Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. So naturally the fanatical fans were devastated, the normal fans were sad, and the rest of us understood. Comparisons made to Martin Luther King, Jr, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Edison, and yes even Tony Stark seemed maybe somewhat exaggerated. Though not by much.

He possessed intense curiosity, powerful intuition, great vision and the willfulness to see them happen. Much of the technological world is a knockoff of Apple’s or Pixar’s designs. Some people made liking his designs their identify. Pretty powerful for expensive toys and a great target for those of us who like to be outsiders.

At a time when the country needs young people interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, Jobs was a household name and role model. America needs more celebrities who inspire us to achieve based on their STEM accomplishments and less of those who get us to mindlessly vegetate on our couches. We need more true innovation. Hopefully he was just a big tree obscuring saplings who will become big on their own.

Sad to see him go. When he stepped down from Apple a few weeks ago, my hope was he would do like Bill Gates and get into philanthropy aimed at education. I hoped to hear more inspiring speeches.

Some of his quotes

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

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Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

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The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

His how to live before your die speech to Standford is a great speech. (Transcript)

My relationship to Apple has always been a mixed one. The first computer I ever hated using was a Macintosh. [1] But then I enjoyed the Apple IIe at school. I like iTunes as a music player, but I keep failing at truly endorsing AAC. I have owned two iPods, but specifically went Android for my smartphone because I did not want to get locked into iTunes.

[1] A friend of my mother’s and mother of a my favorite teacher was running a small anthology publishing company. She would find short stories and publish 2-4 books a year with the stories. She wanted me to figure out how to make something look correct that she had botched on the Macintosh. Only she could not tell me what she had done, how it worked, or what it should look like when correct as the person who normally used the desktop publishing software was out-of-town. I knew lots about DOS then. I had played with the Apple IIe at school, so I was familiar with the mouse. The desktop publishing software was very non-intuitive. Playing, I knew it was the future and our next computer was Windows 3.1. It was my first experience of going to a kid instead of a professional because parents are not smart enough to charge for their child’s expertise.