RIP Steve Jobs

October 6, 2011 by Dave Haynes

In early 1984 I wandered up to, I think, the 7th floor of the old Eaton’s department store building in Winnipeg and found my way into the area where they were, honest, selling computers back then.

I was a newspaper reporter in the ’80s, and doing some freelance writing on the side. The computer at the office was actually a mainframe terminal, so I wasn’t taking that home. I needed something to write on, and I’d been looking for a while. But I couldn’t get past the notion of learning how to work on a PC, using MS-DOS on some horrible black and green screen.

Then I saw the Macintosh on display at Eaton’s, and within a couple of mouse clicks, I was a convert.

It had 128K total memory, and it cost me (ImageWriter printer included) the equivalent of $8,400 in 2011 dollars. And it was worth every penny.

That was genius.

Everybody having anything to do with information technology and media can tip his or her hat to Steve Jobs. Undoubtedly, he and his team accelerated the interactive era and made touching screens natural and expected.

He made a massive mark and will be missed.