A legend passes away!

Steve Jobs, who has quit as CEO not too long ago, passes away.

His passing will be missed by the whole world, as his influence is everywhere.

His foresight has led him to develop the first commercially viable personal computer in the late 70s , the Apple I and II.

I have  a habit of reading Time magazine since my teens, as a way to improve my English   as well as my general knowledge.

I remember I was still a young man in the late seventies, just out of university, when one day, i read in Time magazine about 2 young men who had designed a computer in a garage  which was small enough to be used in homes and small offices. Never did I realise that what I had read about  would be the beginning of personal computers and that my whole life as well as millions of others would be changed by this invention.

The 2 young men were  Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who together,  put out the first commercially viable personal computer, the Apple I and later an improved version,  Apple II (picture below).

After reading about the computer, I had wanted to own one . I managed to get  one in the early 80s, as  a gift from my eldest brother, who travelled often overseas then as an engineer businessman and he carted back one Apple II ( from ?HongKong) ,together with a tape drive for storage, for me.

I  can still vaguely remember that the computer had a RAM of only 32K, which is so so small by the present day standard, and the screen was monochrome.

I did learn to do simple programming then,  using a simple program called “BASIC”, and I was able to design a simple program to do simple calculations on the computer.

I also enjoyed tremendously a game called “lode runner”.  It is still available over the internet, and I still have a version in my netbook, and i think it is more fun than other arcade games. My eldest 2 kids grew up playing this game, and my daughter as a small girl could usually beat  me by attaining level 30 and above , while i would be struggling at level 10 and onwards..

It  was well made and lasted for many years. I still have fond memories of that machine; unfortunately, after it broke down and I couldn’t get anyone to fix it then, my wife dumped it as rubbish.

I went on to own PCs  in the XT series, 4086 and 4088. Later , when the XT machines broke down, I migrated to AT 286, 386, 486 and finally 586. Finally, we have the Pentium chips,  and then Pentium 2, duo cores and what have you.

All in, I must have spent a big fortune owning computers and migrating to another and yet another. The money is well worth it since it has  given me a good background on computers and  the related cyberworld, the internet. Among my contemporaries, I was glad that I was one of the more computer savvy ones, and in fact I was one of the earliest one to subscribe  to Jaring which started the first internet service in the country in the early 90s. I was one of the earliest to move onto streamyx broadband from Jaring.  Now I am onto Maxis-Fibre-to-the-home,  downloading games , movies, concerts and TV serials from the various file sharing sites on the internet , as well as blogging and networking.

All these habits of moving up and keeping  in pace with the vast changes in the tech world started with the gadget invented by the 2 Steves in a garage many years ago.

I bring out this point because there are millions  like me, all over the world, who   have Steve Jobs to thank for the gadget he invented and the habits he influenced.

Even among the younger generations, their lives are influenced by Steve.  Many of them have gadgets such as ipods, iphones and the ipads. Even if they don’t own one of these, chances are the handphones they used are influenced by apple , too. Most of the handphones sports a big screen covering the almost the whole of the phone, a hallmark of Steve Jobs’s influence. Then there are itunes and the apps which have given millions the pleasure to live.

To me, he is one who really makes a difference for all of us. Without Apple I and II, perhaps the PC revolution would not be as fast as it has progress.

Nowadays, even though mostly I use a simple netbook run on Windows software( since it can last many hours on one charge compared to other notebooks),  I play games (my favourite is fieldrunners) on an old ipod given to me by my daughter, and I do own  an  apple computer which can run on apple OS as well as windows.

I shall miss Steve Jobs and the innovation that he has brought this world. He has helped make my life , and that of millions of others as well, more meaningful and more purposeful.

May His Soul  Rest in Peace.. Amitabha!  (Steve Jobs is a buddhist!)