Not being an Apple Addict Acolyte, all of whom will no doubt be flagellating themselves and mourning for about a decade (or until the next update to MacOS comes out, whichever happens first), we’re not going to launch ourself into a fifteen-page hagiographic eulogy of the single best thing that has happened to mankind since G-d turned on the Sun. Give it a few days and the sales of Steve Jobs relics on eBay trading at six figures on the low end will make the medieval practice of selling splinters of the True Cross look like a lemonade stand run by a couple of 6-year-olds.
You know they will.
But we will say a few things about Mr. Jobs on his passing anyway.
First, to die at the age of 56 is way too soon, and we pray for his loved ones and hope that our L-rd G-d will welcome him in His Heaven.
Second, we can’t help but admire somebody who managed to take on Bill Gate$$$ and not only survive, but thrive as a result. Anybody who can stick it to MicroSloth is a hero in our book.
Third, even though we wouldn’t go Apple in a million years (mainly because we’d have to mortgage our kids’ kidneys to buy stuff from them that can deliver half the performance that an old-fashioned, carefully tweaked Windoze box can do at a third of the price), we also know that if it hadn’t been for Apple, we’d still be laboriously typing in commands in DOS. Apple invented the GUI and WIMP interface, and if they hadn’t, Bill Gate$$$ would never have had the incentive to come up with a copy of it. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.
And that is one of the wonders of capitalism and free markets. Competition improves everything for everybody. Which makes the fact that those smelly idiots camping out on Wall Street wouldn’t leave their mothers’ basements without their iPhones and MacAirs even more hilarious. If it hadn’t been for capitalism and free markets, Steve Jobs would have never made an impact. We’d still be trying to make do with standardized pieces of shit while being told they were “top of the line.”
And that is Steve Jobs’ real legacy, if you ask us.
By pushing the boundaries of “what’s state of the art”, by never giving in to the temptation of just being a little bit better than the lowest common denominator, by being willing to take risks and following his visions rather than just going for “good enough” or “slightly better than the competition”, he helped advance the state of the art for everybody, Apple Cultists and Windoze users alike.
For that, we salute him.
And we mourn his passing, praying that we’ll never have a shortage of people like him.
Thatisall.