Apple’s Steve Jobs is the man to thank for Macintosh, iPods, iPads, iPhones, OSX and lots more

I live in a very Apple-centric house. There are at least a half-dozen Apple products in near constant use. My home has been that way for more than a quarter-century.

Now, that’s not to say that there haven’t been other computer/electronics products that have made their was through the front door. It would have been nearly impossible for me to have avoided using Windows-based computers and cell phones while I worked for a subsidiary of Microsoft for more than a decade.

Plus, it would have been tough for me to write about Unix, Linux, Symbian and other operating systems, over the years, without being able to base a lot of my opinions on my experiences with the many flavors of the MacOS and, more recently OS X.

Throughout all that time there were (and still are) a large number of all sorts Apple products being used here. For the record, there’s even a fully functioning Mac SE on the shelf that I sometimes “boot-up” to remind me of what “personal computing” was like not so long ago.

But this is not about me.  This is about the man behind Apple –  and how he has able to turn his ideas and wishes into amazing successes.

In the beginning, I was an early adopter of what was then called Computer Science (in college using copier machine-sized machines that needed punch cards to input data).  

We loved using ancient mass-communications programs such as CompuServe and GEnie (ask your parents). But interfacing with that  rudimentary software was done via cryptic instructions typed into a command line. Even very early Apple computers used command lines.  What a pain.

But, in 1984, two guys named Steve (Jobs and his programming partner, Wozniak) changed all that with their new Macintosh computer.

From then on everyone had to follow Apple’s lead and provide users with a graphical interface. Apple’s was slick.  The competition’s (Microsoft Windows 1.0, 3.0 and 3.1, etc.) were clunky. Sound familiar?

In the following years, Mr. Jobs and company revolutionized computer design and functionality.  Desktops, laptops, peripherals – then portable music players. The list goes on. 

So, it was no surprise that Mr. Jobs looked at the success of his little iPod devices – then looked at the explosion of smartphones from industry leaders like Nokia, Blackberry and, yes, Microsoft. He decided he could do better.

He was right.

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