Back in the late 70’s to early 80’s when I was a young man, I owned a small ad agency. One of my accounts was the Stonehenge Computer store in Summit, NJ, and I fell in love with the Apple computers they sold. I ended up bartering ad services for my first Apple II, and wrote a handful of books about the impending “computer revolution” as I called it.
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Back in the late 70’s to early 80’s when I was a young man, I owned a small ad agency. One of my accounts was the Stonehenge Computer store in Summit, NJ, and I fell in love with the Apple computers they sold. I ended up bartering ad services for my first Apple II, and wrote a handful of books about the impending “computer revolution” as I called it.
One of them, long since out of print, was “The Computers Are Coming.” Luckily, I saved everything from that period in my life and came across a copy of that book and a flyer I did for the computer store. The book was filled with adorable drawings that I had framed and still have. Thanks Steve Jobs for impacting my life in the early days.
NBC-TV heard about my book and as a result I was on The Today Show for 3 consecutive days, demonstrating the Apple, live before tens of millions of people, with Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel. It was the era of floppy disks, shoebox-sized hard drives, and computers that really didn’t do very much when compared to today’s machines. And during one of the demonstrations, the computer froze and I had to reboot it, all the while talking about how the computer was “doing its thing” to complete a task. It was quite a trip. Thanks Steve Jobs – if not for you I’d never have been on TV educating America about PCs.
For over a decade I had a thriving postal mailing list business. I had built mailing lists of computer owners by brand of computer they owned, and rented them to magazines like Byte and Apple Cider and dozens of others. I remember the days of shoe boxes filled with 5¼” floppy disks, filled with names and addresses of Apple, TRS-80, IBM PC Jr. and Commodore owners. Wow, how many of you ever held a really floppy floppy disk? Thanks Steve for so many memories – both on disks, hard drives and in my mind.
Today I’m a partner in Acquirgy, a leading multichannel customer acquisition marketing company that generates customers for our clients using a wide range of online tactics as well as Direct Response TV. Of course, everyone in our company has a computer, both Macs and PCs. They make us incredibly efficient and enhance our ability to produce great results for our clients. I wonder how many companies would exist today if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs.
With the invention of the personal computer, Steve basically spawned thousands of industries, and one could easily argue that all computers, regardless of brand, are descendants of those original Apples. I’m now probably on my 20th computer and our household has a slew of Apple products (Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod) and other brands. So thanks Steve for making our lives better in so many ways, both at work, at home, and on the go, and for directly and indirectly building huge businesses and transforming the way we work, study and entertain ourselves.
Pretty much my entire business career has been around Internet marketing and advertising, and without Steve, who knows where I’d be today and what I’d be doing. So thanks Steve for making an exciting career path possible for me.
So in conclusion and in memoriam, when I see people walking around with iPhones and iPads, and when I see my daughter using a Mac and iPad in tandem for her schoolwork, and when I see my wife using her Blackberry, I smile and say to myself “I was there at the beginning, and it’s been quite a ride.” Thanks for everything Steve, and may you rest in peace.
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