A moment of Airplane Mode in honor of Steve Jobs.

I found out about Steve Jobs' death last night through a text from my buddy Hayden.


Him: "You hear about Steve Jobs?"
I didn't, but with texts like this, you just know.  I googled it and confirmed.
My response: "Kicked the bucket eh?  Smart move by him - it takes all the negativity away from the new iPhone 4s."


And that was that.


At least I thought that was that.  I hopped back on the laptop a couple minutes later to see what all the interwebs thought of this.

Facebook friends were paying tribute.
Twitter was trending RIP Steve Jobs.

Not surprised.

So just like in the movies, I jumped in the shower afterwards and thought a lot about death.  Death of the famous.  Death of the influential.  Weird thing though, because I wasn't sure how to feel.

Emotionally confused, to say the least.

Because on one hand, so much of what I do is a direct result of Steve Jobs.  I write on my MacBook.  I connect with people through my iPhone.  My music is on there too.  I play jams on my iHome.

So much stuff comes from this man's work.

But it's not like he's made me happier, per se.  I, along with the rest of the world, would all have the same feelings about everything if Steve Jobs never did what he did.  We all have hate.  We all have love.  Products don't decide these feelings, because with every new one, we want more anyway.  They're just a fulfillment of a want that resurfaces right after the want is fulfilled.

Take, for example, yesterday.  The iPhone 4s was announced and people were so pissed.  Lots of backlash.  I had a man-date with a dude in my building last night, and he was complaining because the screen was going to be a half inch or whatever shorter than expected.

And it's not like he's some asshole.  He's a normal, kind, interesting, hilarious guy... but he was so adamant about the screen.  And so were a lot of people.  But those same people are RIPing Steve Jobs on the twittersphere and I'm just confused.

Confused by the social atmosphere we've created.
Confused about how I should feel about Steve Jobs.
Confused by consumerism.
Confused by my own reaction towards death.

I was in the shower for half an hour before I realized I was still showering.  I got lost in thought.

And the most incredibly messed up part about this whole thing is that we all found out about Jobs' death through products that he had actually designed.  Think about that.  It's almost as if one of the reasons that Jobs created the iPhone was so that you could some day find out about his death on the iPhone.  Think anybody ever brought that up to him?  "Hey Steve, you know, someday you're going to die and... most people are going to find out about it on the phone you just designed."  Crazy.

So through all this confusion, I figured the least we could do was share a moment of Airplane Mode on our iPhones in honor of Steve.  And if you don't have an iPhone, or MacBook, or an iPad, or an iPod, or like Pixar even... I guess just honor life.  We all need a little bit more of that whether someone important dies or not.

Because whatever way we all look at this, as a whole, our world's priorities are kinda fucked up right now, so the least we can do is appreciate living and those people who made it their passion to make others' lives better.

Say what you want about Apple and Steve, but he tried.  Here's to the guy that will most likely be buried in the most sleek, minimalist packaging, err, coffin ever known to man.

RIP Steve.