The Year . . .
I shit you not . . .
1986.
Orwell was wrong.
(which is a joke you would get if you were alive then and got to see the Macintosh commercial)
We had sold our dust collecting grand piano and bought a Macintosh Plus. Along with an Imagewriter II printer and so much pirated programming that I'm almost ashamed to admit it.
Almost.
I remember building the desk for it. It was the first thing I ever assembled of such magnitude. It required reading instructions, using tools, and carefully applying little wood colored stickers over the screw holes. That desk lived for the next 18 years. It was moved and reassembled 10 times from apartments to houses to apartments to houses to a garage to storage to an apartment to the dump.
During its long and beautiful life, it was the showcase for two Macintosh computers. The Macintosh Plus and the first iMac. Red.
No PCs.
It was at the Macintosh Plus that I first learned to write. Where I first learned to use swear words. It was the computer I was sitting at during the earthquake of 89, it was the computer I used to write my first college essay.
Think about that. I did my fifth grade homework on the same computer I used to write deconstructions of Shakespeare's sonnets.
The Imagewriter II, a dot matrix printer, was still operable in 2009 when my mother finally had to toss it because there isn't a single computer interface that uses the cable.
The Macintosh Plus had 1k of memory.
1 fucking k
That's one Kilobyte of memory.
Imagine this. Download a song from iTunes. Say you have a hankering for Ozzie and you just need to hear Crazy Train. That's 9.8 MEGABYTES of information. If you do the math, and I know you won't, maybe Matt will, but he doesn't really need to, it would take 9,800 Macintosh Plus' to store Crazy Train.
We only had one.
We were poor.
But that computer lasted over 10 years.
In perfect working condition.
In contrast the only PC I've ever owned lasted three years and nearly destroyed my first album.
In over twenty years of having a personal computer in my house, I've had four Macs. The first taught my brother to read. The Second introduced me to the internet. The third got me through college, helped me write a musical, recorded an album, made my wedding video, and the one I have now has only begun the work that I want it to do.
Steve Jobs died today.
Younger than my dad.
With children young enough to still play soccer.
And in all the blogs you're gonna read, you're most likely gonna hear about his brilliance with innovation. A brilliance I can attest to since right now I am sitting at my desk with my iMac, iPad, iPhone surrounding me.
Cause I have to write, take phone calls, and check my fantasy football status, all at the same time.
I would have my iPod too, but I only use it now when I am jogging.
So Yeah, you're gonna hear a lot about how innovative the man was.
But here's my favorite story:
The CEO of Nike is in an elevator with Steve Jobs.
Thinking it's kinda cool to have this kind of access to the great innovator, he asks Mr. Jobs what he should do with his company.
And Steve Jobs replays:
"You make a lot of good stuff.
and you make a lot of crap.
get rid of the crap"
end quote.
This is how I want to best remember a great American whose life was cut tragically short.
Here's what I want you to think about every day of your life. Here's what I want you to think about when you write that next paper, when you choreograph that next dance, when you write that next song, when you go to work feeling as if you have no control over your life at all. Because innovation is really neat, brilliance is fine and dandy. But if you want to really make a difference in your life and all of the lives around you, think about this:
We do a lot of good.
We do a lot of crap.
Do less crap.
