along with Indiana Jones, Maverick from Top Gun, The Karate Kid and Elliott from E.T.

Like Brent from PVPOnline, I always had it on my bucket list to meet Steve - in fact when asked over the last 20+ years "who are the three people you'd love to have at a dinner party?" Steve Jobs made the list most of the time. I think the only time he didn't was during my stint at Disney when he was substituted for Walt out of company loyalty.Ironically, as he eventually became the single largest shareholder of the Walt Disney Company and joined the board of directors, he could have happily stayed at my dinner table in Walt's place and I wouldn't have done Mickey any disservice whatsoever. Though I couldn't see six years into the future.

My true passion for the Mac came in high school when my computer teacher, Mr Taylor who had few redeeming qualities introduced us to the IIcx. Unfortunately, it was throughout this period that Apple and PCs really started their turf war.In those days, PCs weren't called PCs. They were IBM Clones - or just clones. Eventually they started being referred to by their techspec rather than brand and we went through a period of 286s, 386, 486s and Pentiums. Now, Pentium made the chips that lived inside these computers, whether you bought an IBM, a clone or whatever … Pentium were getting the credit. They started figuring out what Jobs already knew. It's about the brand and the experience. The other person who knew a bit about branding was Microsoft founder, Bill Gates. But more on him in a moment.

It was 1995 and despite being out of high school, I trudged back to my alma mater to meet someone else from my bucket list, Douglas Adams. Like Steve, Douglas was someone I had always wanted to meet and despite being a lowly university student at the time, he found the time to have a chat with me at my high school's literature festival. For those of you who don't know, Douglas Adams is the author to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy amongst other things. He even wrote some Doctor Who back in the day. I was thrilled to count Douglas as a friend and for many years after that we kept in sporadic, infrequent but generally hilarious email contact and his passing away in 2001 was another heartbreaking day for me.

While at University I met a guy named Anthony and we became pretty good friends and started hanging out. Anthony was the Media Coordinator for the Student Association and therefore Editor in Chief of the student publication. As a result of our friendship I ended up working on the editorial team of "The Honk" and it was not uncommon at all to see Anthony and I along with Jotham, Raelee, Kath and the gang stretched out on Mac computers putting the magazine together.

Anthony and I went on to one day creating snarkhunters.com together - on a Mac.

Sometime that decade Douglas Adams had written an article called "Mac vs PC" and Anthony and I quickly sent off an email to Douglas asking his permission to reprint it in The Honk for an upcoming issue.Happily he said yes and The Honk stood loud and proud for Apple, despite Microsoft Windows winning the marketing campaign. Some of my favourite Apple vs PC lines of all time, came from that article and Douglas Adams.

"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." - Douglas Adams

"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, who by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place." - Douglas Adams

But we're not talking about Douglas today. We're talking about Steve. However the two men weren't really that dissimilar. Both were creative geniuses who excelled at what they did. Both were passionate supporters of being a geek (which is why I know Steve would have loved me) and they were both ardent Apple fans. One because he created the company - and the other because the computer Steve helped create was clearly the best thing on the market for a creative genius.

All through my career and life I've been a Mac person. If a company I worked for or was contracted to expected me to work on a PC for post-production, we negotiated heartily and Macs - at least one - were introduced. During the last decade we've seen so many advances in personal computing - and most of those we can thank Apple for. But not just computing. If not for Jobs, Apple and the iPod and subsequent iTunes technology, the music industry would probably be bust at the moment. Illegal downloads would have run rampant and Beyonce, Robbie Williams and U2 would have all become buskers. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration but you get my point.Jobs didn't just change little things, he changed the world and saved industries.Look at Pixar. If not for Steve Jobs, Toy Story - and the advancements in computer animation might not have come to fruition.

Telecommunications. The iPhone. Need I say more? President Barack Obama said it best on Wednesday last:

"Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it. … By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun."

"Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world."

"The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented."  - President Barack Obama

The iPhone is perhaps the most revolutionary invention of the 21st Century … and there's still 90 years left. I remember watching the video of Steve announcing the original iPhone and I recall his excitement.

"This is a day I've been looking forward to for two-and-a-half years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. And Apple has been -- well, first of all, one's very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple's been very fortunate. It's been able to introduce a few of these into the world. 1984, introduced the Macintosh. It didn't just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry. In 2001, we introduced the first iPod, and it didn't just change the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music industry. Well, today, we're introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device. So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone ... are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is." - Steve Jobs, Macworld 2007

Like most geeks, I lined up for the iPhone 3, I lined up for the iPhone 4 and if I could have justified it, I would have lined up for the iPad. I ended up succumbing to temptation and getting one a few weeks later :)

Steve was right. 1984, 2001, 2007 … The question remains - where would Apple be without Steve Jobs at the helm? They tried that. Remember? He lost a power struggle in the 80s and left Apple eventually to return a decade later as it's saviour spearheading the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad …

In his commencement speech at Stanford University, Steve said: "Being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

I watched his Stanford address again the other night and I am not too proud to admit I wept unashamedly. After he shared his facing of death and Pancreatic Cancer, Steve went on to say:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Steve Jobs is famous for following his heart and intuition - and in doing so he has changed the world. Not just a little bit - but in ways that our grandchildren will be explaining to us.

An anonymous quote that is circulating the internet, largely in relation to Jobs really hit home for me this week.

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."

I am pretty confident that I can speak for everyone at snarkhunters.com - that Steve Jobs embodied what snarkhunters is all about. Searching for happiness, loving the journey and changing the world.I know everyone on staff here and the entire community of contributors and readers feel the world's loss. Steve, you were truly a snark hunter.

Rest in Peace and thank you for everything.

Luke

In tribute and memory of Steve Jobs, the new version of snarkhunters.com is now iPad compatible and we're going to work this week on making it iPhone friendly as well.

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