Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

When I found out yesterday - reading a news bulletin on my iMac - that Apple cofounder Steve Jobs had died, it hit me hard.

It's not just that Jobs passed away much too young, at age 56 of pancreatic cancer. Thinking about what all of those sleek and shiny iMacs, iPods and iPhones have allowed me to do in the 21 years since I purchased my first Apple computer is mind-boggling.

I took a class in college on the computer programming language BASIC and it was not a wise move. So back in December 1990, the thought of owning a personal computer was daunting. But Apple made it easy and elegant and fun.

Here's a brief trip through my Apple fangirl history:

Macintosh Classic: Truthfully, I couldn't do much with it. The World Wide Web hadn't even been born yet. I played a lot of games: Railroad Tycoon, Sim City, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. If they made an Apple version, I bought it. You couldn't be too choosy.

Macintosh Performa. This was a big step up, it had a bigger monitor and I think it was color. I was on Prodigy for awhile, then America Online. It was considered much too scary to go onto the Internet without someone holding your hand. And remember newsgroups? Are they still around? I used to read them a lot.

PowerBook: My first laptop, which I bought when I moved to Israel for a year. I remember the thrill at finding my first freelance article online. I realized that my audience wasn't limited to people who had a physical product in front of them. Anyone, anywhere in the world could read something that I'd written.

iMac: My first "i" purchase. Goodbye floppy drive, hello CD-ROM. This was where I first uploaded my entire music collection onto iTunes, then onto my first iPod, downloaded my first podcasts, wrote my first blog posts. I got a good 10 years worth of use out of it before it just got too slow.

iPhone: I never thought I'd need to carry around a personal computer in my pocket. Then for a couple of weeks this year, I was housebound without Internet or cable. I used it for e-mail, to check Twitter and Facebook. I read the New York Times, listened to music and streamed movies. It was my link to the outside world.

Like I wrote in August when Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO, his genius was in coming up with products that you never think you'll want but once you have them, you can't imagine ever living without them.

Falling in love with my iPhone

I've had my iPhone for three whole days now and I'm still loving it. Having e-mail and Internet access wherever I go is so cool. Now, I'll be totally lost in cyberspace.

Sure, I liked my old Motorola Razr, so sleek and compact, until it became increasingly difficult to turn back on when I turned it off. Taking the battery out for a few seconds helped. Since it was three years old, I figured it had outlived its natural life and bought a new one.

But after three months, I had the same problem. On Sunday, I turned it off for a minute and when I tried to restart it, the phone came back on but the screen was blank.

Apparently I'm not alone. One suggested (and I'm sure unauthorized) fix I found online - banging the phone on a hard surface a few times - didn't help.

I decided it was time for a change.

About 80 percent of my day - including when I'm at work or sleeping - I have access to a computer. Maybe 5 percent is spent driving. But it's that last 15 percent when I've thought, "It would be nice to have Internet access right now."

The iPhone 3G was $99, same price as the Razr. I was already using AT&T and they let me keep my cheap cell-phone plan, $17.99 a month. My only added expense is $30 a month for the Internet. (I also had to pay a one-time $18 upgrade fee.)

So far, it's been great.

If I'm stuck waiting in a doctor's office for two hours, as I was this week, or I'm running around doing errands, I can check my e-mail or catch up on the latest theatre news via Twitter. I can use it as a radio to listen to my favorite NPR station.

I'd tried out the keyboard a few times at my local Apple Store and it was awfully small and kind of difficult to type on. But now that I've used it a few times, it's much easier than I thought. I'm much more accurate than I thought I'd be.

I downloaded my first "app" from Apple's App Store, the Internet Movie Database.

I was hoping to find some Broadway or theatre-related ones but apparently my options are limited, according to this blog post from producer Ken Davenport. It would be nice if the Internet Broadway Database could be adapted for the iPhone.

Having an iPhone with the movie database would have come in handy a couple years ago when I saw the musical Grey Gardens on Broadway.

At intermission, I turned around and realized the actor who played "Hesh" on The Sopranos was sitting behind me. At the risk of sounding terribly gauche, I introduced myself, told him how much I loved the series and confessed I didn't remember his name.

He was very nice - his name is Jerry Adler. Later, I realized that he was also in the movie Manhattan Murder Mystery, with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. If only I'd known!