Steve Jobs... A few thoughts. And not the same set you've read in all the papers.

He revolutionized a lot of things, to be sure. One of them, not mentioned to my knowledge is our specific industry. The PC was a wonderful tool. But the Mac made graphics. Now, certainly,the PC and the Mac are pretty close in capabilities today but visit any design studio, any agency, any printing company and they're inevitably inextricably interconnected with Apple products. Steve Jobs targeted the graphics industry and created this particular revolution.
Back in the late 1980s we were all downplaying the effects of the computer in our industry. Photography was a film-based and photo-paper print-based business. Typography was an art delivered by specific technology that was far too complex for a desktop computer.


Slides were on Kodak Ektachrome film in Wess mounts projected by Kodak Carousel projectors, sometimes controlled by very particular and specific computers that could be programmed to time the slides from multiple projectors to simulate a really rather rudimentary sort of animation.


Print ads and brochures were done by making what were called 'mechanicals' and then they were sent to printers who made what were called 'separations' which were turned into 4 color 'plates' which were attached to the printing presses and the artwork was transformed to printed materials through a miraculous affixing of tiny little dots of ink that, when combined according to the instructions of the mechanical and then the separation and then the plate and then the press, made stuff that looked like... ads and brochures! Video was a series of cameras that recorded images onto tape, 2 inch, then 1 inch, then 3/4 inch then 1/2 inch and 8mm and 1/4 inch and whatever amount of inches, it was all bound up in rolls and required an editing suite of serious electronic equipment to convert what you taped into what you wanted.
All of it was a nightmare. My brother Mark, once, in the midst of the transition to today's technology, when we still had to have all the old stuff and all the new stuff because the new ways were not quite robust or reliable, even if they were quicker and more efficient and promised even more efficiency and speed, said, famously, "What was so wrong about the old way?" We all laughed, agreed, knew he was right and terribly wrong. Today the old way seems like Hieroglyphics. The new way is so entrenched it only seems like the new way to people who knew the old way. It is, let's face it, the only way.
A Mac with the tools to create art of one sort or another is a magical box. Capable of graphics for print, web, video, presentation graphics, whatever you want. And better than anything before it. Capable of so much so fast so well, it's a sort of miracle. What was so wrong about the old way was that there was a need for a very specific piece of technology and an expert for almost everything you wanted to do. A typographer was a pretty valuable person. A photographer was an artist. A designer was usually a pretty talented and creative person in the form of a pretty cantankerous package. Cantankerous because good designers had way too much to do with rather limited tools, and no time to do it.
The industry has changed. People with some skills can pull some magic off the screen. Kids can create their own graphics effortlessly. One person can do five tasks. More. With the help of a fairly intuitive computer and some pretty capable software.
Steve Jobs had more to do with this than anyone. His company took direct aim at our various industries and reinvented all of them. All while he reinvented the telephone and the PC and animated films and the music business... and a few more, too.