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As you all know by now, Steve Jobs passed away today after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Just as thousand of other tech writers have been doing all day, I felt the need to write something about how Steve and the work he did at Apple.

Now I’m not going to gush about his brilliance, or how the i(device) was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  In fact, I was NEVER a Apple Fan boy in the first place.  WAY back in the day, I started working on computers in 1980.  Mostly MSDOS, I was just beginning to understand how to program as well as the possibilities the computer offered. Later I was introduced to the AppleII, then the Mac.  And at first, I thought it was the most amazing, but the limited software choices, cost and bugs turned me off. So I went PC during the great computer war. Function over form when it came to computing.

Little did I know, I would be converted..

I had the palm III and used to connect it to a cell phone with data capability to make what we would call a smart phone.  Later I bought the first really solid smart phone, the Kyocera 6035. Then came the iPhone.

This was an amazing device. The map feature alone was a quantum leap from what I could do on my palm750.  But what really made the iphone amazing to me, and I never really experienced this with the Mac nor the iPod, was just how beautiful as well as technically astounding the device was. It really changed everything, or at least I could see it changing everything.  I was one if the first guys out there to start jailbreaking my iphone because I quickly realized that we have not even begun to exploit the power of this device.  But what I want to stress, and what I’m writing about today, is not that the iPhone married the phone to the computer allowing us to have access to information anytime anywhere.  We had that.  The treo750 was that.  Heck the Kyocera 6035 was that.  No, it was the experience.  THIS was the change.  Yes the technology was amazing, but every little detail of the phone, from how it felt in my hand, to how it looked on the screen, to how it responded to my touch was graceful.  Web pages LOOKED and acted like webpages giving me a true experience. The integration between the phone and other elements of the OS was ground breaking.  And all of this worked so well, and so gracefully, it was a completely new experience from what I was used to on my Treo.  And this is what I think Steve wanted from the beginning.  The AppleII and Mac just could not deliver what he really wanted, but the iPhone did.

I still use my old Tablet PC more then my Mac, and I have Android phones as well as my iPhones, but as a non Apple fan boy, I have to say and iphone is a true mark in the evolution of consumer devices and with iTunes a revolution in business.  I have my grips, but I am a convert to the vision of Apple.

Good Job Steve… and Thanks.

R.I.P. Flip

A quick moment of silence for my favorite hand cam the Flip. Yesterday Cisco announced it was closing down its division of Flip, a fun little handheld camcorder, as part of the restructuring of its consumer business unit. Cisco purchased Pure Digital, the maker of the Flip, in 2009 for $590 million when they were the best-selling camcorders on the market.

I can understand why the Flip is no longer ‘flipping’ people’s lids. Smart phones now are getting higher megapixel cameras and the ability to upload video to one’s website of choice is much easier with the phone than moving the videos from Flip to computer to web. I also expect that smart phones will kill the pocket camera industry as well here soon.

I will continue to use my HD Flip for my Youtube channel, but am sad that I won’t be upgrading to a newer version of this handy little pocket recorder in the future. R.I.P. Flip.