October 6, 2011

Steve Jobs, from around the time I saw him in 1981. (Image from nymag.com)

I find myself deeply saddened at the news of Steve Jobs’ passing. Yes, we knew he had been unwell, but the shock and the depth of feeling have taken me by surprise.  Not since I heard of John Lennon’s death have I felt this way about someone I did not know personally.

My life has been marked by Steve Jobs, his Apple company, and its products.

It started in 1979, when I found a part-time summer job working for a hole-in-the-wall, seat-of-the-pants store in Austin, Texas called Computer ‘n Things. It was the smaller, scrappier competitor to the Computerland a few miles away.

Computer ‘n Things was a “microcomputer” retailer, selling mostly Apple II’s (and its software and peripherals), along with a few other brands like Cromemco and Altair. But mainly it was Apple, and I came across it looking for a summer programming job, having just finished a course in Basic at UT Austin.

It’s owner and manager, Charley Randall, answered the phone when I cold-called. In response to asking if he needed a programmer, he said, “We don’t need that at the moment.”

Me: “What do you need?”

Randall: “Someone for sales.”

Me: “What do you need in a salesman?”

Randall: “Someone who will work for straight commission.”

Me: “OK.”

At the job interview, while Randall conferred with his brother about whether or not to take me on, I sat in the front of the shop watching an Apple II draw geometric patterns on a TV being used as a monitor.  I did something to the keyboard and promptly crashed the program that was running. Oops.

Not the most graceful start to my life with Apple. But a start it was.

That summer job turned into two years part-time, then full time.  I learned how not to crash the Apple. I learned enough about a program called Visicalc (a new thing called a “spreadsheet”) to sell Apples to people who might be able to do something with them. I learned to load programs from cassette tapes. We played Space Invaders and Bill Budge’s Pinball game.

I learned how you could often fix one using what my boss called “percussive maintenance” – banging it on a table to reseat the integrated circuits.

I remember the Apple III, and what a disappointment it was to get it out of the package and have it not work because components had popped out of their sockets during transport.

But the Apple II+ sold really well, and made a lot of people more productive, especially when we were able to make the jump from cassettes to 5 1/4” floppies (and two of them, if you could afford them).

Somewhere around the first half of 1981, Randall and I went to a retailers’ conference put on by our distributor High Technology. I don’t remember if I shook his hand, but I definitely remember Steve Jobs was there, talking to us about his company and his products.

There’s one thing Steve Jobs said that has stayed with me in the three decades since. He said, “Apple Computer makes more mistakes than anyone else in the business.”

The point was they were willing to try things, to innovate. They were willing for what they tried to fail. And they were capable of learning from those mistakes, and improving.

I left Computer ‘n Things in June of 1981. One of our customers at the time was a guy who worked for IBM, and he had mentioned that his company was just about to bring out a personal computer as well. So I wasn’t around for the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, or the way the PC, the XT, the AT and later models ate Apple’s lunch.

But still, my heart was with Apple. When I returned to the USA in 1983 from a couple of years in Germany, Randall cut me a deal on an Apple IIe.  That machine got me through grad school, and when I moved to Australia to be with my wife in 1987, that IIe came with me, and became the first computer she ever touched. (It is still in my garage somewhere, although the power supply is long dead.)

Our Apple IIe was eventually replaced by a Mac SE/30, which lasted eight years or so (and probably would still boot if we plugged it in).

And while I had a few IBM PCs along the way (mainly because I needed them for work, and mainly during the time that Steve was away from Apple), I always came back to the Mac.  Our family has had any number of the machines. My wife has had a series of Macbook Pros. I had a Mac Pro that lasted six years, and since, a couple of iMacs. My daughter uses a white Macbook. We all have iPhones. We all have iPods. When I get a tablet, it probably will be an iPad 3.

You get the picture.

So Steve, all I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for your part in my life. Thank you for the products you brought to the world, for your vision, for your inspiration, for your attention to detail, and for your tenacity.

My life is the better for them.

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.

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Image source: nymag.com