Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic, regarding the death of Steve Jobs, from her blog Work/Life Imbalance:
I’ve never had a religious experience with an Apple product.
I owned a PC and a Treo until 2009. The staff at my company Brain Traffic all use PCs. I don’t make fun of my friends with Androids. And I still don’t own an iPad.
When news of his death came yesterday, my online community immediately went into deep mourning. Every single tweet in my timeline was about him. The response was overwhelmingly emotional.
I didn’t get it. Me, I was shocked but not saddened. To be perfectly blunt, it seemed like everyone was being overly dramatic about what was a sad but not, like, epic historic event. Of course, I didn’t say this to anyone, because then who’s the ignorant asshole? Me, that’s who.
But after a few hours of nonstop Steve Jobs hashtags, I started clicking links and reading. For the first time, I learned about his life and his leadership. I read personal accounts from colleagues about how his products were the doorway into their careers and passions. Over and over, I read the list of legacies he left behind: the personal computer. Pixar. The iPod. iTunes. The iPhone. The iPad.
Of course, like the rest of the world, I take that stuff for granted. Big time. I don’t even really see my iPhone or MacBook Air anymore. They’re kind of like the glasses I wear every day. I grab them and put them on without thinking about it, first thing in the morning, and I can see. Anything. Everything.
On a recent trip to the bookstore, my son selected a book called “Heroes of the World.” We read about one person every night before bedtime: Gandhi, Edison, Da Vinci. Yesterday, for the first time, I realized that it was missing someone. So last night, instead of reading his book, I read my son an article about Steve Jobs. My son said, “Wow. Why isn’t he in my book?” I said, “He will be.”
We both get it now.
Steve Jobs’ death hit me particularly hard, and I’ve been struggling to figure out what it is about this particular billionaire CEO of a technology company that makes it such a difficult thing for me to take. Until reading Kristina’s post, that is.
