I've been a loyal Mac user for 15 years.
I'm still not iSad.

It's sad that Steve Jobs has died.  He was young, pancreatic cancer is terrible, and there's no doubt that he was a smart guy who did a lot to transform the way we interact with technology.

I'm also a loyal Mac user.  I got my first Apple computer in 1996, and have used them ever since.  I got a huge cinema display screen in 2003 when they cost a fortune (more than $2500), and my first iPod in 2005 when they still cost a fortune ($700).

But, at the risk of getting myself flamed into oblivion, I have to say I find myself disturbed by the emotional outpourings of grief his death has engendered in the past few days.  

Steve Jobs was a business tycoon, plain and simple.  He may have transformed the way we interact with technology, but he wasn't doing it in order to save the world (he famously canceled Apple's philanthropic efforts when he returned as CEO, and so far there isn't much evidence to suggest he was doing much privately, either).  He wasn't really trying to make computers or other gadgets accessible to the masses (Apple software isn't open-source like Linux, and the hardware isn't cheap like PCs).  Apple may be a great place to work - but don't expect a good work/life balance.  And if Microsoft or News Corp. had sent 'investigators' to search people's homes for prototypes or information, I can promise you there would have been a huge backlash.

I don't know...I'm all for celebrating the lives of people who have made a difference in the world.  And Steve Jobs did that.  I guess I just wish we'd do more celebrating of the people whose goals weren't all rooted in money or who used their extraordinary wealth and influence to cure a disease or alleviate poverty.

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I do a fair amount of blogging for clients (no, I won't tell you who they are) and sometimes I just run out of things to say.  I can't believe I'm saying that, and probably neither can most of the people who know me in real life, but there you go.

The situation has been complicated by the fact that the 'return' key on my Blackberry has stopped working, which means that my 'Blog Ideas Notes' file has turned into an unreadable James Joycean stream-of-consciousness text glob which is doing little to inspire me.

However!

I have noticed that people who get recognized as Great Bloggers aren't the ones who wait around for Big Ideas to hit them.  They are simply the ones who write what they're thinking about that day, even if it's not exactly genius (or at least not every time).  Anais Nin made a whole career out of it, even before the internet.  And I certainly think about something every day.  

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