Bemused,
I weave in and out of the crowd of punters at my local Chermside Apple Store. I
am guilty of a wry delight in the sights and sounds of this wondrous marketing
symphony that Steve built from nothing but an adolescent day-dream. I paused by
an elderly man caressing the oleophobic surface of a screen as if it were his beloved
pet Irish Setter. There were breathless rumours that a batch of iPad-2s may or
may not arrive today, or maybe tomorrow, then again, it may be next week, and
they may not be WiFi versions anyway. Every time someone left the store with an
iMac under their arm, the staff-in-blue cheered and clapped and whipped the
browsing faithful into an evangelical (yes that word again) frenzy. I knew that
there was no chance of picking up an iPad from a bricks-and-mortar store for my
girlfriend, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching Apple lead its flock in a dance
wherein the music never stops. It seemed the online store was the only option.
A
pleasant trade-off for using Apple's bloodless online shopping experience is
that you’re rewarded with a couple of lines of free laser-etched text on the
back of your iPad. As we couldn’t come up with anything clever ourselves,
we decided a quote from Steve would grace Sabrina's iPad-2. As it happens,
Steve's quotes are mostly too long-winded to fit the character limit. The only
quotation short and snappy enough to fit was, "I want to put a dent in the universe –
Steve Jobs".
Six months later,
surrounded by loved ones, Steve peacefully left our universe and left a big
frickin' dent behind.
His
final words were, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” [1]
The news of Steve’s death was so shattering that this
author’s estranged girlfriend broke a two year silence and texted the news to
him.
Often when someone
close to you dies, you begin shuffling through old photos of the departed. For
several days after Steve’s death, there were so many people surfing the net for
photos of him that his image was
the number one search target according to Bill's search engine, Bing. The one photo that caught this author’s eye was
in The Washington Post. It was an image one of his neighbours
embracing her son outside Steve’s home. [2]
The tributes poured in from the most likely and unlikely places. Within
hours of the passing of Bill’s old
sparring partner, he twittered, “For those of us lucky enough to get to work with
Steve, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.” [3] Facebook-Mark,
posted on his page within moments of the announcement: "Steve, thank you
for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can
change the world. I will miss you” (almost half a million people ‘liked’ this).
The most poetic - but objective - tribute was
scribed by prestigious freelance Journo, Tom Junod, in Esquire:
Over the next few weeks, we may well discover that Apple made a frantic push to bring the iPhone 4S into existence, so that its progenitor could breathe a sigh of relief before breathing his last, and that the Moses marooned on the mountaintop could taste fruit from the Promised Land. But there will never be an iPhone 5, in the sense that there will never be an iPhone 5 introduced by Steve Jobs. There will never be an iPhone introduced by a man who always used his introductions to teach us that there is no Promised Land – and no mountaintop. There was only a relentless and remorseless American faith that we wanted what Steve Jobs wanted, and that if Steve Jobs liked something, so would we.[4]
Death can have a unique
impact on the both the friends and the foes of the departed. Even those who had
locked horns with the man were suddenly apologetic and crest-fallen at the loss
of their favourite antagonist. Gizmodo's Brian Lam was at the epicentre of the
lost iPhone prototype fiasco. He was the one who Steve called and demanded,
"I want my phone back". Steve had personally barred any Gizmodo
journo from visiting any Apple event. To the techosphere, this is like getting
grounded by your parents for the rest of your life. On the day the big fella
died, Brian, caught in a maudlin moment of grief, wrote a lengthy tome about
his scuffles with Steve. He revisited an old email he sent to Steve:
Subject:
Hey Steve
Date:
September 14, 2011 12:31:04 PM PDT
Steve,
a few months have passed since all that iphone 4 stuff went down, and I just
wanted to say that I wish things happened differently. I probably should have
quit right after the first story was published for several different reasons. I
didn't know how to say that without throwing my team under the bus, so I
didn't. Now I've learned it's better to lose a job I don't believe in any more
than to do it well and keep it just for that sake.
I'm
sorry for the problems I caused you. [5]
B
There was no reply, and
there never will be.
This author can plot the exact time when the news hit the
world that Steve was no longer with us. At 5pm on the 5th of October (US time) this
blog registered its sharpest spike in
its short history. Where was Steve’s best friend at this time?
[1] Jones, S. (2011, October 31) Steve Jobs's last words: 'Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow'. The Guardian.
[2] Associated press. (2011, October, 6) Quote Box:
Apple’s Steve Jobs remembered by friends, colleagues. Washington Post.
No comments:
Post a Comment