Steve Jobs: An icon of the Digital Age passes on

At the turn of the century, the game changers of the Industrial Revolution were people like James Watt who invented the steam engine, or Henry Ford who revolutionized the car manufacturing industry, Alfred Nobel who invented the dynamite or Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb and so many more iconic names I just couldn’t remember all of them. Their inventions changed the world as they saw it in their own time. But these were men who lived more than a hundred years ago and few people even remember their names today.

 Today, we live in the age of the Digital Revolution and few people on this earth can qualify as “game changers.” They are people whose ideas make the world a little better and amongst the greatest of them is Steve Jobs of Apple Computers. Yesterday, Steve Jobs succumbed to a very aggressive pancreatic cancer at the young age of 56 and being one of his staunch followers, I mourn the passing of this icon of the Digital Age together with the millions of Apple users all over the world.

 No doubt Steve Jobs is the greatest genius of our generation who started Apple in a two-car garage and turned his company into a billion dollar mind boggling industry and a world market leader. His death was announced by CNN, BBC, Al Jazzera and a great millions of his followers must have learned of his passing using the products of his genius.

 Chances are good that you have a personal computer (PC) in your house or your office, Steve Jobs created the PC. Though the Apple computer was extremely expensive then, it allowed other computer companies like IBM or Microsoft to be the market leaders in the PC world. Eventually the prices of Apple products, though still a bit on the expensive side, dropped. But what was remarkable with an Apple Computer was its ease of use and it was virtually free from the ever present virus that plagues all PCs. I now have three different Apple products and most of my family uses them. Yes, we never had a virus nor did we need to buy a virus protector.

 I got my first Apple product called the iPod way back in the early 2000. It was indeed a game changer because we have spent so many decades enjoying the market leader in this field which was then the iconic Walkman by Sony. The Walkman was easy to use because when you bought the product, all you need to do is drop a tape and listen to the music. Years later it evolved into a CD and still had that convenience. How things have changed.

 The iPod was different in the sense that when you bought that product, it doesn’t work until you downloaded music from your PC or your laptop. That meant you had to download the music in your home library or buy it from Apple’s iTunes library. That meant you had to be computer savvy. The first few years was done like this because the Music Industry refused to see things the way Steve Jobs saw it. But what broke down their resistance was when Steve Jobs acquired the songs of the Beatles and they saw that the sales of old Beatles music blossom to new heights. The rest is history.

 Recently the iPod was recreated into the iPod Touch. Steve Jobs gave us our music and made it possible for us to download movies and games and yes, get our email and use the Internet to browse for information, all within our pockets. A couple of years ago Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, which is the bigger version of the iPod Touch. Nope, I didn’t get one simply because I think it is too big, so I got myself a MacAir when Steve Jobs launched it last November.

 The question in everyone’s mind is what happens to Apple Computer after Steve Jobs dies? At this point, allow me to say that the genius of Steve Jobs has been shared with his close friends and staff and since he had to go on medical leave due to his illness, Apple Computers was prepared for that eventuality. Steve Jobs never hid his illness from his friends and a couple of months ago when he retired as CEO of Apple, they knew he wasn’t coming back to Apple. He was already terminally ill when he resigned from Apple.

 I leave this article to give you an excerpt of Steve Job’s speech that he made in Stanford on June 12, 2005 when he talked about death. “This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept; No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.” Now Steve Jobs has gone into the iCloud of God in heaven.

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