Thank you Steve.

With the plethora of paeans to Steven P. Jobs upon the occasion of his passing, I don't think I have much to add to the outpouring of electric ink. He was a dedicated artist, a genius industrial designer, a technological master at the height of his game. He didn't always make a home run every time at bat. But his average was everyone else's exceptional.

Instead, if I may, I'd like to share how Steve changed my life. No, I didn't know him. But I recall growing up a decade after he was born. As Moore's Law accelerated into inevitability, computers became personal, handheld, swiss army ginsu knives of extraordinary power and beauty. As a boy in Ohio in the 70s computers were enormous mainframes with quirky typewriter interfaces and bizarre storage and communication strategies. I mean really: cards, tape and a goofy acoustic coupler. Even back then I could do a fair impression of a handshaking protocol. With the advent of the Macintosh way back in 1984, I thought that this would change everything. Steve was right, and I just followed along.

Graduating from college way back in the caveman days of 1986, I packed up my portfolio in a borrowed car, threw in an old tent and a couple friends along for the ride and headed West. To the epicenter of the computer revolution. I talked my way into a job at AT&T, where I learned a bunch of different computer systems at the same time. CPM, DOS, early Mac desktop publishing. A slide-writer, a good ol stat camera and one of the first laserprinters ever. After a few lonely (but command-line-filled) years, I met a beautiful red-headed girl to complete my Charlie Brown-like existence.

At this point in my story, I was thinking of moving back to the East Coast for a job at Bell Labs/Lucent. But I wanted to stay in the SF Bay Area, stay using the most comfortable of the systems I jumped between every day, stay with that cute little red-headed girl (today, 10/10/11 being our 18th anniversary). Maybe things might have turned out differently if I had taken that job, maybe I might have ended up with some other cute red-headed girl, but I could still feel the aftershocks radiating from Cupertino and Silicon Valley: this is the heartland of tomorrow. This is where it starts.

I recall going to a lecture by Marc Canter of what would become Macromedia (later acquired by Adobe). I asked him when videoworks would gain a 24 or 32bit color space, to which he answered that an 8bit palette was sufficient. Then my girlfriend/now wife won a raffle for a (ooh! ahh!) Mac Plus. Ah yes, ancient days indeed. Good times.

I interviewed at Apple around this time, but passed on that job. One of the biggest decision points in my life, to be sure. To pass on working for the mothership was a tough call. But those were the days of post-Steve Apple, so maybe I skipped the doldrums of the Scully/Amelio years.

I moved up and on to Diasonics (later Toshiba) as an art director and marketing whiz kid for gee whiz technologies like MRI and ultrasound. We broke new ground in desktop publishing and media on Macs. One of the joys of that job was setting up new hires with a Mac, load Soundmaster and have it intone "Ahl be back!" every time it ejected a floppy. It was at this job that I played my first LAN games (lesson: never beat the boss) and learned a bit of UNIX so as to get by on the SGI workstations that controlled the MRI machines.

When I moved on from that job, I consulted for Toshiba and a swath of different medical manufacturers, branching out into pharmaceutical work for Genentech, some venture capital work and a series of digital interactive sales tools for wine industry titans. I bought more Macs and the occasional PC (just for testing, honestly!). I married the cute little red-headed girl and we made the invitations on a Mac. I made my first web site from scratch on a Mac. I created artwork for my first illustrated book on a Mac and transmitted it overnight for output on a modem the size of a hardback book (which seemed tiny back then). I toyed around with 3D illustration on a Mac and eventually illustrated three books in 3D. At each step the Mac helped me help my clients. It was there for the earliest emails, the first video grabs, my first 3D model, the first digital video and audio explorations. I knew PCs but Mac spoke to my heart and soul.

I've watched as Apple reinvented industries (iPod, iPhone, iPad) and jumped in when the jumping was good. My children have grown up using tools that were beyond magical just a few years ago. I've watched and pushed and pulled as science fiction has increasingly become reality. Thank you Steve Jobs for the amazing tools, the magic and wonder of your movies, your machines and your madness. Your awesome genius in seeing the form beneath the stone and bringing it forth into the light with the panache and pride of a father. Your company will evolve the state-of-the-art, but it has lost a muse, a master, a genius. In that sense we, the world, are a bit poorer for your passing.

For all the times you have been there for me Mr. Jobs, thank you…

Too soon, too soon.

Sent from my iPad.