Thoughts & Articles
My thank you to Steve Jobs
Jim Infantino
6October 2011
Our company runs on Apple. Our servers don't, but all of the machines in our office are Macs. There is just no way that I could have created this web system without Apple, not because of specs, or programs. All the programs I work in could just as easily been run on a PC. But I never would have used them if they were.
I came out of university with a philosophy degree and a strong desire to write a better song, and maybe do something good in the world. I had not used a computer in school - though some classmates had apple IIs, and one or two had a mac.
Once out of school, I took temp jobs while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do, and one of them was in a company that used macs for creating org charts, presentations and other printed materials. They also had a Xerox computer - a big screened monster on which Steve Jobs modeled the mac's mouse and windows architecture. It was a bear. I had no problem working with the macs, and gained a reputation as a 'computer guy' - even though I had no real computer experience. The mac was just so easy to get that I fibbed about my previous experience, showed up and was a sudden expert.
Going forward, I never really figured out what I wanted to do, though I spent some time in an early information technology company, and they were all over Steve Job's second project - the NeXT computer and Silicon Graphics machines. The company kept talking about ideas like TCPIP, UNIX and Lynx. I thought it was so much mumbo-jumbo and I was only interested in the next mac. I was in the design department, and in my spare time, I was creating album covers for local musicians. I could do this, not because I went to design school, but because I had a mac se30, and a good sense of design. This is how I got by for a period while I went out and played my music.
The mac was my computer because it was a perfect fit for a creative person. I went on to start using it to create animations in Flash, write HTML, work in Photoshop, create icons and images for the web, and begin writing the SLAB web system. I never would have done any of this if Steve Jobs had not created a computer environment was intuitive and well designed. It never would have spoken to me.
I will never cease be to amazed and inspired by what Mr. Jobs accomplished with his vision of a creativity machine. In our very small way, we want to follow his example in the way we write our software.
With the rest of the modern world, I express my gratitude.
- Jim
I came out of university with a philosophy degree and a strong desire to write a better song, and maybe do something good in the world. I had not used a computer in school - though some classmates had apple IIs, and one or two had a mac.
Once out of school, I took temp jobs while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do, and one of them was in a company that used macs for creating org charts, presentations and other printed materials. They also had a Xerox computer - a big screened monster on which Steve Jobs modeled the mac's mouse and windows architecture. It was a bear. I had no problem working with the macs, and gained a reputation as a 'computer guy' - even though I had no real computer experience. The mac was just so easy to get that I fibbed about my previous experience, showed up and was a sudden expert.
Going forward, I never really figured out what I wanted to do, though I spent some time in an early information technology company, and they were all over Steve Job's second project - the NeXT computer and Silicon Graphics machines. The company kept talking about ideas like TCPIP, UNIX and Lynx. I thought it was so much mumbo-jumbo and I was only interested in the next mac. I was in the design department, and in my spare time, I was creating album covers for local musicians. I could do this, not because I went to design school, but because I had a mac se30, and a good sense of design. This is how I got by for a period while I went out and played my music.
The mac was my computer because it was a perfect fit for a creative person. I went on to start using it to create animations in Flash, write HTML, work in Photoshop, create icons and images for the web, and begin writing the SLAB web system. I never would have done any of this if Steve Jobs had not created a computer environment was intuitive and well designed. It never would have spoken to me.
I will never cease be to amazed and inspired by what Mr. Jobs accomplished with his vision of a creativity machine. In our very small way, we want to follow his example in the way we write our software.
With the rest of the modern world, I express my gratitude.
- Jim