Steve
06 October 2011
As I sat typing this morning, BT walked into the room and told me that Steve Jobs had died. I stopped writing, fired up Daring Fireball and read the three linked-list items that Gruber had posted.
I felt a momentary flash of sadness and then read the quote from Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address. The best part of the talk is the one that Gruber highlighted:
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
The first time I seriously took notice of Apple was in early 2002, as the original iPod was gaining popularity.
As a college student I couldn’t afford to buy a brand new iPod, so I scoured eBay and found that a number of sellers were offering deals that seemed too good to be true, which of course they were. This was the pre-gmail, pre bayesian spam filtering days and I was well aware that Internet scams were rife. Ignoring my head and following my heart I contacted a zero-rated seller who was offering a brand new first generation iPod for a price cheaper than brand new but still far more than I had ever paid for a gadget.
Pushing aside my nagging doubt, I dutifully wired the money to the seller via Western-Union transfer and waited.
And waited.
After several weeks and repeated un-returned communication with the seller I gave up and contacted eBay’s dispute department who put me in touch with the police’s fraud team. Thankfully eBay’s insurance covered the money, which was paid back in full.
I felt embarrassed and stupid. I blamed eBay, the scamming seller and even Apple: How could they justify making the iPod so beautiful and so expensive and so out of my reach?
I consoled myself by becoming anti-Apple; focusing on their lack of market share in the personal computing space, their elitist attitude, their DRM on the iPod and their apparently closed ecosystem. With a classic case of confirmation bias, fuelled by plentiful anti-Apple press, I hoped to quiet the strong emotional connection I felt to the quality of their products. I was jealous.
Six years later the emotional, hormonal roller coaster of life, loves and hates at college was a fading memory. I had dived into the viper’s nest of the financial software industry, where I tried, failed, laughed and cried at its unfathomable nonsense.
In a fit of frustration with work I emigrated to Sydney, Australia and bought a MacBook; the 2007, black, Intel Core Duo model. It was my first Apple product. I paid full price for it.
As I opened the amazingly well designed box I suddenly understood why care and quality go hand in hand. Here was the embodiment of that nebulous principle that I thought I understood. In my hands was the result of a million selfless acts of care.
That understanding I felt, triggered by the physical embodiment of a principle that I had struggled and failed to define, was due to the product of a unique organisation. That organisation is the legacy of a very special man, who remembered that he would die, and so followed his heart.
Thank you, Steve. Rest in peace.