Steve Jobs Has Left Us

That's certainly not good news for the tech industry.

That applies to both Apple Computers specifically and to the technology world as a whole. Steve Jobs has had an undeniable and rather unavoidable influence on the business, especially in the last ten years or so.

From what I understand, the MacIntosh, or Mac for short, would more than likely not have taken off the way it did as a computing solution without Jobs. We almost certainly would not have had as many of the nifty little gadgets we've got these days, if the man hadn't done what he's known for, at least not in the quantity of devices or options we do.

Now, I won't say that it's entirely impossible that we'd be entirely without something like the iPod, for example, without Jobs. Sure, it's possible that someone, maybe even Apple itself, would have come up with something like it eventually. But it was influence from Jobs that put the Apple version into the realm of the public.

I've got some experience with a few of these products, most notably the Mac computing platform. This experience is more than a little out of date, of course, as the last time I really used a Mac very much, I was working on a bachelor’s degree in journalism, which is something that I fell just short of completing a little more than ten years ago. My memories of using Macs are, in general, good. They were very much like the Windows-based PCs I'm more accustomed to, only a little better suited to the actual work of doing things like page layout and streamlining the production of media.

There are two big reasons why I've been more Windows-based in my computer usage in the decade or so since my bachelor’s degree: price and the directions my life has gone.

The dominant of those reasons is where my life has gone. When the journalism thing didn't work out the way I'd hoped, I started looking for ways to apply my skills and talents in a broader sense, and that meant focusing on Windows and IBM type computers, since that's what is used in a much wider sense. Your general office setting, as I understand it, most often runs on Windows and other Microsoft products. As such, that's what I got to focus on when I went for an associates degree later on.

But I'm sure there might be questions about why I don't own any other Apple products even if having a Mac wasn't exactly warranted. In many cases, it's for much the same reason I'm using a Windows-based PC to write this. I can no more justify spending $200 on a supercharged cell phone when the $50 one I've been using for years suits my needs for a quarter the price than I can spending $1200 on a computer when the $750 Windows-based HP machine does what I need it to do just as well.

With all that in mind, I've got to acknowledge that without Steve Jobs in charge at Apple, we might not have nearly so many smartphone options, or varieties of MP3 players, or tablet computing to the extent we do. In fact, one of the trends I've noticed lately is that a rather large majority of my readers are reading on devices that run on either iOS or the Mac OS.

So, yeah, with Jobs' unfortunate, and at least somewhat untimely passing of complications of pancreatic cancer, amongst other things, the tech world has lost one of its all-time biggest boosters. He'll certainly not be replaced, and whoever winds up taking his place is going to have big shoes to fill.

So, rest in peace, Mr. Jobs. You've earned it. Thanks so much for making the computer world so much better. You will be missed, good sir.