Steve Jobs

I woke up today like I assume many of you did to the sad news that Steve Jobs former CEO of Apple Inc and life long hacker in the truest sense had sadly passed away after a long battle with cancer.  Echoing the writing of millions of other bloggers all over the world I am sad about it I think a large swathe of the worlds population are.

I was thinking about why I’m sad about it while I drove to work.  I’m not a Apple fan boy by any means and as lot of what they do as a company I find utterly flawed and oppressive.  As a developer some of the things they force you in to doing make me angry only to live life in the shiny happy walled garden that is the Apple echo system.  That’s not what I’m going to talk about though.  I’m not going to attack them hell I use several Apple products myself these days not only as a developer but also recreationally.  I use a lot of products though and I have no real allegiance any more to one methodology.

What it seems that a lot of the trolls that inhabit the net right now have failed to realise that outside of Apple without Steve Jobs the world we live in as Geeks, Developers, Nerds, and Hackers might be a very different one to what we know.  Jobs was the later in the truest sense of the word back before script kiddies and black hats stole the title it was people like Jobs that started to bring comms and computers to the mainstream.  Helping those who wanted to learn understand and building the communities that we so loyal belong and support even now.

The way Jobs presented and was filled with enthusiasm for whatever he was working on was infectious, reading interviews with him and seeing him speak was interesting to say the least a front man for a large multinational yes but always seemed like he was still part of the community.  In that way the Apple and Linux communities are not that different and right not I straddle them both.  I wonder how different the state of Linux might be and Even Windows in a world where Steve Jobs did less.  Would we have such elegant UI’s ? Would digital media have become the dominant format for audio as soon as it did ?  You might not like Apple but and even Jobs but you have to respect him for what he did.  He helped bring the geek mentality to the masses.  Developers are no longer the slide rule carrying thick rimmed glasses wearing social outcast they are so commonly portaied as it’s OK to pass around a laptop or tablet etc in a coffee shop it’s the norm now, sure it would have happened eventually would would it have been now?  I honestly think that through the competition not only between companies (and the opensource of course) but also the communities that have formed around those companies be they users, developers, fans and advocates and fanboys(girls) that Steve Jobs really did make a difference (to the our world as it is now).

I’m proud to be part of two communities that though don’t always agree on things and have often heated and openly bitter commentaries have today both shown respect for someone that maybe brought us all a little closer to respecting not only each others opinions but each others world.

Cheers Steve.  You rocked that sweater hard yo.