Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
At the time, I’d just come back online after trying to sleep for hours. So I heard both pieces of news about an hour apart. Was just sitting there thinking whether I’d even be able to go into a store to buy an iPad/Pod/Phone at the time… had Reverend Shuttlesworth and Dr. King not lived.
I mean, I don’t think there is anything amiss in the way Steve Jobs is being celebrated. Even friends who hated Apple feverishly admit that at worst his leadership at Apple demanded other companies up their game.
And in a way, the world the Civil Rights movement was trying to make was one in which Civil Rights issues weren’t major enough to make headlines. So it’s not that I’m bitter that the world isn’t stopping for the Reverend the way the world is stopping for Jobs.
It’s just that the two things happening so close together, and so many people around me feeling so many emotions made me have to retreat for a minute and get my bearings. It’s like all I could hear was the world sobbing at varying pitches of sadness.
An acquaintance disclosed that he cried upon reading the word “was” on Steve Jobs Wikipedia page. I said:
I feel you. No comparison to losing a family member or anything like that. But Apple’s stuff just got so entwined with so many major emotional moments of my life.
I cried too. Love him or hate him, he absolutely changed the world. Even if you hate Apple… what computer company had fans before him? The first time I saw the backlit keyboard on the MacBook Pro, I felt like I had some kind of spiritual awakening. I was broke at the time…. had just come out of recovery from an illness that all but killed me and my company.
And I worked around the clock for three months, dreaming of the day I would go pick up two of those babies for me and my business partner. Still have it. Only laptop I’ve ever had that’s lasted more than 6 months.
I remember before I got an iPod, when my father showed me how he bought one and how he could broadcast music to different rooms… and thinking ; MY FATHER has an iPod. I have to explain EMAIL to my father and he has an iPod. Before me!
So many memories. I’ll remember Steve Jobs with fondness, as a visionary, on so many levels.