Since I don’t believe for a minute he would leave the company he created as a vehicle to change the world, it’s easy to conclude that he is leaving because he is closer to death than he would say publicly. How’s that for keeping plans secret?

I don’t care too much about succession and company plans. But I do care about and have interest in what Apple has meant for me.

I came to the Mac because of a job. In 1987. After working through and hacking Commodores and VAX and DOS, to me it seemed a toy. I hated the slowness of it. The job also involved backing up an Apple IIe. I hated that machine too. And then, I did my first layout in Pagemaker on a black and white 8″ Mac screen and printed to 1200 DPI. Mind blowing. A Laserwriter came soon, and before I knew it, I was in business for myself – on the side – doing layout. Intro to pre-press and production. Suddenly networking came into the picture, content management, and then…the Internet. All done through Macs. DOS, then Windows, when needed. A Newton, bad software choices and an oath to leave it behind as punishment.

Then Jobs came back. I resisted until the iPod lured me in. It worked better than all the alternatives. I know, I tried them. And I’m picky about music. Then the iPhone 3G. And it all made sense again. Suddenly, Apple was the absolute best in laptop hardware – I know, I looked – and music players and phones. I standardized on iTunes and its ecosystem of categorization tools. I moved to Logic. An iPad came home to get me off my ass and read whenever, wherever, while flipping into synth mode when creativity struck.

And I didn’t have to waste time learning useless info about formats, and drive speeds and networking protocols, and deliberately arcane command lines. All of that was behind me. I could focus on the important stuff again. Meaning. And so I did.

Thanks Steve. This was the note I wrote several times because I enjoyed all the stuff you made and it did change the world. I just never sent it. I don’t believe in an afterlife or a beforelife, but I do believe in a meaningful life. And yours was.

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