TECHNOLOGY visionary Steve Jobs created revolutionary devices that changed our lives, says our Online Editor. Do you agree? Has the iPod, iPhone or iPad changed your life?

My love affair with Steve Jobs began on Christmas Day 1987, when my mother unveiled our brand new Apple Macintosh II, my first computer.

The first Mac to support a colour screen, it came with a then colossal 20MB drive and was the very peak of technological evolution. Like Douglas Adams and Stephen Fry and a million other geeks before me, at that moment I fell for Apple: the first stirrings of a passionate affair that shows no sign of ending decades on.

Like all lovers of the techno-wonders Made in Cupertino, my eyes filled with tears on Thursday morning as Twitter exploded with the news that the man who created Apple Inc. was dead.

By captaining the finest creative and techological team on the planet and dedicating them to the pursuit of design perfection (and damn the cost), Steve Jobs changed the world, and turned my childhood fantasies into reality.

Ever since watching Blade Runner in the early 1980s I had dreamed of owning a portable handset that could access every piece of information on the planet. The iPhone made it happen. Steve Jobs made home PCs cool, and delivered the iPod and iTunes, kit and technology still radically reshaping the music industry.

In his wilderness years he created Pixar, which changed the movie industry forever with an unbroken run of animation hits that include Toy Story and Finding Nemo: two of my favourite films of all time. Not bad for wilderness years!

But I have written about my love of Apple on these pages before, so instead, here are some choice tweets from the last few days that do a far better job than I of conveying the magnificence of this magnificent man.

@carloscomputers The world has lost a truly brilliant person and geek today. I have goosebumps. #stevejobs

@KingPodge RIP Steve Jobs - some people do great things, great people change the world. Not bad for a dude wearing jeans and turtle necks.

@waylandlee Steve Jobs tributes appearing on Post-It notes stuck to San Francisco #Apple retail store
instagr.am/p/POs4M/ #stevejobs

@EnterthePanda Shrine to #SteveJobs set up outside of #AppleStore in #Beijing, China. Many, many people gathering. yfrog.com/kluamr5j

@WSJ Steve Jobs pioneered the personal computer industry as co-founder of Apple. Here is our obituary:
on.wsj.com/nhRZ45

@Romensko Steve Jobs changed (but didn’t save) journalism. bit.ly/qxL9YQ

@NiemenLabs “Steve Jobs was the man nobody knew, yet the man everybody knew.” nie.mn/pHXmqj

@DanGillmor Remember Steve Jobs this way, in his own words: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” bit.ly/4hnah5

@ abcmarkscott The fusion of counter-cultural courage with capitalist genius. How Job’s understanding of death drove his life. thebea.st/rjToR2

@digidude512 When Michael Jackson died, tweets relating to him were running at 500 per second, with Steve Jobs, 10,000 tweets per second - CNN

@SimonCrerar Earth loses a visionary UberGeek. In Heaven, Douglas Adams lays out the welcome mat and gets ready to geek out... #stevejobs
 
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