No I missed out on the Apple I and it was October 1976 that I was first interested, but had the Apple II and many of the other machines that followed. In fact I was originally involved in technology, especially media related, worked on many phototypesetters and in doing that was referred to lads who were to watch...Apple. There were clear limitations especially with graphics but interesting nonetheless and so I had Apple II to play with.
For me Steve was the catalyst that made Apple what it is today, or sadly perhaps what it was before this crazy announcement on CSAM.
Wasn't just Steve though, as Chuck Geschke also played a big role in the development of a basic computer to a very usable computer system with decent graphics. I spoke to Chuck too, a really passionate guy about what he was doing in working on a little page description language called PostScript, but where funny enough the spark of thought for that was in 1976 and ironically it was the same company that Apple used as a basis for its computers Xerox PARC.
The real breakthrough for Apple came after Steve left Apple as his vision was for a more powerful and usable computer. In 1985 it was clear his vision did not appear to be shared by Apple, but he left, and where his life was not made easy, with rumours he was sacked although public record seems to demonstrate Steve intended to leave.
He set up NeXT and used $11.8m of his own money, and his first computer was considered a failure financially, but yet it assisted the setting up of the Internet via Tim Berners-Lee (although it was his boss that picked NeXT computer), and was to herald what we now know as Apple Mac and all the other devices that followed right up until now.
Meanwhile Apple nearly went bust during his absence, and in 1997 after Steve had come back he had an investment of £150m from none other than Microsoft!
Perhaps I'm just old fool reminiscing, but its horrendous for me to see Apple squandering its ethical stance on PRIVACY and engaging in SURVEILLANCE using machines they have sold to customers.
Had a lot of tragedy too, and nothing can hurt me more than losing my son, which is a lesson to you all. Never take family for granted, I used to work 7 days a week, taking my kids with me on occasions...I WAS FOOL.
What I would give for just a few minutes more with my son. The day he died he took half of me with him.
In 1997 Apple's financial situation was dire and under Steve by 1998 Apple were back on track.
Steve used DPS (hence the link with PostScript) and object oriented programming and whilst his computers were never a financial success at NeXt, his operating system was to save Apple and to this day the operating systems at Apple reflect Steve's move from Apple to NeXT.
Eventually Apple got Steve back, in 1997 paying him $426m for everything NeXT including NeXTSTEP plus $1.5m of Apple stock, and retrospectively this transformed Apple, both in terms of usability and financially.
I note how many people compare Steve with Tim, but sadly and I'm sure Tim would agree, Steve Jobs was in a totally different league, as without him coming back to Apple, it would not exist today.
I hope Apple remember some of his quotes on privacy and surveillance as this latest idea is certainly not in keeping with his publicly stated views.
Apologies for being long winded, its been an interesting life, was at the outset of computing/home computing, system director mainly Wintel....with my first association with computing being a newspaper computer in a 12ft. x 8ft. room sealed environment with smoke cloak with a tiny computing power.
Went from publishing after my views on it were confirmed hence the revolution in newspaper and publishing but even that only really possible when vectored graphics entered the scene.
Apple give up on this awful idea.
