Steve Jobs, RIP

The sad news came this morning in The New York Times:

Steven P. Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple who helped usher in the era of personal computers and then led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age, died Wednesday. He was 56.

The death was announced by Apple, the company Mr. Jobs and his high school friend Stephen Wozniak started in 1976 in a suburban California garage.

I spent the early morning today at the keyboard. How long have I been doing this? I recall the first computers that Gerry Dunbar and I bought that December, Apple IIe's.

What an incredible change in writing. Constant editing, constant changing, constant revision from the very first word to the end. A kind of writing incorporating editing that was not previously available. Even the old school geniuses of scissors, scotch tape, and typewriters couldn't come close to this (Bruce Cleveland I am thinking of you). I see myself doing now something that couldn't be done before. And it is entirely, completely taken for granted. Entirely routine. Of course, you do that. Of course your finger reaches out to the delete key, of course you highlight and move text. Everybody does that. But that's only one of the important and pervasive changes Apple made. The list, one I am not going to provide because the Times has done so, is remarkable.

May his many contributions be remembered.