Geekscape Remembers: Steve Jobs

I remember teaching on Wednesday, to a class of film students, when we came upon our mid-class break. Within a minute, someone had jumped online and said out loud “Steve Jobs died”. Everyone sort of looked around like “what do we do now?” It reminded me of the time in 1997 when my father pulled up to the curb outside of my college dorm, where he had dropped me off upon taking me to school and said “Princess Diana died”. For many people, these were individuals who led lives worth aspiring to, who may not have been a part of our conscious day to day but had an effect on them nonetheless.

As geeks, Steve Jobs’ presence in our lives through technology was indisputable. Now that he is gone, the Geekscape staff shares its memories of him. Feel free to share yours in the comments or on the forums.

Heidi Hilliker – Geekscape Writer

I was about seven or eight years old when my parents brought home a beautiful beige classic compact Macintosh. I’ve never had another brand of computer. My Step-Mother even used to love to say, “Once you go Mac, you don’t go back.” It was kind of a family motto. In the past 20ish years I had another Macintosh, a first gen teal iMac, a titanium Mac Book, a Mac Book Pro, an iPod and now an iPad. The truth is that the Apple company, through the vision and imagination of Steve Jobs, captured my imagination. Mac’s hardware and software have always shown smart design, have proven to be user friendly and have been trend setting. At the end of the day Mr. Jobs taught us all one very important lesson. Technology can have soul.

Shane O’Hare – Geekscape Writer

Steve jobs is just one of those people. He wasn’t an engineer. He never drew anything up from scratch. Never invented a technology. He was able to take any idea, any concept for a new device, and make it great.

The history of Jobs and Apple is an amazing one. The whole story of starting from scratch in the garage, 3 hacker buddies with a dream, is a story that helped make me who I am today. The romanticized concept of the little guys against the world and them succeeding is not one you see everyday.

Steve Jobs made home computing accessible. He took the crazy idea of Wozniak and made it marketable. Everyone remembers their first Apple 2. Everyone remembers playing number munch at school on a black and white apple all in one. Gates may have put a desktop in every home but Jobs and Apple invented it.

My first Apple product was an Apple all-in-one we got from school. I prided myself in being the total computer nerd. I read programming books and learned how to install and edit programs while in elementary school. Skip ahead to middle school where I saw a documentary on computers and learned of the epic tale of the man from Cupertino. It was an inspiring tale one that pushed me to go into computing as a career.

My first consumer device was the iPod shuffle. Gum stick version. I bought it on a whim one day after work. I wanted to be able to listen to music while working at the golf course. I had that thing for years until the updated black nanos were released. I got one of those Day 1. It changed the way I listen to music. I discovered podcasts. I remember listening to Jonathan on Geekdrome on my scratched up Nano while picking up golf balls.

That was that. I moved away from Apple from there. I grew into a hardcore PC 1337 gamer haxor.

I never adored Apple from there but appreciated what they did. What crazy concepts Jobs created and brought to market. I have to eternally respect his vision for making the smart phone marketable. I wouldn’t have my Rad android phone if it wasn’t for him. We wouldn’t have star trek pads if it wasn’t for Jobs’ dream to make an accessible tablet. He was truly a genius businessman.

Hearing of his death really made me sad. That day we lost a one of a kind person. A visionary of the golden age of computing. We lost a person from history. The era will be gone forever. I am grateful that I was able to experience Jobs’ maniacal ruthlessness and crazy dreams. You will be missed.

Noel Nocciolo – Geekscape Music Writer

I was in fourth grade when my parents brought home a brand-new Macintosh LC desktop computer.  I went to college with a desktop PC; a gift from a family member who didn’t know better.  Nearly having thrown the desktop out of my window and onto the sidewalks of Manhattan MANY times, I ended up with a blueberry iBook for sophomore year, followed by a MacBook and now a MacBook Pro.  The workflow habits of fourth grade die hard.

I am an only child raised by books: Little House On The Prairie, The Babysitters Club, Anne of Green Gables, all of the seminal choices for young girls.  In between school, piano lessons and dance class, I was often alone; lost in my imagination in the pages of novels. 

The Mac embellished my imagination, in its unassuming gray matter.  I loved the microphone feature; I could record silly songs and noises, anything really, replayed instantly, without carting around a handheld cassette-tape recorder.  Oregon Trail, Number Munchers and the Where In The World/USA/Time/America’s Past Is Carmen San Diego? series became my new platform for wonder.  My parents couldn’t get behind having a GameBoy or any sort of video game console in our house, but the Macintosh LC they allowed; dying of cholera in Wyoming, and all.

Our Macintosh LC was the word-processing home to “Noel’s Best Books.”  I was an elementary school entrepreneur.  I wrote short stories, typed them, printed, and mailed them monthly, along with a handwritten, mimeographed “newsletter” to about eighty friends and family members from my parents’ address book.  I found so much of school to be dull, and relied on the stories I felt compelled to tell, to distract me until the bell rang and I was fortunate enough to attend my after-school activities.

