Steve Jobs: a radical, an inventor, and a visionary pt. 1

"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," Cook, 50, said in the memo. "Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."

-http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

As I am reading this from the Apple website, I couldn't help being emotional. One way or another we have been influenced by Steve's vision whether you are a computer user or not. This post will not be about Steve's personal life; it will be about his contributions that affected everybody's lives one way or the other.

I would start with the introduction of the friendly-user interface. Before the advent of the desktop and icons, there was the command module. If you are using windows, click the start button, go to run, then type cmd, then hit the enter key. You will see a window called the command prompt. This is how computers worked before. You are given a monotonous screen to type up your complicated line of commands just so that you can use a specific function of the computer. That is why a lot of people at that time were alienated from technology because they cannot cope up with the complications of the computer at that time. Steve Jobs invented a user friendly interface that would allow people to use the computer with ease. It is called the Macintosh computer.

To support his idea of a friendly user interface, he introduced the thing you use to move the pointer in your keyboard, the mouse. Prior to the introduction of the mouse, people were navigating through their computers using a cursor and arrow keys. A cursor is that little square thing that blinks on the command module. You can never see that thing anymore, the blinking line you see when typing anything on a word-line is called an insertion point.This also led to the birth of the desktop. No, not the immobile computer, but the thing that has the icons that you can click to launch a program without going to the start menu.

His worked inspired other companies to create a user-friendly environment for their computers. Virtually everybody got rid of the old code format after the introduction of the Macintosh.

On the next post I will talk about the downs of his life, and his eventual role in Pixar. (Yay! Monster's Inc.)