He Was “For The Rest of Us”

Steve Jobs has left the building. He is no longer Mr. Apple. While this day had to eventually come, it doesn’t make it any easier to take.

No other business leader has been such a visionary, and no other company is such a reflection of its inspirational leader. Jobs is Apple, Apple is Jobs, and we will see if the great company can continue going forward without him at the helm.

I suspect it will. After all, Jobs stocked the pond.

In its early days, back when IBM ruled the PC world, Apple was positioned as “the computer for the rest of us.” Us were those who could care less how the damn thing worked. Us were the technophobic crowd who merely wanted the magic without knowing how the trick was done. Us were the ones who wanted to do a task with one keystroke instead of three, and wanted to make it possible for typography to be beautiful.

That’s what Jobs and Apple gave us: easy to use computers and devices that did what needed to be done, while doing some other cool things, all while looking pretty cool.

I spend most days hunched over an Apple laptop. I listen to an iPod on foot, in the car and on the plane. I talk on an iPhone and surf the web with it, too. I rarely resist the siren call of an Apple store and lust for all the goodies within (MacBook Air, I’m stalking you). And, of course, I’ve been a fan of Apple’s advertising from the start.

Aside from those couple years when Jobs got das boot from Apple and created NeXT and turbo-boosted Pixar, the company was a reflection of the man in jeans and a black turtleneck. A man who is sick, but still generously shared his wisdom a few years back with this inspiring commencement address.

A man who was our modern day Edison with his name listed on 313 Apple patents. A man who thought differently, and asked us to think different. A true American legend, this Steve Jobs. He will be missed. Enjoy.