For the past week, the world has been in various states of shock and mourning. Steve Jobs — Apple Inc. co-founder, chairman, and former CEO — passed away on October 5, 2011, at the age of 56. Although his health had been in a state of decline for some years, we are all still left with the feeling that he was a visionary who has left us before his time.
Some members of the Apple II community long ago ended their involvement with the company Jobs co-founded. They feel he mismanaged the Apple II line, abandoning it and its users in ways that KansasFest never has. But whether you disagree with him, glorify him, or vilify him, we can all agree that, if it were not for Steve Jobs, there would not have been an Apple Computer Inc., an Apple II, or a KansasFest in the first place. He and Steve Wozniak were a dynamic duo who complemented each other’s technological prowess and marketing and design sense to create a product and an industry that has shaped our lives.
Many KansasFest alumni have in the past week shared their feelings about Steve Jobs and how the visionary impacted their stories. First on the scene was Tim Kellers in a story at NJBiz.com that features Cindy Adams’ photo of him at KansasFest with the late Ryan Suenaga.
KansasFest committee member Ken Gagne was one of several Computerworld employees to appear in a montage of musings on Jobs’ talents and contributions. An Apple IIGS can be seen about three minutes into the video.
Gagne later joined Mike Maginnis in recording an episode of the Open Apple podcast in tribute to Jobs. The show’s notes include links to several other remembrances.
Perhaps most appropriately and impressively, Eric Rucker created a tribute that runs natively on the computer that helped launch Jobs to stardom. Writes Rucker:
It’ll run on any 48k Apple II, preferably Revision 1 or later if using a color monitor (due to the 6 color circuit), with Applesoft ROMs, and a 16 sector Disk II. Or any later Apple II, of course, all the way to the IIGS ROM 3. (I developed it in KEGS, and tested it on a //c.)
Images found from around the web, tweaked, rescaled, cropped, and converted to GIF in IrfanView, converted to HGR in IIGIF.
Sound from Software Automatic Mouth, text that it’s speaking from Apple’s Think Different campaign.
The tribute is available as a .DO disk image or in this video:
Written tributes include those from Bill Martens, Steve Weyhrich, Vince Briel, Eric Shepherd, Mike Maginnis, Ken Gagne, Blake Patterson, and KansasFest 2012 keynote speaker John Romero.
Whether or not we agree with all the decisions Steve Jobs made, we thank him for bringing our community together. He will be missed.