Steve Jobs with iMac G3

Alternate universe

Of course, this is an overly-simplistic view of what life without Steve Jobs and Apple would be like. Jobs might have invented the all-in-one PC, PDA, smartphone, and tablet, and redefined how we consume digital content, but it is naive to assume that Microsoft or IBM or Google, given enough time, wouldn’t have arrived at roughly the same creations.

In such a parallel universe, though, a world without Steve Jobs would be intrinsically different. We would have personal computers, but the IBM PC might have been less successful at pushing into the home, and MS-DOS and Windows might enjoy its 95% share of the market. Through Moore’s law, we would have smaller, PDA-like computers, but they would have dozens of buttons, have a complicated interface, and crash all the time. The music, TV, and movie industry would probably still be exactly the same as the ’60s: Digital? What’s digital?

Steve Jobs and the iPhone 3G -- which actually changed everythingPerhaps most importantly, though, the world would be less joyous, less functional, and less beautiful. PCs would be beige boxes with gangly wires and buttons running everywhere; PDAs would be cheap, silvered, plastic affairs with cluttered, unresponsive interfaces; Portable MP3 players would be square and dull-looking and be a pain to use. Almost every modern gadget and tool has been touched by the Jobsian aesthetic and it is painful to imagine an Earth without him.

Fortunately we don’t have to entertain such a planet: Steve Jobs lived! He created and innovated with a visionary flair that has indelibly altered society, and then… he left us. So it goes.