“Jobs has asked to be buried in a coffin with rounded corners and no visible latches or hinges” — Something I read someplace this morning but can’t find now.
I’ve never had an emotional stake in the whole “Mac vs PC” debate. The only Apple product I use is an iPhone, and that only because my employer pays for it. I stick with PCs because I’m paid to program them, because they run the software I want to run, and because I’ve never been willing to pay the premium for the pretty box with a fruit logo stamped on it. I don’t begrudge Mac fans their choices, though – if that’s the tool that works for you, I’m happy for you.
I do have an issue with Apple as a company: their tendency toward closed, proprietary systems that serve no purpose other than to keep people shelling out money to Apple. Why does my iPhone need a different USB connector than the standard mini-USB jack that’s used by, oh, everyone else? Would it really hurt Apple’s bottom line that much to let me plug an SD card into the thing for more storage space? And I haven’t used iTunes in years – is it still so damned hard to get songs bought there to play somewhere other than iTunes? Microsoft gets pounded, sometimes deservedly so (but not so much anymore) for bucking standards… often by the same people who sing Apple’s praises while the Fruit Empire’s practices make Bill Gates look like Linus Torvalds in a very, very expensive suit.
What I’m trying somewhat unsuccessfully to get at here is that I’ve been neither a fanboy nor a vocal detractor of Steve Jobs (though, obviously, I disagree with some of his policies). There are two areas where I can’t help but sing his praises: he popularized (but did not invent) and steadily added innovations to the graphical user interfaces on which most of our interactive technology today is based; and he was a driving force behind turning the cell phones we’d all started carrying into techno-swiss-army-knife do-anything gadgets that have connected us all in ways that only science fiction had previously imagined. (Just please don’t use your smartphone to “connect us all” while you’re speeding down the same highway I’m driving on, thankyouverymuch.)
So whatever I may think of some of his actions, the man did change the world, and probably for the better. Those who would be innovators have an icon to look up to and a big set of shoes (not to mention a closet packed with long-sleeved black turtlenecks) to fill.
(Jobs also earns bonus points with me for living a life that would cause the Westboro Baptist people to protest at his funeral. If the WBC hates you, you must have done something very, very right. And if they tweet their hatred via a device you brought to market, you deserve some kind of posthumous award!)
