On October 5, 2011 the world lost a great technology visionary in Mr. Steve Jobs. His passing was extremely sad but, we must admit, not surprising. I won’t take up time and space extolling the virtues of Mr. Jobs and all of the great things that he did at Apple, Atari, Pixar, etc. That has been done better than I could possible do in a number of places.
What I’ve been thinking about most is how Jobs’ vision has affect my gaming life specifically. I write this on my Macbook Pro while my iPad sits next to me running Tiny Tower, and my iPhone charges because my daughter drained the battery streaming Netflix in the car while we drove a good distance (for a 3 year old) out to our harvest basket farm and back. (She also has her own iPod Touch –that she also watches all of the Toy Story movies on– and her other mother has an iPhone, a Macbook Pro, and an iPod). The iP**ds have become our stereos, radios, game consoles, board games, book shelves, televisions, and a whole lot more. It goes without saying that we are a bit of an Apple family, but that’s not the point.
I’ve been gaming for a really long time. I game a lot. If I actually think about it I game a lot more than I tell folks. Not on purpose, but because for many of us gaming has become ubiquitous. In the same way that there are millions of people who play games would never call themselves “gamers” much of what I spend my time doing I don’t count in my gaming time. If I did I would have to admit that vey few of my waking hours pass when I am not gaming for a few minutes at least. This is something that has to be attributed largely to my iPhone. This is even more true than when I rocked the Crackberry/iPod Touch combo. Because I have my phone forever at hand I open a game almost every time I have to wait more than 30 seconds for anything. it’s one level of Bejeweled, make one pizza, one cake, serve one table, restock one laundromat, just one quick something. That is something that never happened when I had to pull out the PSP or DS. Handheld consoles are great for gaming on the move, but they require more of a commitment than an iPhone game does.
Steve Jobs (and his beautiful technologies) have become a part of and changed our lives in ways that I, for one, would never have expected. Thanks to his vision for the iP**s I will forever expect my portable technology to allow me to communicate with the outside world in myriad ways and to provide me multiple forms of entertainment…all while looking good. And for this, Mr. Jobs, I say “So long, and thanks for all the fish. May you forever sleep with angels.”
