RIP Steve.

Bro David
Apple fanboi since OCT 1984

Like most in my profession (molecular biology) I am a Mac head. I had to write my thesis on an early DOS machine, but that was pre Mac. The original Mac revolutionized our image-intensive science. At any conference, they generally are about 70% of the machines on the desks. Indeed, I've never owned or worked on a Windoze PC. I still have an old gum-drop iMac in my lab next to my Apple multi-terabyte enterprise-grade server.

My first iPhone, purchased early this year, has revolutionized my life.

Steve Jobs was born of an unwed mother, given up to a loving adoptive family, and a college dropout. Yet another reason to re-examine our paradigms of "success".

RIP, Steve. May we all, always, keep "thinking different".

Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

-Susan Forsburg

From the Microsoft precincts (unable to afford the temple tax to the Inner "Macxo-Mactorum"), I nevertheless offer my prayers that Steve RIP/RIG...

JC Fisher

Perhaps its because technology has become, as Marshall Mcluhan noted, an extension of ourselves, that Mr. Job's casting off his mortal coil, is such a big story. The coverage is not just about the death of Mr. Jobs--its about our own latent narcissism and sense of self importance. My how we try and defend our sense of self against the inevitable dissolution. Its an Ozymandias moment in the making.

See Juan Cole this morning:

Steve Jobs: Arab-American, Buddhist, Psychedelic Drug User, and Capitalist World-Changer

. . . Jobs was the biological son of Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali (a Syrian Muslim then graduate student in political science from Homs, which is now in revolt against the Baathist regime). . . That is, like Barack Obama, Jobs was the son of a Muslim. . . .

Homs in Syria is the city of his biological paternal forebears. It produced scientists and historians. Hilal al-Himsi, who died in the 9th century, translated from Greek into Arabic the first four books of Apollonius’s work on the geometry of cones.

Indic spiritual traditions were important to Jobs, especially Buddhism. The quest for states of altered consciousness, which characterized some in my generation, was central to his creative vision.

The DOS operating system was something that only an engineer could love, a set of odd commands entered on a blinking line against a black backdrop. Jobs preferred icons, and changed computing forever. He, at least, was convinced that without the liberal social and spiritual experimentation of his youth, his creative vision would not have been the same. . . .

Thanks for that, Murdoch.

Did Jobs investigate/publish the info on his bio parents? (I'm just curious as to how we know this)

JC Fisher

There's a link in the Juan Cole piece to an article in the Daily Mail giving more details about Jobs's family life. He met his biological sister, but seems to have avoided his biological father. Jobs led a simple life, but he wasn't a simple person.