He Grew Out of Freedom. Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs died on 5 October 2011

Steve Jobs' Apple grew out of freedom. Jobs, a hippy, rejected the accepted way of thinking and behaving. His philosophy was to look at the established differently, think laterally, pursue simplicity, reliability – and beauty.

That is what makes him as a man and his creation, a Mac, stand out.

You can do things that you have already been doing, but in a more efficient and enjoyable way.

I was trained as an editor and writer in a just-precomputer era, when machines were big, complicated, ugly and intimidating. Cut, copy and paste was just that, literally – pen, paper, scissors and glue.

I saw my first Mac in the Tokyo bureau of AP. A Japanese colleague let me have a quick go and I said: 'I want one too'. 'Sure, you do', she said.

Then, when I was part of the first joint Russian-American publishing venture in Moscow, the We/Mbl newspaper, I went on an Apple-Mac DTP professional course.  What struck me then was how a Mac was built to replicate all the basic human wrtiting, editing, layout and design operations – with ease and elegance.

I've stayed loyal to Apple-Macs ever since, even when, in the late 90s, the brand was on the verge of dying out, and even though I had, during the course of my career, to work on Windows computers.

Today, when I work on a modern Mac, I feel sometimes that it knows what I'm going to do even before I do, a weird, but, again, enjoyable feeling.

'The man who gave Apple its bite'  is probably the best tribute to him. Here is a quick remake of the Apple logo I made in Pages:

Russian version here. Republished from I Work in Pages.

Photo by Joi Ito.