I owe my career to Steve Jobs. Him and his exciting non-beige computers. His bubble backed iMacs in semi-translucent Bondi Blue. His OS 8.5 operating system that somehow made perfect sense to my PC brain. In 2000, I decided to give up on a career as a production artist in a successful advertising agency to take a chance on being an Apple tech. I’m still shocked that I made the jump, but have never regretted it. I started at mac-fusion on my birthday, July 5th, 2000, working for a man that just became an Apple Reseller. Apple Resellers were the Apple stores before there were official Apple Retail Stores. I soon saw my first Steve Jobs Keynote online. He had such a presence and a way of making you excited about whatever he was presenting, even if it was something you didn’t need. I remember my first Macworld. Sitting in line for the Keynote at 4am in San Francisco. Having only 20 people in front of you but somehow you still didn’t get a great seat. At least we were in the same room with Steve. He wasn’t just hocking a product. He believed in it; he was passionate about it. Looking back, that was due to how much of him he put into those products.
I owe my marriage to Steve Jobs. You can laugh if you want to, or try to argue differently, but the man I’ve been married to for the last 5 years wasn’t my “type”. He’s actually the man I went to work for in 2000. We’ve discussed it before that we would have never dated any other way. We also have a 3.5 year old child together. No we didn’t name him Steve or anything Apple-ish. We’re not insane. Just passionate geeks that decided to breed our own little Mac techs. Nothing crazy about that, right?
I owe the bulk of my friends to Steve Jobs. So many of the people that are in my life are due to my Apple career, from other Apple Resellers, clients, people I met online and then met in real life (and others that I still plan to meet in real life). I have a very real Apple community around me on Twitter, all of us together due to a love of Apple. People I would have never known or thought to know if we didn’t start off with that tiny thing in common.
You can try and say that it isn’t Steve Jobs, but really it is just Apple. I and others know that there wouldn’t be the Apple we know today if Steve hadn’t came back. I try really hard to not be a raving fan girl, but at times it’s hard. A third of my life has been changed by Steve Jobs and Apple. It’s weird how many of these things all came about because of a brilliant man with a vision. So to that I say thank you Steve as much of my happiness is due to you.
Thank you for letting me purge and try and get my head around why I’m so upset. It makes more sense now.
Photo Credit: Dylan Roscover
