After coming over for a beer tonight, a friend of mine sent me a text. “Steve Jobs died.”
Impossible. Steve Jobes doesn’t die. He can’t die.
Unfortunately, this is not true. It’s sobering to reacquaint ourselves with our own mortality, but Steve is no more. While I was not the first of my friends to catch Apple fever and watch the webcasts and the later live blog updates, I am almost embarassed to say that the passing of the man means as much to me as the passing of someone from my own extended family.
I’ll ask you this: name the last CEO of a company that ranked in the top 10 most valued companies in the world whose death was noticed by people on Facebook. I can’t remember anybody, and I doubt Bill Gates will get the same treatment (although given his philanthropist nature, I hope he does.)
I think the reason I, and many others, will miss Steve is because he was like the more knowledgable, more mature friend that we all looked up to. He knew what we’d like, no matter where we went, and we were almost never disappointed when we gave his suggestion a try. The man’s death feels like that of a Pope or a President; even YouTube is posting videos tonight remembering Steve Jobs. While I doubt anybody will ask me ten years from now what I was doing when I learned that Steve Jobs was dead, the man was truly an icon of the times, even if I was only cognizant of the tail end of those times.
We’ll miss you, Steve.
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