Opinion All about Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs,more than anyone else,saw what computers could do for us.

October 7, 2011 02:57 AM IST First published on: Oct 7, 2011 at 02:57 AM IST

The one and only time I saw Steve Jobs was from the sixth row of the giant San Francisco convention centre auditorium where he delivered the keynote address to Apples Worldwide Developer Conference. I was a Beatles fan and had seen Paul McCartney in concert,but this was different. As a 31-year-old neuroscience graduate student who had won a scholarship to this conference (really just a way for Apple to get their pick of students as recruits),I found my fellow awardees much younger than me all either college or high school students and rather blasé. I,on the other hand,was shaking with excitement. I had started using Macs in 1996,during the bad period,the time when Steve (like God,or Madonna,he was known by one name) was away from Apple. I had watched how Apple had nearly gone bankrupt but was now showing signs of recovery. I knew from Apples rumour mill that a new chip from IBM,the G5,might be announced at this conference and that was going to take their computers to new heights in performance. Most of all,I was excited because I was going to see Steve.

The lights went down and he bounded up the three steps to the stage in his black turtleneck,jeans and sneakers and the crowd rose to applaud him for what seemed like 10 minutes. I thought he looked quite spry for someone who was ancient (48). As he talked,he bent forward at the waist at what seemed an uncomfortable angle,taking strides that seemed too long,and looked down while gesturing with one hand. He paused and looked up only to emphasise a point (and garner more applause),his talk honed to sound effortless,perfectly spontaneous,only breaking stride when he introduced a well-rehearsed but plainly terrified Apple employee to demonstrate a new software feature. The feeling was of someone urgently and uncomfortably focused and his manner made the crowd uneasy why were we not as hard-driving and insanely great as him? and when Phil Schiller,his frequent keynote co-presenter,appeared,his jovial and easygoing manner seemed designed to calm the crowd. Steves presentation climaxed with Whole Lotta Love,the Led Zeppelin tune blaring out while a shiny steel-cased new computer bathed in spotlights appeared automatically from a rotating platform on the floor. We must have been about 6,000 people in the auditorium: each of us was clapping,shouting,whistling,jumping our adulation. The head of IBM (whose name I dont remember) came on stage and made noises about Apple and IBMs partnership. The lights came up,the keynote was done and Steve walked off the side of the stage; it was pretty close to a religious experience.

When Apple Computer was founded in the 1970s,computers worked for large corporations but didnt really do anything useful for people. Steve,more than anyone else,saw what they could do for us. He recognised how people would like the graphical user interface,the mouse,and more recently,the personal music player,the phone,the tablet and the digital store. He also always knew what they couldnt or,more importantly,shouldnt do for us his impeccable sense of design,honed in calligraphy classes,would not let him cram features into a Zune-like phone or allow other PC manufacturers to blur the hardware-software jugalbandhi he had so carefully constructed. No one did solipsistic minimalism like Steve. This vision,for which he never relied on focus groups,often led him and his company astray. He famously failed to licence the Mac operating system to other hardware manufacturers,and probably never saw the great benefits people could get by connecting to one another. Even today,that signature remains at Apple while Facebook and Google are adept at connecting people,Apples attempts at doing that (Facetime,Ping,etc) have been oddly unsuccessful. Like all great people,he was persistent and lucky he was fired from Apple but brought back at a time when the personal mobile device industry was taking off and Apple,with its combination of hardware and software,was perfectly poised to flourish.

I am a Machead,a Macolyte,an overgrown fanboy,because of Steve. There are many like me. We camp outside Apple Stores before they open for the first time,for nothing other than the thrill of having done it,we earnestly comb rumour websites for hints of the next product and we go on pilgrimages to 1 Infinite Loop (a play on a runaway computer programme),Apples headquarters in Cupertino,California. We have done this because we thought he knew what is best for us he appealed to the feeling in all of us that compels us to follow military generals,political leaders,saints and,in him,technology impresarios. He was reportedly a terrifying boss with exacting standards and a self-described a*****e at times but inspired great loyalty in his workers. He gave them great responsibility and convinced them that they were always changing the world. He,with all of his followers,made us love a thing created from silicon and metal because he made it personal.

Steve Jobs died on Wednesday and many things will be said by those who knew him and his work well. I have never met him or come closer than the 20 ft I did that day of the keynote. However,I always felt I knew him while using his products every time I noticed a pleasantly unexpected capability,when I noticed that some feature could have been included but had been purposefully left out and mostly when I just saw them. While Steves presence that day at the keynote as a human was deeply disconcerting,using the products he created makes me feel serene and happy. In that way,every day,he makes me feel loved,and it is futile to hold back the tears as I say goodbye,even if it makes my iPad a little harder to read.

The writer is a doctor and founder of a Delhi-based health information start-up,express@expressindia.com