Dear Apple,
As I heard the news about the death of Steve Jobs this morning I shed a few tears. At that moment I was unable to explain to myself why I felt so sad, since I never met the man. But as I write this message I’m figuring it out.
When I got home, the first thing I did was open my MacBook, which is wirelessly connected to my Airport Extreme. I played songs that fit in with my sad mood on iTunes. In Safari, I watched several YouTube videos and a TED talk. I tweeted about the loss on Twitter for Mac, and checked out the trending topic #SteveJobs. I found a link there that took me to http://www.apple.com/stevejobs, and clicked on a “mailto:” link. This opened a screen in Mail, arguably the finest e-mail client I’ve ever seen. And here I am, typing.
And all of that worked not just well, but very well in a beautiful way. My experience with OS X made me switch away from Windows, where countless Linux and BSD distributions have failed. Where I used to need a lot of tweaking just to make something work, I’m now often quite confused at how intuitive hardware and software from Apple really is. I actually needed to think different. For instance, installing an app by simply dragging it was entirely new to me.
I can easily say my experience with technology was very much changed when I found the products Apple makes. And Steve Jobs made that happen. When my MacBook dies, I can buy a new one, but Steve Jobs cannot be replaced. My condolences to everyone and I wish much strength and fortune to the company and staff in the future.
Kind regards,
Marjolein Tamis (The Netherlands)
Arjan also blogged about this, sharing Apple’s view.
Jochem commemorates Steve in his own way.
