Oct 09, 2011 16:46
The world lost one of its gretest innovators and visionaries last week.
I never met him, but several of the electronic gadgets I own attribute their design to Jobs and Apple Computer -- the personal computer, the MP3 player, the smartphone. Granted, none of these are Apple products. I thought at the time -- and still think -- that Apple products were overpriced. And so I bought the cheaper competitors' products -- the copycats, as it were. (And that's how I feel about Microsoft innovation -- see what other people have done and try to build it better.)
My high school physics teacher had an Apple IIplus. And when the IIc came out, I wanted one......but couldn't afford it.
When the first Macintoshes were released in 1984-85, I tried one, and one of the university labs. I was already used to the command line interface, so I thought the Maintosh GUI (graphical user interfacde) got in the way of real computing. Several years later, when Windows 3.0 ands its successors came out, I changed my opinion about GUIs. Now, I can't imagine computing without a GUI. Unless I'm working on an older mainframe.
Some who knew Jobs personally may say he had a driving personality. If you're a visionary, sometimes you have to be an SOB and show some chutzpah to get your vision across to people.
I wonder what the future of Apple Computer will be, and who will be our next great innovator and visionary.