Web Secret #205: Steve Jobs

Between myself, my spouse and my 3 kids, we own the following Apple devices:

• Four iPhone 4
  
• One iPhone 4s
  
• 2 MacBook Pros
  
• 1 MacBook
  
• 1 iMac desktop
  
• 2 iPads

So you would think that with 11 Apple products in my immediate family, (including the three I use at least 9 hours a day,) I would have a pretty good grasp of the genius of Steve Jobs, Apple's founder and CEO. Well I didn't.

Reading his biography educated me.

Steve, thank you for:

• The Apple II - first personal computer not just for geeks
  
• The Macintosh - birth of the home computer revolution
  
• Being CEO of Pixar - responsible for Toy Story, Finding Nemo, WALL-E and other digital animations delights
  
• Apple stores - the store as brand
  
• The iPod - giving me music everywhere
  
• The iTunes store - saved the music industry from falling entirely in the hands of pirates.
  
• The iPhone - my whole life in a hand held device.
  
• The App store - spawned a new content creation industry. (Besides, I can't live without "Words With Friends.")
  
• The iPad - launched tablet computing - went from "why do I need that", to "I can't live without that".
  
• iCloud - all my content is backed up and all my devices communicate with each other.
  
• Apple - the world's most valuable company, worth over $500 billion, and home to the best in imagination and creativity - a place where technology, art and design intersect.

Steve was a maniacal perfectionist, and intensely involved in every facet of the devices, technologies and companies listed above.

Steve Jobs, responsible for more disruptive technologies than perhaps anyone since Thomas Edison.

I salute you.