<p>And a smile:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.theonion.com/articles/last-american-who-knew-what-the-****-he-was-doing,26268/[/url]”>http://www.theonion.com/articles/last-american-who-knew-what-the-****-he-was-doing,26268/</a></p>
<p>Oh for the love of god. This makes me ill. That vile Westboro group is planning to protest his funeral. Why??? [Westboro</a> announces protest of Steve Jobs? funeral?with an iPhone | The Lookout - Yahoo! News](<a href=“Westboro announces protest of Steve Jobs’ funeral–with an iPhone”>Westboro announces protest of Steve Jobs’ funeral–with an iPhone) They seriously turn my stomach. How can any group be so full of hate.</p>
<p>Great quote from Wilde, musica!</p>
<p>The loss of Mr. Jobs must be more important than I guessed, as it was announced on a network by interrupting the regularly scheduled program. “My god!”, I thought, when it began – supposing that a major disaster or large scale terrorist attack had happened – “What now?!”…it was quite anticlimactic to learn what it was – not the death of a world leader, mind you, but that of a businessman – certainly a gifted one, but a businessman all the same.</p>
<p>It was almost humorous listening to the ensuing “special”. People waxing poetic about someone as if he had been the next coming…</p>
<p>It certainly is a loss for the computer industry, particularly Apple, but let’s get some pespective here. He basically produced a tool – a TOOL – to make things more convenient, true, but to somehow impute that such accomplishments as his have profoundly affected our humanity is frightening. Now, perhaps robots might “feel” an inconsolable loss…</p>
<p>“The loss of Mr. Jobs must be more important than I guessed”</p>
<p>The bottom line.</p>
<p>
The wheel, electricity, running water, flushing toilets, flying machines, the personal computer. All mere tools. All have profoundly affected humanity.I have been around since before personal computers (not before the other things). I don’t think it is any exaggeration to say they have profoundly affected our lives (in both good and bad ways).</p>
<p>One of my favorite old stories was of a family sitting together and someone asked what modern convenience they would not want to do without. Most people answered dishwasher, microwave, washing machine. The the Granny said “running water”. We just get too used to these “tools” that we take them for granted and don’t realize the huge impact they have on our lives.</p>
<p>I don’t think that Jobs can be described as just a businessman. I am not an Apple fan. We have no Apple products in the house, other than S2’s Ipod (that he hardly ever uses). I used the early Macintosh computers years ago, but I switched to Windows/IBM machines around 12-15 years ago, and it was like going from a Model-T to a Ferrari. I am a heavy-duty computer user, and the programs I was using, although nominally available on Macs, were completely different on Windows. Also, I liked the absence of annoying “user-friendly” interfaces.</p>
<p>I remember using computers that took up entire rooms, struggling with fitting my code into the available memory, running programs that took days or weeks to finish. As computers became more powerful, my needs increased. </p>
<p>This is to say that, for me, computers are an essential tool for research. I am not a computer expert, only a major user. I can’t imagine the mental leap it took to envision computers as a mass-market commodity, a “toy.” I have great respect for the engineers who actually made this happen. These products have changed the way many people live.</p>
<p>Henry Ford gave us cars, Steve Jobs gave us computers.</p>
<p>Anyone read “Guns, Germs, and Steel”?
Great book showing the importance to history of these new “tools”!</p>
<p>Henry Ford “just made cars” and Edison “just made lightbulbs”… From WIRED: </p>
<p>“Jobs wasn’t just a savvy businessman, he was a visionary who made it his mission to humanize personal computing, rewriting the rules of user experience design, hardware design and software design. His actions reverberated across industry lines: He shook up the music business, dragged the wireless carriers into the boxing ring, changed the way software and hardware are sold and forever altered the language of computer interfaces. Along the way, he built Apple up into one of the most valuable corporations in the world.”</p>
<p>Not to mention the 75,000 jobs he created.</p>
<p>
I remember having to write out the coded entries on a form, that then went to the punch card department to punch holes in to the card that then went to the computer department. who fed them into the huge main frame. Then we would wait and wait. Then we would get a huge green and white printout with all the data to check. All very time consuming. When we had to rerun the accounts because of an error it was a huge and time consuming operation. many a late night at year end or month end waiting for the whole process to repeat so we could make deadlines. Now all that is almost instantaneous.</p>
<p>That was in the early 80s. We went off to Egypt for 3 1/2 years and when we moved to the states PCs had become a big thing. I was of the why would I want a PC in my house mentality (I am nota very forward looking person). Hard to imagine life without them now.</p>
<p>swimcatsmom, I hae the same experience in college. One of my first jobs was “babysitting” a structural engineering firm’s computer while the cards ran through it. Every once in awhile, I would have to fix a card jam.</p>
<p>“One of my favorite old stories was of a family sitting together and someone asked what modern convenience they would not want to do without. Most people answered dishwasher, microwave, washing machine. The the Granny said “running water”. We just get too used to these “tools” that we take them for granted and don’t realize the huge impact they have on our lives.”</p>
<p>My grandmother’s answer was “paved roads.” I’m 49, and my dad didn’t have running water or electricity until he was 9 years old!</p>
<p>When I was a kid, my grandparents did not have an inside toilet. They did have a proper toilet but it was outside in a little hut. They had potties under the bed and if we didn’t want to use the potty (or had bigger issues) we would have to go down the stairs and outside. (no I’m not 100, I’m in my 50s).</p>
<p>(lots of older English houses were built before indoor plumbing so retrofitting them was a big undertaking- even now my brothers little terraced house - which is currently worth about $450k - has a downstairs bathroom behind the kitchen in a room that was that was an addition to the original structure).</p>
<p>Sorry, going a bit off topic.</p>
<p>^No it’s interesting. When I lived in France there were two toilets in the house. One could only be accessed from the back yard. The other was added onto the outside of the house and was accessed from a stair landing. Apparently the toilet plumbing was harder to accomodate or maybe people thought it was yucky. They had sinks in all the bedrooms and a bathing only bathroom off the master bedroom.</p>
<p>We are a non-Apple family, but we do have i-pods.</p>
<p>There’s an interesting interview by Teri Gross at Fresh Air that she did before he went back to Apple. He talks about how he wanted to design computers for the liberal arts. [Steve</a> Jobs: ‘Computer Science Is A Liberal Art’ : NPR](<a href=“Steve Jobs: 'Computer Science Is A Liberal Art' : NPR”>Steve Jobs: 'Computer Science Is A Liberal Art' : NPR)</p>
<p>From NY Times:</p>
<p><a href=“With Time Running Short, Steve Jobs Managed His Farewells - The New York Times”>With Time Running Short, Steve Jobs Managed His Farewells - The New York Times;
<p>Very real, very moving. Glad he found his sister and had a chance to get close to her later in life.</p>
<p>Not sure if anyone posted this link–
[News</a> Desk: Cover Story: Steve Jobs at the Pearly Gates : The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/10/steve-jobs-new-yorker-cover.html]News”>Cover Story: Steve Jobs at the Pearly Gates | The New Yorker)</p>