The Guy Who Made Me Like Computers.

Apple.com

When I was a teenager in the 80s I figured this whole computer thing would blow over in a few years and I'd be riding my horses and writing my stories and everything would be cool.  No reason to worry myself with things involving keyboards and screens.  No reason to get over my wariness of all things technological.

Yep, I hated computers.  Hated the way they beeped at me when I pushed the wrong button, hated the whirring fan noises they made, hated the look of the things.  Ugly plastic boxes.

I got over it when Jethro presented me with my Mac Black.  That computer changed everything.  I'm not kidding.  I started blogging.  I started writing fiction again!  And... had to admit I didn't hate computers anymore. I did not want to throw the damn thing across the room out of frustration.  I felt a serious loss when that computer was decommissioned!  

Although I still have it.  And if we rigged up a power supply for it, it would actually still run.  

Thank you, Steve.

These machines have such a huge impact on my own life.  The music industry runs on Mac; my husband uses nothing but at work.  Our family is Mac only.  There are three iGadgets among the four of us.  Up until two years ago I'd never had a cellphone.  When the iPhone came out, I thought, y'know, I might actually be able to deal with one of those.  It didn't scare the snot outta me to just look at it.  It made sense to me.  And people, very few things in this world make sense to me.

 My sister, who is even more of a technophobe than me, has a MacBook.  She has managed to run a business without a computer for like, ten years.  When she bought her computer, it was me who set the thing up for her.  ME!  

And here's the real proof that  Steve Jobs developed and realized a truly great machine: Both sets of our  parents have Macs. They can even turn it on by themselves.  It works.  Now when we visit them we can visit instead of fix the computer. Okay my ol' man doesn't use the Mac but heck he doesn't know how to use the portable phone either and can't turn on the TV in the living room cuz the remote is different than the little TV but hey, he at least knows how to scroll the screen down on the iGadget!  That's saying something!

Little scatterbrained Heidi who figured she'd never have to use one of these things... I use Mac White pretty much every day.  I'll gush lovingly about  it to whoever will listen.  I feel weird that I have so much enthusiasm for a hunk of plastic.

It's not just the physical machine itself. Yes I think it's beautiful, all elegant and clean.  I appreciate good design.  But really it's the spirit behind it.  The ideas, the innovation.  This came out of a mind that didn't just think out of the box but didn't even bother looking for the box and just went ahead and thought up a better box.


Imagination, creativity, the constant challenge to the accepted ways of doing things... I think these are the kinds of values this man had.

There are beautiful tributes out there in the world and I can't even begin to measure up to those.  I just had to say it:

Steve Jobs made me like computers, and it changed the way I do things.

(I'm going to go think up a better way to build a box now, metaphorically speaking.)