I'm glad you asked this question because I felt weird not having commented in the main thread that's going, having been an Apple fan for God knows how long and having been a member here since 2003. Your question helped me think about it all. And I wrote, probably too much, and actually not even as deeply as I wished I had. I found out when I was in class and started to tear up but couldn't really process it in the middle of a 3 hour history lecture. And I'm tired. I feel like I should have something more cutting to say about how I feel because I felt it in class, felt it without words. And now that that moment's passed, I don't have the words for what I felt at that moment. Anyhow:
When I saw the news it hit me and I knew I cared.
I don't know exactly why.
I talk about him all the time
It's someone my dad and I talk about.
How many American heroes are there. I mean, I know he's not a hero, hero, but I don't follow sports or anything. And I don't even know if he was the nicest guy--but I'm not the nicest guy either. He was someone to admire. For his accomplishments. I don't see the ability to do that a lot. Like in a big way. A bigger than life way. I would talk about him as if I knew the way he thought. He was like a force in the world to talk about. Like the way I talk about the president. I somehow feel in the old days there were more iconic people like him. I'm not sure. It doesn't matter. It matters that he existed. And he existed at the same time I existed and I cared about the force he had in the world.
I actually wrote a paper about him in 9th grade when in my biology class (who knows why in biology) we were asked to write about an inventor. I wrote about Steve Jobs and stretched the parameters of the assignment a bit and wrote about the upcoming iMac (the first one—it hadn't come out yet) as one of his great inventions. Later in college when I took a public speaking class, I gave a talk on his life using Keynote, which at the time was really impressive looking.
I think as the years went on, I became less and less passionate about Apple--pretty much correlating with Apple's rise in popularity. But I always thought of Steve Jobs as a force in the world. And I cared about him the same way I would care about anyone else who influenced the world the way he did.
I don't know him. He was intensely private. But I'm writing on a MacBook Pro right now in large part because he existed. I feel there's something to tap from my more intense admiration I had earlier in my life. I'm tired, though. But there are a lot of things. Like the fact that he could handle being fired from a job and move on. And then go back to that job and go on to leave with the bang he did. I mean basic things: like how did he live with his illness and just go to work let alone keep focusing on the future. His life really does seem too short. So many are. I wonder if the world will be a sleepy place without him in terms of technology. He cut through so much to move to the end goals. Apple's products always seem simple. The end result is simple. And that was Apple's greatest advantage over its competitors. The ideas Apple created were self-evident and obvious. But simplicity and self-evident solutions seem to be something a lot of companies struggle with executing. The world does feel a bit empty when I think about technology. Like if in 15 years I'm using a Google or Microsoft or Apple phone, will it be sleepy? Will someone have seen something in the distance? He definitely saw into the distance, sometimes eschewing little niceties along the way for a new paradigm. His approach reminded me of pile-driving and knowing the end result would be worth it once people caught up.
But to sum up as I was saying before, I cared because he was a person in the world that was a force, someone I talked about, as if I were staying close to the movers and shakers. I mean I don't think of myself as a peon and I don't think of him as a king, but I think in our minds we have narratives of the leaders of various industries or governments, we feel close to them, whether we like them or not. We talk about them as if they are pieces on a chessboard right in front of us: "Did you see what Steve Jobs announced?" "Oh yeah, that's gonna give Google a run for its money." As if we were part of it all. I guess we are. There's something sweet and innocent about being able to have coffee table talk about these people who we don't know. I don't know how else to articulate it. And I feel I connect to other people through talking about them the same way I talk about politics with family and friends as if I am a mover and shaker there, the way people talk about sports teams as if they are a part of them. They are our nobility, perhaps. And part of me is to care about people like that. Call it human nature.