I hope Adam Mordecai doesn't mind if I break my own rule and excerpt liberally from his blog post about Steve's Job's passing. It concerns how Steve Jobs and Apple have influenced our lives.
My first computer was the Macintosh 128k which I got when I was 8 years old. I drew pictures of Mr. T on it using macpaint and the mirror brush feature. I broke world records on the ski jump on Winter Olympics. I won Uninvited after lots of hard work, and I slapped around the Black Knight in Dark Castle.
The Mac IIfx got my family through basic accounting and word processing. I managed to break it on a regular basis by adding too many extra features.
The Mac LC II helped me survive high school and and almost got me to do some studying in college. You Don't Know Jack took up much of it's use.
The Powerbook G4 helped me download all my honeymoon photos, and allowed me to view my Dad singing If You Think I'm Sexy to the bagpipes at my wedding.
The original iPod got my Dad through his chemotherapy, and he was mystified that I was able to put all his favorite operas and musicals in one little device. He couldn't eat, he couldn't relax very much, but the times in which he did, he had those little white ear buds on. When he died from Pancreatic cancer, the one thing I wanted from his things more than anything was that little player. (Even though Opera is not my favorite.)
The G5 got me through the end of my 20s, and aided me in editing a video of my Father for my family to remember him by.
The Powerbook G4 kept my ideas and thoughts for me after his passing.
Three incarnations of the Macbook Pro got me into my 30s, helped me write, helped me create, helped me do my job.
My iPhone 4 has helped me document every moment of my son's life, and will be documenting my daughter as she comes into the world in 6 weeks.
I'll probably have to get the iPhone 5 in 8 months to have enough room to record and obsess over my children's every tedious move.
Steve Jobs died of the cancer that has impacted my family for generations. The reason Pancreatic Cancer is such a death sentence is that the symptoms don't really appear noticeably until you are already close to the end. I'll continue to hunt down the latest breakthroughs in Pancreatic research on every future mac I own until I know that I and my children are safe.
