Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Hey Look! Another Steve Jobs Blog!


Yeah, I know, there's a lot about him right now. But love him or hate him, Steve Jobs has been an extremely influential person in the world of computing. And while reading through countless articles about him, and mocking those which sounded like obituaries (mentaly calling up Monty Python's "I'm not dead yet" and the SNL "Gerald Ford, tragically died this weekend" skits) you see a lot of adoration. A little fewer in between is the negatives, but all have to admit how much the guy has influenced the way we view computers now days.

My first experience with his product was the lovely green monitored Apple IIe, playing Oregon Trail so many times that we were trying to kill off our pioneers rather than get them to California (oh, and we played the learning games the school provided. But we finally wore our lab teacher down so she would let us play Oregon Trail.) My first experience with a computer with a color screen, GUI, and mouse was the Mac, in that same computer lab. Fast forward to college, and I used the design lab's blue candy-shelled iMacs to do my class assignments. Then I married a computer geek, and we now have three Apple products in the house: a Macbook, and two iPads. Our kids know how to operate Netflix, Angry Birds, and Kindal on the iPads--such a different experience than that of the 3 1/4 floppy'ed IIe. And as always, I'm curious to see what Apple will come up with next. What will make my kids think of the iPad as a relic, in their future? The Apple-sans-Jobs company will have all eyes on them in that respect, to see if they can continue in that tradition of innovation.

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