THE ONE WITH i

I woke up this morning around the usual ungodly hour. First thing I do is reach for the iPod in it’s docking station and hit the snooze button. This morning for whatever reason, maybe a good nights sleep, I chose to shut down the alarm and have a quick browse through twitter, which is my normal routine, after about 20 punches of the snooze button.
The first thing I saw was that Steve Jobs had passed away. Being half asleep and bleary eyed, I reached for my iPad. Same thing there. An amazing visionary had passed away. My first words to my wife this morning were not good morning or anything of the sort. She was awoken to the words “Steve Jobs is dead!”
I’m kinda late onto the apple bandwagon ( I was always a windows buff), but I was always aware of what Apple and Jobs were doing as a kid. The likes of Jobs, Gates, Sinclair etc. were always inspirational in my young book.
My first interaction with any Apple product was in a school computer lab. And I was blown away. Not so much by what was on the screen, but the actual design and shape of thing, compared to the IBM compatible monsters that were also lurking around the same lab. It took the bare bones of nearly 20 odd years after that for me to buy the original iPod touch. And since then; Nano’s, more iPod touches, Apple TV’s and an iPad 2 all have been purchased. Honestly, I believe the iPad is one of the greatest pieces of tech ever invented. It doesn’t leave my side and I couldn’t get through the day without it. Even for my (almost) 15 month old.His first interaction with anything tech was an apple product. He’ll quite happily sit in front of my iPad banging drums on Garage Band or laughing at a movie or interacting with Elmo. I would have been lost in NYC or Dubai or London or anywhere else I’ve been without my iPod touch. It’s rarely used for listening to music. Instead it has gotten me around subways, provided directions and even booked restaurants for me thousands of miles away from home.
Steve Jobs along with his vision and drive have made a huge impression on me. So it’s with a heavy heart that I write this. And whilst this is an incredibly sad time for the Jobs family and all that knew him it also needs to be a celebration of what was most certainly an incredibly gifted human being. He has changed and inspired the world by how we interact and communicate with each other forever. His vision has changed how we read magazines, listen to music, the list is endless. His vision has changed my life and it has brought smile after smile to my son’s life. And for that, I say “Thank You, Steve!”
As individuals Steve Jobs has changed our lives in ways no one thought possible years ago.
And it is only today that we realise, there is more “ i ” in all of us than we ever knew!