tim.hnkns • Thank you, Steve At first, I didn’t feel like I...

Thank you, Steve

At first, I didn’t feel like I deserved to write about Steve. What could I possibly add to the conversation? I didn’t know Steve or his family; I don’t have an anecdote about meeting him, getting an email from him … Steve Jobs never knew I existed.

But then I got to thinking …

Like many people, I use the products Steve has made to earn money. Like many more people, I use the products Steve has made to communicate with friends and family, and to educate and entertain myself.

Because of Steve Jobs, I feel like I’m living in the future nearly every day of my life.

Even though Steve never knew I existed, it feels like he made things just for me. When I use my iPhone, or iPad, I’m using the computer I dreamed of since I was little boy. I don’t have to learn how to do anything, everything works just the way I think it should.

Now, this isn’t a commercial for Apple’s products. I bring them up simply to say this: The way those products work, the way they delight me — it’s because of Steve Jobs.

Steve had a passion for people he’d never met.

Steve wanted to delight and inspire people like me — people he’d never meet — all over the world. We’re all a part of Steve’s legacy.

Every time a kid picks up a guitar and hacks together three chords and drum loop in GarageBand, every time a mom grabs video of her kid stealing second, or snaps a shot of her husband’s silly ice cream face with her iPhone; when I read my sermon from an iPad; when my sister plays Angry Birds; all those little messages my wife and I exchange each day using our Macs or iDevices — it’s all part of Steve’s legacy.

Demo Time

There’s this kid I work with, Amber. She came to me a few years ago for help with her guitar playing and her songwriting. She’s a talented kid; she wants to do this sort of thing for a living. Of course in due time she decided she wanted to start recording some of the songs she wrote.

She brought in her laptop — some sort of Windows PC with audio software installed.

Every recording session was a disaster. We’d spend half of our time troubleshooting audio interface connections, software problems and the like. By the time we got around to actually laying any tracks down, all our energy was drained and, needless to say, those tracks weren’t our best work.

When it came time for us to work on a proper demo for Amber’s college application, I decided I’d bring in my Mac and we’d do everything in GarageBand. Suddenly everything clicked. All the time and energy we’d spent getting the other setup to work could go into the music. Now we were putting together fully produced tracks complete with drum loops, multi-track guitar and vocals. The songs sounded the way they deserved to sound.

The explosion of creativity we experienced in those sessions was only possible because of the creativity and the genius that Steve infused into the culture of his company.

The greatest achievement

That’s just one story of the many I could tell, and of the thousands I know Mac users across the globe could tell.

Because Steve believed that everyone had an artist, a writer, a programmer, a musician within — because he believed that anyone could be creative — he dedicated his life to creating products that fostered the creativity in others.

Steve bent every iota of his own creativity to the task of pulling the best creativity out of others. Apple as a company and millions of users stand as a testament to Steve’s ultimate accomplishment.

Steve’s greatest achievement is me. It’s me and it’s all the others who are able to accomplish their own creative goals because of the work Steve Jobs spent his life on.

When we work, we’re standing on the shoulders of a giant.

Thank you, Steve.