I have a confession: I used to hate Macs. When I was in college that is all they had in the libraries to type your papers. Keep in mind this was just before the dot-com boom. In fact, you could take a course to learn how to search the Internet.
Fast forward just three years and I hear if the iPod for the first time. A doctor friend of mine had his entire music collection on a 40G iPod. And the sound quality, “forget about it”. I had to have one. I became obsessed. Two months later I opened a Christmas present from my wife…a first generation 10G iPod. I took it everywhere. No more burning CDs to make long road trips bearable. Airline flights became nightclub-like.
In 2007, I saw the first iPhone. No way. It’s actual real Internet pages. Once again I became obsessed. The only problem was, now I had a BlackBerry. I lived BlackBerry. I had one of the original Motorola two-way pagers so the keyboard was right up my alley. I was even using the HP iPaq before most. For some reason I became content to stick with the BlackBerry.
Two years later, my wife got an iPhone 3G. I admit I was jealous, but still could not part ways. I did not like the spring board for typing. Then my oldest daughter list her mobile phone and iPod touch privileges for about three months and I discovered the world I had been missing. All the apps. My email. The web…real Internet pages. And Twitter, can’t forget Twitter.
I cashed in the BlackBerry for an iPhone 3GS. Ad I sit here typing out thus blog post, I’m doing it from…you guessed it, my iPhone. This thing has changed my world. It has changed my perception of Apple and Macs. After using the iPhone, I realized that my next desktop computer had to be a Mac. Two months ago, I did it…I purchased a brand new iMac. Holy Cow it is amazing. Just because a visionary made it possible to sir all 350 of my CDs on a tiny music player.
For the record, my household owns 4 iPod Touches (3 now, one got stolen), two iPod Nanos, an iPhone 3, two iPhone 3GS, an iMac, an 80G iPod Classic, and the one that started it all. The original 10G iPod.
Mr. Jobs thank you. You’ve made the world realize that tech and art can coexist. You’ve changed the world of not only art, and tech, but that if business, marketing, production, etc.
You will be missed by many.
Cale D. Hawley 