remembering Steve i grew up with beige boxes. then i moved to Canada and saw the iMac G4. how can computers be so beautiful? i couldn’t afford a Mac, so i made my PC look like one. changed the icons, the fonts, the windows. learned to make those shiny, lickable buttons. that’s how i got into interface design. i saw something i loved and wanted to make things like it. i burned DVDs of Steve’s keynotes and studied them. watched them again and again. there was so much care in the products, and so much joy in showing people what they could do. my first iPod was a black nano. i carried it everywhere. then the iPhone happened and changed the world. it felt like anything was possible. since he died, i’ve felt us getting stuck in a loop. constant refinement. better supply chains. more ways to keep people scrolling. so much talent spent on tiny improvements, so little room for something truly great and heartfelt. the keynotes get more cinematic every year. i still miss the live demos. someone onstage playing with something they helped make. the excitement, the jokes, the things that went wrong. it felt human. it was fun. we made computers faster. phones thinner. added more cameras. made machines smarter than us at more and more things. somehow, we’ve also become more disconnected and lonely. we spend so much energy trying to beat humans. i wish we spent more time learning from people’s lives and making them better. when i work, i still sometimes think: what would Steve do? i’ll never know. i’m sad i never got to work with him. but his work reached a kid with a beige PC and changed the course of his life. i wonder how many others have a story like mine. i’ve kept these words with me: “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” there’s still so much worth making. things we can put our hearts into. things that make someone feel what i felt when i first saw that iMac. thank you, Steve. 💛