Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Thank You Steve Jobs

When I got home tonight and clicked on to CNN I learned that Steve Jobs died today. I felt the loss of a friend. I certainly didn’t know him personally -- yet it seemed I did. The reports of his health issues prevailed, but I chose to believe he would live forever.


He said, “No one wants to die, and yet death is the destination we all share.” I recently watched the video of his 2005 commencement address at Stanford on my iPad. My love for Apple began with the iPod, then I became intimately involved with the iPhone. It all synched seamlessly with my iMac, creating my first perfectly integrated relationship.


None of this is so different from the relationship anyone had with Steve Jobs or with Apple. That is the beauty of it. My experience was like the experience of everyone else...except I could not see the words on the screens of any of these devices. Under the leadership of Steve Jobs, Apple did something no one else had the guts to do -- they gave text the ability to speak with Voice Over.


He revolutionized a culture and he allowed everyone around him to think of everyone around them. And, I have no doubt that this legacy of inclusion will continue and his powerful spirit will continue to change the world.


In realizing his dreams he also realized mine.


Thanks Steve -- you changed my life!

3 comments:

  1. I am a Voiceover user and I follow your blog. I am having trouble posting my comment in the comment box so will experiment now and then return to ask my questions. Be back soon!

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  2. I'm back again! Rather amazed, I might add, because commenting has been difficult for me. I want to ask about the secret security numbers that some sites ask you to type in ... Facebook included. Is there any way of accessing these numbers when an audio option isn't offered? Secondly, when posting from a blog post to Twitter, Voiceover insists on reading the numbers as they count down instead of reading the typed words, and the programme is completely unusable until the countdown ends. Have you solved this problem? Third, I want to say that I enjoy your blog posts and wish you were more prolific. Your archives suggest that you have posted more regularly in the past, and I enjoy the freshness of new posts rather than searching labels for old posts that interest me. I look forward to hearing whether you can solve my social networking issues!

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  3. Leanne, thanks for the encouragement -- I know I've been a bad blogger -- I will do better.

    I agree, finding the comment box is a challenge. The comment box is is the first link directly under the blog post -- for example on this post it will now say "3 comments" which does not sound like an invitation to make a comment, does it? Sounds more like it's inviting you to read already posted comments, right? Last time I checked I could not change this in blogger -- but I'll check again.

    I must admit though, I find commenting on blogs generally a pain in the butt.

    Your questions about posting to Twitter is a complete mystery to me -- I am also a bad tweeter. I've asked a couple of people much smarter than me -- and I'll let you know if they have a solution for you.

    ReplyDelete

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