Steve Jobs has had a huge impact on the whole world by influencing the life on millions. These are some of the moments I remember.
My parents’ company was an early Apple dealer, the first Apple ][ entered our home in 1979. I immediately started playing with it. I remember playing Breakout with paddles.
One or two years later (I must have been 10), my dad taught me some Basic programming. I remember writing a simple program which played a 4 frames animation of a stick-man playing basketball.
In the early 1984 the first Macintosh arrived. We unboxed it in our living room. And there was MacPaint. Life has never been the same: I didn’t need to write code anymore!
Not much later, a Mac in my bedroom was connected to an early modem. An acoustic coupler. I called a friend on the other side of Gorizia and we chatted in a terminal window.
In 1989 I incorporated my company: a tiny advertising and design agency. All because I loved using those tools.
It was going to MacWorld in San Francisco with my dad, in the late ’80, that I first met Dave Winer and Marc Canter who would later have huge influence on my work.
In those same years I met my wife when I was hired to teach her how to use Quark Xpress.
It was a time when Apple was almost a faith. There were constant endless discussions with everybody about why the Mac was better.
And then for some time the Mac was not cool. Many moved to Windows. Quite stubbornly I didn’t. (Steve was not at Apple at the time).
Actually we also had a NeXT Color Station in our office. We mostly used it to render 3D animations with RenderMan, back when Pixar was in the software business.
In order to put the NeXT on the same network with our Mac Quadra, I had to first figure out TCP/IP networking.
Then Steve got back to Apple, and Thinking Different started to be cool again.
I picked up the guitar again after many years and started studying music thanks to Garage Band.
There has been a Mac next to me for most of my life.
Thanks Steve.