To: rememberingsteve@apple.com

My first computer was an Apple II Plus that my dad brought home as a Christmas present when I was in 3rd grade. Although not as immediately user-friendly as computers would become, the machine that Woz built just plain worked. Always. And it defined for me a sense of taste for what technical and design excellence really meant.

So for me, Apple was the only computer that mattered, until about 1995, long after Woz and Steve Jobs had gone, and Apple products had become just another commodity item. I bought a $4000 Mac that was so unstable (System 7) that I swore off Apple products for life. By this time I was being paid to program computers, and I figured that if I was going to be miserable, I might as well be miserable on the same awful machines that everyone else used. Computers were no longer sources of imagination and joy, but just another lifeless tool we could use to turn $1 into $1.10.

I was happy to see Steve Jobs return, but I was still skeptical, even when the first iMacs and iPods made me believe that perhaps there was once again a group of people in this world that cared about making something useful and beautiful. It wasn't until Steve Jobs presented the first iPod Nano, when I had the same emotional reaction I had when I was 8, when I first saw an Apple II: "I have to have that, and I have to have it now."

Not long thereafter I bought a 17" Macbook Pro, having heard good things about Mac OS X, and having been frustrated to the point of tears with a Dell laptop that would periodically decide to ignore me as it ran its anti-virus software. I'm typing this on that same Macbook Pro, which is running just fine 4 years later.

I never met Steve Jobs. I don't even know any of the engineers at Apple. But it has mattered to me in my life knowing that somewhere in this world there is a group of people that cares about making useful and beautiful things. That technology can improve the human condition. That people can strive for excellence, and achieve it.

Sincerely,
Kurt Christensen