Being given a machine on which to explore the colors of creativity is powerful.  As J.K. Rowling’s series inspired one generation’s creativity like George Lucas’ trilogy inspired another, Steve Jobs’ Apple products inspired toddlers to the aged.  We were given the tools to our creativity with his companies, and for that, I have nothing but awe at the tenacity of his path.  And adoration that Pixar hire my man, Randy Newman, to write the music for Toy Story; another creative force; one whose back catalog is laden with songs about racism and cocaine.  Amen.

Dave Biscella – Geekscape Box Office Round Up Writer

When the iPod first came out, I had no need for it. I was a big CD guy. Loved collecting them, displaying them, listening to them. I was
never going to give up CDs. Then I randomly bought a shuffle one day and everything changed. Within a few weeks I had upgraded to a Nano.

From then on, I was all iPod. CDs were ripped into iTunes and never thought about again. All my music was now purchased through iTunes and listened to through my iPod. As somebody who considers music a huge part of their life, everything about music changed for me.

Same feeling when the iPhone came out. I had no need for it. I don’t even like the phone. I have no need for one that does so many things. I probably wouldn’t even use the apps, it’d just be a giant waste of money for me. Then I randomly bought one. Since then, I’m on my phone
probably 90% of the time I’m awake. I’m in constant contact with my friends from all over through various ways, I can keep up on my email
better, dumps are so much more enjoyable, and I even do a good bit of writing on mine. I’d rather imagine a life with no phone than I would
a life with a phone that isn’t an iPhone. It’s weird to say something so small changed my life so much, but it did.

When Pixar started making movies, I had no interest. Why do I wanna watch kids’ movies? Then a few years ago I watched one. Then immediately went back and watched the rest. Now, I eagerly anticipate each new one so I can sit down and watch it with my daughters.

When you add it all up, Steve Jobs changed my life a considerable amount. And much like my parents, he did it despite my resistance. Like my parents, he never forced me into what he felt was best for me, he just kept putting it out there and let me find it when the time was right for me. And, sadly, like my parents, I never fully appreciated and understood just how much of an impact on my life he had until it was too late, and I never got to thank him.

Thank you, Steve Jobs. You will be missed. I trust you’ll see this, because if there isn’t already wireless wherever you are now, I’m
confident you’ll find a way around that.

Typed on my iPhone.

Jonathan London – Geekscape EIC

I remember the day that my father told me he was going to remarry. Even if you’ve relatively liked the person he intends to marry, I don’t think something like that ever sits well with a child still trying to figure out his place in the world. If you can’t keep your dependable, authority figures consistent, what can you depend on? Obviously, this new woman had her work cut out for her if she ever planned on winning me over as a new parent.

Funny enough, one of the tools that my step-mother Alice used was a Mac. I absolutely remember trips for hamburgers and to toy stores and Einstein’s Arcade on The Drag near U.T. I definitely remember score challenges between her and I on the original Gameboy Tetris. But mainly I remember the nights that I spent at her office, while she worked on cases and I did my homework in one of the tall office towers by the city capital building. The building had bats and every now and then I would here the flapping of wings and look up to see that one of Austin’s many fruit bats had made its way into her office. It’s a pretty vivid memory, working with a broom to try and urge the bat back out a sliding glass window. I had to get back to my homework. And mainly I had to get back to my homework because I knew that if I finished my work before Alice finished her work, I would get a chance to play on the office Mac.

The Mac in her office was one of the old black and white originals. The screensaver was the famous flying toaster one, completely fun and different from the PC I had back home for playing Loom, Ultima and King’s Quest on. This machine was different. The games were definitely different, and I couldn’t get done with my homework fast enough so I could spend some time playing them. Today, I only remember 3 of those games. There was the original Snake, where you had to eat apples in order to grow your snake as it moved around the screen, always being careful of eating your own tail or hitting the wall. If you received a high enough score or cleared enough rooms, the snake would be replaced by a train, running around the board consuming coal and looking for the exit to the next board.

There was also a standard top down dungeon crawling game (which definitely wasn’t Ultima) but was fun enough and allowed me to save my progress… which I don’t think mattered all that much to me because the story consisted mainly of going into a dungeon and killing things. And then there was a Doctor Who game, which I think was just called Daleks, which played a little bit like Defender but the point of the game was the run around and not get touched by the Daleks on the board. This was over two decades ago, long before I met Stephen Prescott and Ian Kerner, and so for most of those years all I knew of Doctor Who was “Daleks are bad and will kill you if you touch them”.

The games were not complicated. Looking back, they weren’t all that rewarding either. It was just cool to play something on a different system, as if I was going to a friend’s house who had a Super Nintendo while back at home I only had a Sega Genesis. Of course, as an 11 or 12 year old kid, my first experiences on a Mac weren’t of editing or word processing or anything. It was of playing games. And I didn’t know that 20 years later I would be eulogizing the man who had built that machine, writing on another one of his machines. I’d be writing about a machine I had almost forgotten using, because for me that machine wasn’t a writing tool or a technological advancement. It was a reward. And in its own little way, it played a role in getting through a really confusing and early part of my life.