Steve Jobs: February 24 1955 - October 5 2011 - Part 1

I am not an Apple products fan. My first encounter with a Macintosh PC was when I was in university back 1997 or 1998. I remembered one study module that required me to use the Macintosh PC for one whole semester; I think the study module was Marketing Research. This first encounter did not bode well with my initial impression of using an Apple product. I did try my very best to adapt to using the Macintosh PC but it was all in vain. I became and still am a hard core to the boot Windows OS PC user. I also did tell myself that I won't use an Apple product for the rest of my life.

During the time when I had to use the Macintosh computer, the late Steve Jobs then was at the start of his return phase to the Apple organisation. I guess Apple was not doing well financially as well as unable to introduce technological breakthroughs to the IT industry in Jobs' absence for that particular decade (1985 - 1996). Thus, the Macintosh PC I had used then in my personal opinion was of poor quality and lacked the finesse of Jobs' genius touch he had when creating products for Apple. My lousy experience using the Macintosh left a negative impression on me and reinforced my belief that the Windows OS PCs were the way to go where computer technology is concerned.

Fast forward to the present day when the news of Jobs' death reached me this past Thursday morning when I went online early in the morning. Apple Inc. has managed to do well in the last decade with the introduction of iPod, a digital music player in 2001. However, I was unaware of Jobs' maiden creative breakthrough since he returned to Apple Inc. to help revive the organisation's position in the IT industry. I supposed Apple products were not a big hit in Malaysia then, not to mention it was expensive to own an Apple product.

The launch of the first generation of iPhone in 2007 seemed to have cemented Apple Inc.'s reputation to be a stiff competitor to many, if not all mobile phone manufacturers. Not to mention other computing brands whose core business is selling the ubiquitous Microsoft OS PCs and laptops/notebooks are also facing increasingly stiff competition from Apple's iMac and Macbook. These computing manufacturers also jumped on the bandwagon in creating smart phones to compete with Apple's iPhone.

Apple products seemed to go from strength to strength after the iPod was released in 2001. Not to mention the very much improved line of iMac and Macbook computers. I guess the pinnacle of Apple Inc.'s runaway success would be the introduction of iPhone and iPad, changing the landscape of computer and mobile phone technologies for many years to come.