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Remembering Steve Jobs – 1955-2011 – R.I.P.

imageI’ve been up and down about Apple products over the years. On the one hand, considering myself a dyed-in-the-wool computer techie, I’ve always kinda sneered at systems that never presented any major opportunities to utilize my talents – ie, things that just ran and didn’t require substantial amounts of configuration or maintenance to prevent things from going wrong, or in-depth troubleshooting when things DID go wrong. In latter years, however, despite the Droid X that I own and the Android “Nom” t-shirt that I’m wearing as I write this, I’ve found myself using Apple products more and more. I use my iPod Touch for ebooks and RSS, Twitter, Google Plus and a desktop clock at work, plus Facetime when the wife or I are out of town. I use my iPad2 for games, news and idle browsing. I did not agree with all of Steve Jobs’ philosophies – the concept of knowing what’s best for everyone and padding a computer’s operating system so comfortably so that nobody can poke their eye out with it, even if they tried – I don’t like that. But the man certainly was a visionary, and like the news sites are saying, the world is a lesser place without him in it. There’s obviously a place and an audience for what he made – and I acknowledge that as a tech guy, it was in no small part due to Jobs making computers “aesthetic works of art” in a way that made them appeal to the masses. It really dawned on me when my 2-year-old toddler picked up the concept of swiping his finger across a screen seconds after seeing it, that Apple products like the iPhone were completely intuitive – for everyone – without needing to know a lot about computers. Great for most people. For me, still fun. But, like a doctor without the prospect of sick people, I’m never happy unless I needlessly complicate things. If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is.

Hopefully the new CEO of Apple will carry the torch forward. Equally, I hope the flopdick hackers out there grow a pair and start TRULY working on hacking new versions of iOS instead of “withholding exploits” because they’re scared Apple will patch them. Physically break open the device, throw in a new chip, defeat whatever RSA encryption is present, break the master key and for christ’s sake let’s make this stuff fun again. I’m looking at you, Asia. Don’t just stop at game console modchips! Sheesh.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Rest in peace, Mr Jobs.

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