The Confusatory

About Steve

I’m writing about Steve Jobs’s life, but it’s really not for you, it’s for me.

Steve Jobs was an incredible person to watch move through the world, a person to be awed by, to envy, and to imitate, not because of what he did, or who he inspired, or what he created, but because of his relentless pursuit of a better self.

Many stories have been told about the young, brash, passionate co-founder of Apple, and many more about his fine design taste and the fight for simplicity waged since he returned. Far more interesting is his evolutionary arc, sketched out as clear as daylight across the companies he led between his first and second eras at Apple. He continually honed his taste, and constantly questioned what was possible to do with bits and atoms and photons. He refined his approach for convincing people that his vision, grand and beautiful, deserved to exist. He grew personally, first as a father, and later as a messiah of sorts, saving his first company from the brink and creating a world that he perhaps had always dreamed of, but one which the rest of us could barely imagine until it was before our eyes.

My former coworkers and I loved making him the things he wanted: we made them because he asked, and we made them great because he demanded.

I only interacted with Steve twice, but I miss him deeply and severely. I admire his drive and vision and relentlessness, his constant, unyielding search and fight for aesthetic perfection. I dream of growth and maturity and a trajectory of my own even a tenth as meteoric, and know that his vision and passion and fine taste will carry on for a long time to come.