Bill So eloquently put, much of what you say resonates with me. Very sad day. Cheers Ashley
Sent from my iPhone On 06/10/2011, at 3:13 PM, "William G. Scott" <wgsc...@ucsc.edu> wrote: > On Oct 5, 2011, at 5:52 PM, Bosch, Juergen wrote: > >> http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/ >> >> May innovation continue to lead the future. >> >> Jürgen > > I've been quite saddened about this all evening. Even though we knew it was > coming, it is still incredibly sad, especially at his age (only 56). > > Although I never met him, through OS X, he made a fairly significant impact > upon my life and career development (such as it is). > > The advent of OS X has had a significant impact upon both my professional and > personal lives. Although I have worked with unix systems since the mid 1980s, > it was only when OS X came along, and I made the switch (from SGI's Irix, > which many of us remember fondly as a total pig of an OS), did I really come > to enjoy using computers. As a crystallographer, a unix operating system > really is essential I think, and when OS X appeared, a fundamental change > took place in my office as a young assistant professor: I only needed one > computer. > > Before, I had an enormous SGI sitting on a table, for doing science. With its > stereographic hardware and dials, it put me back (well, actually, the > taxpayer) about $12K for an R10,000, which had a 150MHz RISC processor. The > sony trinatron monitor did a good job heating the room, especially in the > summer. Then I had this little colored hunk of plastic, the first generation > bottom-of-the-line iMac, upon which I wrote my papers and grant proposals, > sitting on my desk. This left very little room in my office to mope and feel > sorry for myself, which my wife tells me are the only things I am good at. > > OS X came on an extra CD packaged with an iBook I bought just before the Sept > 11th attack. I remember, because I gave my first presentation using OS X > 10.0.3 or something like that on that day, in Grenada, Spain, right next to > the Alhambra. It was the worst talk I ever gave, but it wasn't the fault of > the software. I was excessively nervous, so much so that my arch-competitor I > guess took pity and tried to calm me down. Maybe I sensed something bad was > about to happen. Anyway, it was an inauspicious start. > > I eventually made it home and put it on that colored piece of plastic in my > office and discovered it really was a real unix operating system, albeit in > its infancy. I sort of got lost in it for months at a time, and was > determined to get all of the software used in macromolecular crystallography > running on OS X. O was about the only thing at the time that seemed ready. > What evolved from that was a crystallography on os x website, which started > off as a chronicle of my pain, which I seem to feel an almost moral > obligation to share and inflict upon everyone around me. (I work at a > university that, frankly, isn't very good at infrastructural support, to put > it mildly, and I wound up having to learn to do everything the hard way, by > myself.) > > I think it is fair to say that Steve Jobs and OS X were some of the main > things that made this, and my survival, possible. > > I've primarily used OS X I guess from the bottom up, but at the same time I > was a bit of an Apple fan-boy in the sense that I got the first iPod when it > came out, the first iPod Touch, the first MacBook Air, the first iPad, etc. > I've never regretted any of those purchases, nor the purchase of the 20 or so > Apple computers that I've acquired for work and family over the last decade > or so. > > My newest OS X adventure has been into computer audio. I really still don't > know much of anything about it, but again Apple has made it an enjoyable > experience. I bitch and moan about iTunes as much as the next guy, but if you > stop to think about it, it transformed the entire music industry, and turned > what began as a network of illegal file sharing (Napster), something I > regrettably missed out completely, into a legitimate business model. Some > might look at this as co-opting, but I think there is a bit more to it than > that. In any case, both from the perspective of hardware and software, > Apple/Jobs completely changed how I listen to music. > > During that same decade I was starting out as an academic scientist, I had > more or less given up on music almost completely. My oldest son now likes > music (Pearl Jam, Joy Division, REM), but at the time he couldn't handle > listening to it at all, probably as a consequence of being somewhere on the > autistic spectrum. OS X provided an escape from all that for me, but it > eventually also provided a relief for him I think, and through it he came to > enjoy (some) music and now plays cello and electric guitar. > > So, I guess Steve Jobs has had a large, albeit indirect, influence on my > life, and that of my family and research group. I never met him, but I've > learned a bit about him through a former VP. I doubt I would have liked him > very much personally. Obsessive secrecy and temper tantrums aren't my > favorite personality traits. But as I continue to age, I realize superficial > likability isn't really that much of an asset. > > I'm kind of worried about the future of my favorite platform. > > A friend once said to me that Apple and The Gap were the only companies that > successfully marketed to my generation (those left to pick up the shattered > pieces of the world left to us by the rampages of the infinitely > self-entitled baby-boomers). Hopefully Apple doesn't go the way of The Gap. > That is the trouble with a personality cult. I hope this is something > different, and more sustainable. > > -- Bill
