So Much Wit

The clos­est I think I ever got to meet­ing Steve was in 1999, at the Mac­world expo in San Fran­cisco. I spent a lot of time on the show­room floor that year, and it is very likely, sta­tis­ti­cally speak­ing, that Steve and I were in the build­ing at the same time at some point dur­ing the week.

So yeah, not very close.

It was a good trip all the same. I was there with my step­dad on a kind of geek vaca­tion — we got a cool hotel room near Moscone, and I got to wan­der around on my own for a few days, look­ing at all the neat stuff peo­ple were mak­ing for the belea­guered world of Apple com­put­ers. The morn­ing fol­low­ing Steve’s keynote address, I remem­ber sit­ting in the hotel restau­rant and read­ing the Chron­i­cle, which had run an arti­cle on the just-​​announced candy-​​colored iMacs — or as they put it, Mac’s Life-​​Savers. I had a notion that it was a Good Thing, and that I def­i­nitely wanted to col­lect them all.

Among the enor­mous amount of loot I gath­ered that week was a glossy poster adver­tis­ing the new iMacs. It went up on my wall the minute I got home.

I find the mem­ory of 14-​​year-​​old me plas­ter­ing my walls with adver­tis­ing kind of cringe-​​inducing — but to be fair, the same can be said for basi­cally every other mem­ory I have of my ado­les­cence. More to the point, Apple kit in the nineties just wasn’t that good, so I have been won­der­ing where all the emo­tional attach­ment and iden­tity issues came from. It could sim­ply be that I needed a team to root for, given how com­pletely I ignored sports. But even back then I think I had the sense that there are basi­cally two approaches to tech­nol­ogy: you can make a thing and try to sell it, or you can see a prob­lem and try to solve it. Doing the for­mer is respectable; doing the lat­ter, and doing it well, is admirable.

I’m about to start an engi­neer­ing career at post-​​Jobs Apple. When I inter­viewed with the com­pany, Steve had already for­mally resigned as CEO; when I start, they will have already held his memo­r­ial ser­vice. He is gone, and I am sad­der about it than I expected to be, but I am also excited. A few weeks ago, Guy Eng­lish wrote a piece called Not About Steve, and I’ve been turn­ing it over in my mind since. Here’s what gets me:

One of the first things I remem­ber read­ing in the news when Jobs first returned to Apple was that he had the Icon Gar­den moth­balled. At the time, around 1997, Apple had pix­e­lated sculp­tures of Mac OS icons on the cam­pus grounds. Once Steve returned they had to go — appre­ci­at­ing his­tory is one thing, enshrin­ing it is some­thing else.

To me, dis­man­tling the icon gar­den speaks of a remark­able com­bi­na­tion of prag­ma­tism and imag­i­na­tion. For four­teen years, Apple’s ethos has been a state­ment and a ques­tion: what we have done is good; how can we do it bet­ter? That’s not just good busi­ness, that’s peo­ple aspir­ing to greatness.

So with that in mind: thanks, Steve, for mak­ing what I have done pos­si­ble. I can’t wait to see what I’ll do next.