Lists all of the journal entries for the day.

Wed, 5 Oct 2011

10:32 PM - The end of an era

Many people remember Steve Jobs as a visionary, the driving force of Apple, Inc.'s success in the last decade.  He was also the owner of Pixar that transformed a small animation studio into a blockbuster success and sold it to Disney.  He sat on the boards of Apple, Inc. and Disney.  He had successes and failures.  NeXT Computer was a computer manufacturer that made workstations for schools and businesses in the early 90s.  They made some of the first computers with decent graphical user interfaces, networking, and MACH kernels.  Steve sold NeXT Software (the hardware business failed) to Apple around 1997 and became the head of a company he founded once more. 

The world wide web was created on a NeXT computer.  The first website, web browser and web server all ran on a NeXT cube!  Steve brought us the iMac, Mac OS X, iPad, Iphone, iTunes (well they bought this from a former apple employee), and the reinvention of how users consume content.  Good or bad, this has affected all of us.

Steve didn't do these things alone.  Many other talented people helped him.  He sold the ideas to all of us.

I started my BSD project because of Steve Jobs.  NeXT (and OS X) was an idea that computers could be powerful, stable and easy to use.  The last six years  of my life, I've spent trying to build something like OS X but for people who couldn't afford the Apple preimum.  As I've learned, he had to charge that much to be successful. 

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