No Replacements Found

So I found out last night during my accounting class that Steve Jobs died. That really sucks- I'm sure Apple's stock took a hit right after it happened. Steve was a guy who believed in innovation- making the human experience as magical and as user friendly as possible, even if it meant failure. Jobs had his fair share of failures when with Apple, but when he gets it right, he sure does hit it out of the park. After all, I'm writing this post on a used Macbook Air that I bought recently. My last laptop, an HP, has a lot more computing power, and Windows 7 is a great OS. But it's got to be a testament to the way Steve endorsed his products that almost all of my personal technology- my laptop, my tablet, and my mp3 player- come from Cupertino by way of China. Not giving up my Windows Phone anytime soon, Apple. sorry.

But even without me, there's still a whole army of iPhone users who claim that it's the best thing since sliced bread. Hardcore Android users passionately dispute that fact, but that's what it is- a fact. The customer is always right, and if you don't believe the iPhone is the best thing since sliced bread, just look at the sales numbers. Look at the number of apps people are buying on a daily basis. It all has to mean something, and considering where Apple was 10 years ago, Steve Jobs has done an unparalleled....job....with the company he founded, was forced out of, and then asked to join back.

We probably could have foreseen Jobs' health problems accumulate- after all, the he had been looking quite gaunt in the last few Apple keynotes, and was rumored to not even be healthy enough to be at his final keynote that introduced iOS 5 to the world. Tim Cook was named CEO just six weeks before Jobs' death, but nobody believed that it would happen this soon. This suddenly. This unexpectedly.

Normally with cancer patients, you can see the deterioration happen right before your eyes. The patient becomes bedridden, they have a thousand different meds pumping through their bodies, and the doctor can give a time frame of days- maybe even hours- before the patient is going to die. Was Jobs putting on a happy face for all of us this time? Did he know that this was coming? I'd have to assume so- it's not like he didn't have the money to go through with any necessary surgeries to stop the cancer. But he still showed up to work, still gave his keynotes as if nothing had ever happened to him. Jobs, up until the day he passed, chose to think different. There aren't too many people who I consider have lived their lives fully by what they have taught, but I hold him in that regard.

Look what his products have allowed to happen- autistic children and grandparents alike use the iPad to improve their brain activity. Some consider OSX to be the most user friendly operating system on the market today. The iPod changed the music industry entirely. And we don't even need to start on the impact of the iPhone on the smartphone market.

Godspeed, Steve. I don't ever think you will fully realize what a difference you've made in our world today.