Steve Jobs, R.I.P.

It's a sad day in the high-tech world. Steve Jobs has passed away. He was the driving force behind the Apple II, which created the computer game industry, and later the iPhone, which transformed the industry. Let's not forget Pixar, either, and the amazing movies that they have made. Or the iPad, which is busy remaking the laptop market and creating a whole new category of devices.

I never met the man, though I did go to a few Homebrew Computer Club meetings back in the 1970's. I still remember when Ty Roberts (now CTO at Gracenote) came by the Hero Games offices in 1983, to show us the prototype of this awesome new computer called the Macintosh... Ty wanted to create a Champions game for it. That was cool, but what that computer really meant was that a few years later, with a laser printer and Pagemaker software, it made putting out books incredibly easier. And all of that was really because of Steve Jobs' vision. I hope his companies continue to do great things, and carry onward in his memory.

Requiescat in pacem.