William Henderson: Steve Jobs’ iLife

How many of you were using an iDevice when you learned about the death of Steve Jobs? I’m asking the question, but I’m not the first person to ask the question, because the question was posed, at least on my Twitter timeline, by three people within 30 minutes of the news breaking. And later, by dozens more, each, I assume, using an iDevice. 

I was on my iPhone, checking Twitter, and Holly was in the kitchen, cooking, and when I told her that Steve Jobs had died, she said, oh, that’s sad, and then she checked her news alerts. On her iPhone.

At the time, my son, Avery, who is four, was watching something through Netflix streaming on my iPad, which has become his iPad, since he uses the iPad more than I use the iPad.

Later, when I was looking at how Apple was commemorating Jobs, I went apple.com through a browser on my 27-inch iMac. When Holly got home, she did the same on her 17-inch MacBook.

In a box in my closet, there are four other iPhones. Dinosaurs, really. Relics and reminders of a society before the society we know today. Before Twitter and apps and the Gs, 3 and 3S and 4 and 4S,

Moby signed the back of my 3G. I had driven to New York from Boston to see Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman at the Housing Works Bookstore, and Moby had gone to the store to see Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman, and I approached him after the event and told him how much I like his music and asked him if I could have his autograph, and he asked me if I had a phone, and I said I did, and he drew a picture on the back of my phone and then signed it. I later coated the back of my phone with clear nail polish.

I have survived six iPhone cases and bumpers and even a brief period of time when my voice control activated for no reason. I’ve exchanged my ear buds 11 times for various reasons. I’ve waited in lines for hours to get the new phone the moment it went on sale (not the moment, really, since I was never the first in line). I’ve called my phone Jesus and baby. It is the last thing I look at before I go to sleep, and the first thing I look at when I wake up. I use my phone as my alarm clock, which means I often dream about the sounds my phone makes when I receive a new email or an @ reply on Twitter.

Steve Jobs would never have been able to pick me out in a crowd, or any one of you Mac users. But tell me you don’t know a Mac product when you see one. The sleek and slim and flat and touch-activated, and and and.

And he’s gone, dead, years too soon, before either of my children will get the chance to stand in line for hours just to get a new Mac product the moment it goes on sale (not the moment, since I doubt either of my children will be first in line; they probably won’t be that crazy).

Better people than me have elegiacally written about Jobs and his life and his death and his black turtlenecks (who cares how many black turtlenecks Jobs had?) and his influence and his brilliance and his drive and his and his and his.

I’m writing this on a Mac. My phone is next to me. My son is watching the iPad.

I think that statement says all I can say about Steve Jobs. He changed the way I – we – live and communicate and connect . What better eulogy than that?

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I asked William–Will–to write about Steve Jobs. I asked him for a number of reasons: this marks the beginning of Specter’s transition into different content–current and, at times, non-literary, content; Jobs’–and Apple’s–impact on visual & audio artists is well known, but I wanted a literary voice to speak up; Will & I share a common love–fanaticism, maybe?–for Apple products, though we also understand, in some small way, the legacy of Steve Jobs (both positive & negative), and I believed Will could deliver on a tight deadline, without direction, an eloquent note about Jobs. And he did. 

-mensah.