R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Apple was part of my life throughout my university days and remains so today. I remember how excited I was about the very first Macintosh.

I was blown away by MacWrite and MacPaint on the first Mac computer. Sure, MacWrite could only hand a few pages of text before it ran into problems, but it was a pioneer in the field and helped changed user interface expectations forever. We could change font styles and sizes! Format paragraphs!

MacPaint was also a pioneer. Not only could you create art digitally, but you could use those images in other applications. That program, as primitive as it may seem today, changed so much in the way I thought about digital creativity.

Most of my friends in university were and still are Mac enthusiasts. We'd have "Mac Weekends" when we lived out in the country, whenever everyone would bring their Mac for networked gaming and Macgeekbonding. One of our friends ended up working for Apple, and on the first iPhone.

Jeff's been an Apple fan for far longer than I have. Apple products he's owned include: Apple ][+. Macintosh 128K. Macintosh 512K. Mac Plus. SE/30. II. IIcx. Quadra 840AV. PowerBook 180. PowerBook 3400c. Newton MessagePad 100. Newton MessagePad 2000. G3 Graphite. iMac. iPod. iPod Touch. iPhone 3G. PowerBook G4 Ti. PowerBook G4 Al. Mac Mini. MacBook Pro Core2. MacBook Pro Core i7. iPhone 3Gs. iPhone 4. iPad. iPad 2.

I often get his hand-me-downs when he upgrades, and I've been very happy with that. :-)

One of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes, which I rediscovered on Jeff's Facebook Page yesterday:

‎"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle."

R.I.P., Steve.

I've posted some of my favorite "Jeff, my Mac Guy" photos above and below.