I'm sure many of us feel we've lost a friend today, though all we may really have known was the dominant figure at a MacWorld, or a Shareholders' Meeting, or on a panel discussion on public television with other Silicon Valley luminaries.
I was privileged to meet and talk with him (though a Founder, he was then only an employee) as I had a consulting engagement at Apple Computer, Inc, in the late 70s and early 80s. As a skinny 22 year old, he was a quite compelling figure to the 50-year old consultant.
When I asked him one day about the "bongs" I had been hearing from that restricted portion of the warehouse full of cubicles that was Apple's first "big" building in Cupertino – what we all now recognize as the Mac's distinctive start-up tone – he responded with a line I heard him use frequently and publicly in 1984: We are creating the greatest advance in human communication since Gutenberg invented his printing press.
Oh sure, I thought, more hyperbole and enthusiasm from an indefatigable 20-something.
He, and his works, thereupon proceeded truly to change my life beyond anything I could have imagined in 1979.
Sitting at my iMac today (as everyday) I offered a little prayer for this unforgettable atheist.
R.I.P.
