Thank you, Steve

Steve Jobs
1955-2011

Dear Steve,

I’ve never met you in person, but I feel that I know you. You’ve influenced so many things around me – this MacBook which I’m typing on, my iPods, iPhones, and iPads. Zachary will grow up trying to manipulate objects on every screen he finds because of you.

You have been one of my biggest inspirations in life. Your inspiration touched me with the first Apple products I bought back in 2002-2003. At that time, Apple was still an outlier company and I felt I was taking a risk buying an iBook. The biggest lesson I learnt back then from Apple products were that compromises and trade-offs don’t necessarily mean that you end up with less.

I remember that for the same price, I could have bought a more powerful Dell laptop. But with the iBook, the trade off in power gave me a more reliable machine, the freedom from computer viruses and ultimately made me more productive.

Your philosophy and work ethic played a part in shaping my own views on life. I love your commencement speech at Stanford and have watched it many times over. This part of your speech particularly resonated with me as I contemplated leaving employment and starting my own business.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Looking back, going to work for myself was one of the best decisions in my life.

It saddens me that you’re gone, because I won’t have the opportunity to meet you in person. Nor even the opportunity to send a random email to [email protected] and hope to get a 1-line response. It saddens me that I won’t be able to thank you for all of your inspiration, the amazing products that make my life better and for the advances you’ve played a part with in technology.

All I have to offer now is a blog post – it’s a small gesture I know, but I wanted to pay tribute to you.

Thank you Steve, for putting a ding in the universe. You’ve certainly put a ding in my life.

Wishing you peace,
David


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