Steve

I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what to write for about fifteen minutes. Whatever I say will be sandwiched between thousands of obituaries, but that doesn’t matter. I’m writing this for me.

Conventionally, we’re told to distinguish work from life, art from commerce, the serious from the joyful. As far as I can tell, Steve Jobs never paid heed to such distinctions.

Steve wasn’t a businessman in the typical sense. He was a man who conceived of tools to enable us to create and communicate, and to enjoy the creativity of others. Steve’s genius was his recognition that mass-produced slabs of glass and silicon and aluminium could be drawn together to create something beautiful and human.

Still, I couldn’t care less about the gadgets. It would be sad and misguided to reduce Steve Jobs to a product lineup.

Steve’s legacy can, I think, be summarised in a single sentence: it shows when we take care.

My life, and the lives of countless others, has been shaped by that philosophy.