I won't pile on or try to stand out in the "Me Too" chorus about Steve Jobs. What can you say that hasn't been?

I've written my share of what the fanboys would consider Apple "hater" posts. Most of those weren't directed at Steve Jobs personally. My beef is mainly most of Apple's hardware products. They're brilliant and liberating, but only for a select few who can truly afford them. Seriously, at the end of the day, the $400 Toshiba laptop does the same exact thing (basically) as the $1400 Macbook.




Now, my position is different on the iPod concept. Jobs was a late period, northern California hippie. Price points were reasonable on the two thirds of the iPods and 99 cents a download is completely democratic. I have a hunch that was by desgin and directed, like just about everything else at Apple, by Jobs.

Jobs was a complex human like all of us. Beneath the hippie persona lurked a ruthless, textbook corporate giant. Early on, he hosed partner Steve Wozniak at of part of their "Break Out" bonus at Atari. Woz stuck with him. The rest of the story is filled with accounts of control freakiness, brutal dismissals and humiliating dressing downs for failure.

However, Jobs was the closest thing our period of American history will have to a genuine Thomas Edison. Certifiable, inventor genius. Edison was complex and ruthless, too. Look it up. But outside of those traits, that spirit of innovation and commercialism is what sets America apart, makes us great, and will continue to make us great.

Jobs helped shape media and changed the way we access and consume it. Was it all him? At huge companies, it's usually a group effort (See "Steve Wozniak"). But he sure as hell inspired it and put his stamp on it. 56 is young. Who knows what he could've done with another 10 or 20 years. But look at what he did with the time he had.