A Lasting Inspiration Oct 7, 2011. Steve Jobs, you were an inspiration to me from the first time I saw your Macintosh. What a break with the other computers that surrounded it in the shop! All displaying glowing text on a black background - hard on the eyes; yours was the inverse, black text on a white background. Like a printed page. Easy on the eyes. How upside-down and inside-out the creation of this machine must have required its creators to think. In almost every way was it like a flying saucer landed amidst soap box cars. And yet - how obvious it was in its simplicity - like a Beatles' song. To pull something like that off takes immensely clear insight - the ability to see that accessibility and familiarity can trump a host of hypothetical possibilities. That - and the emotional and persuasive energy to get the engineers who created it to invert their ideas and unlearn most of what they knew to be true. Since that day in 1985, the Mac, and virtually everything else you did in your career, has been proof to me that going against the tradition, that turning things upside down, is - well - not only possible, but quite possibly a path to greatness. That - and that technology should be infused with beauty and quality at every level. I miss you.