Thursday, October 06, 2011

apple, jobs and the hereafter

even on his death bed, steve jobs managed to protect his life's great success story apple from harm. only yesterday did millions of people complain about their disappointment of the new iphone and that it's not again as revolutionary as all the other devices apple has released in the past few years. i wonder what they thought was coming... a sci-fi piece of art with a fluid 3d display, variable in size and appearance, so that your boss might think you're eating a banana instead of chatting to your best friend, and of course embellished with all the luxuries of a futuristic personal allround living and working assistant. not that apple will not be able to invent something like that soon. maybe not right this minute though. the 21st century only just started, folks!
Bildquelle
now that steve jobs, the great visionary of user friendly and cutting-edge computer technology, has died, people have suddenly stopped complaining. instead, they mourn and honour him and all his accomplishments. and so they should! when jobs took over the reign of the ailing apple company, he basically started changing the world. the imac and the powerbook, at the time highly advanced if vastly expensive but definitely worthy pieces of computer technology, made working with a computer an unexpectedly pleasurable experience. over were the days of break downs and losing the last 4 hours of work, over the days of searching for an electronic hiccup in the depths of a hardly comprehensible system, over the days of computer viruses and mundane design. those were his first major successes, paving the way for his renowned ipod, iphone and last but not least his ipad. all of these inventions outsmarted apple's competitors by years, decades even. they're only catching up now because the apple matrix is there for everyone to look at, retrieve the original ideas and start creating similar stuff.
modern civilisation owes steve jobs big time. he might have contributed to an ever more demanding, globalized society that forces people to forget their humanity and become more and more dependent on technology. BUT at the same time, by creating technological devices that are intuitive and easy to use he translated the complex language of computing into a user-friendly and even fun way of working with computers. almost a modern martin luther of the secular world.
thanx, steve! RIP.
ps: i'm writing this on a macbook pro, which took over my old powerbook's job last year. after 5 years! which other laptop would have been able to cope with 5 years of progress in hardware, software and on the web. and it's still doing its work as a retiree on my sister's teacher desk. yes, i love apple, too!

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