Last night as my husband and I sat at dinner during a date night, I saw his iPhone light up with a text from a mutual friend. I grabbed the phone, excited to see what pithy thing our friend might have said, only to see words I never imagined seeing in all my life: Steve Jobs died.
My mind immediately rewound about 11 years to the first time I had really heard of this great visionary. Eric, my husband, had always been a PC guy — he even had a business in high school repairing computers and doing tech support — but there was a new game in town. Steve Jobs was back at Apple and he was doing sexy, innovative things with the personal computer. We laid down a lot of quiche for that first Mac, and it was so buggy! I remember having to reboot it constantly from OS9 to OSx and back, depending on what I wanted to do with it. But it didn’t matter — Steve Jobs had a vision that we were on board with, no matter what.
Then I flashed to the first time we got to go to MacWorld in San Francisco. It had been Eric’s dream for so long, and it was the first and only time I’ve ever seen him pop out of bed at 3am without a single complaint. Why? Because Steve was giving the keynote speech that year, and Eric was determined to be in that room for it. He sent me pictures and updates from his iPhone, and he wore the mock-turtleneck with a pride only a true MacGeek could have.
It was at that conference when we decided to take our little side business of helping people connect their printers to their Macs — or assisting “Switchers” in moving their data — to what would become a fairly big name on the NYC stage of Mac consulting.
We took a huge risk. With only two clients on our roster at the time and not a lot of money in the bank, Eric left his very cushy day job and focused his energy full-time on our business.
We could have failed. We could have ended up back on unemployment like we were a year earlier. But wasn’t it Steve who said “have the courage to follow your heart and intuition”?
Today, our Mac consulting business is thriving as we bring Apple technology to businesses, stores and restaurants. We have developed apps for iPhone and iPad. Every day, I bang out my manuscripts on my MacBook Pro. We use our iPads to read or play the piano or teach our child through innovative games and applications. We use our phones to connect to those we love through the phone itself or FaceTime or by sending pictures and videos halfway around the world in mere seconds.
There are countless ways Steve’s visions and the execution of those visions have affected and improved our lives. I will forever be grateful for the inspiration Steve provided my husband especially.
I hope he went to his death peacefully, knowing that there are millions of people in this world who feel as I do. Millions who are saddened by the fact that they will never get to shake his hand and say, “Thank you.”
Rest in peace, Steve. You will be greatly missed.
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