Submitted by Katie Hellmuth on | 0 Comments
Tonight the news broke into my new schedule of trying to watch a sitcom in the evenings after a good day of work. Steve Jobs really did die, and that wasn't supposed to really happen. After the show ended, we flipped around to news networks that were memorializing Steve Jobs. As I couch potatoed , I chided myself for not getting on the computer - onto my MacBook Pro - to crank out some more Tin Shingle type work. Sometimes, when I shut work off in my mind, I won't open the computer until the morning, or bring it to bed. Too much room for distraction and deep surfing and brain sucking. I said "What would Steve Jobs do? He wouldn't stop!" But I don't know that, and I had just heard him quoted in his Stanford commencement speech that one must trust in something, so I trusted my decision to rest.
When I retired to bed, I was in the mood to read tech articles on Mashable or SEOMoz or something, from my iPhone (I allow the iPhone, but not the laptop). It occurred to me to pay homage to Steve Jobs on my Twitter. Then I read some other homages. Then I realized our company, Tin Shingle, home to and advocate for all entrepreneurs, needed to make a statement. But I had that earlier problem where I'd vowed to not open my computer for the night.
Enter the beginning of our homage: I can blog from my iPhone. Even though the experience is a little clunky because the WYSIWYG isn't displaying so I have to type in code view and create my own line breaks, Steve Jobs enabled this flexibility.
Thank you Steve Jobs for (and these are only a few of the many life changing things you've done):
- Changing the world's behavior and mentality with more than a handful of products. Yet, there were many, many more of your ideas and hard work that did not work and failed in public. And your beat went on.
- Trusting yourself, and having enough conviction to keep going even when others failed doing the same thing.
- Being so quotable, and saying out loud what many of us say to ourselves silently every day. But when you say it, it's believable and credible. We can speak our own secret fears with "Steve Jobs said..." and it becomes truth.
- For (re)inventing things from technologies or arts that already existed. Like having a hand drawn font programmed into a computer, or even remastering a touch screen phone, making it into a computer/magic wand, and making it so easy, a child could do it.
- For enabling my 16 month year old daughter's eyes to light up as she flicks through pictures of herself or daddy, while listening to her favorite music, then googling this: "Sssrdddseefzs", and finally Voice Dialing someone, all within 2 minutes (note to Apple: can you pleeeeease unlock the mandatory Voice Control thing?)
- For being a beacon of hope for all of us, especially entrepreneurs who think we're onto something great.
