Today's Thomas Edison or Graham Bell ...

That will be the way that Steve Jobs will be remembered.

While Bill Gates/Microsoft changed the way business in America and around the world is done - Steve Jobs changed our everyday lives!

The best way he did this was to put his computers into the schools in the early 1980s for low or no price - the Apple IIe was the first computer that was accessible to the general public ... The first home pc ...

While, yes there were things like the TSR-80 from Radio Shack (our first computer at my house in college) it was based for the work-place/home office work.

Apple was designed for those who wanted to do their own programming - any one could learn Basic language and design their own programs - there were magazines published soon after the Apple's release to the general public that contained programs that you could plug in for working higher concepts.

Yes there was a time when Microsoft/IBM where kicking his butt and it seemed that Apple would die at the turn of the century ... He pulled them out of the hole with a device which didn't seem to have anything at all to do with he computer ...

iTunes!

A way to save all your music onto a single device - no more swapping out tapes, platters, or CDs - just a touch of a keystroke and you could have music all night for your gatherings.

You could make personal mixes of music onto CD-Rs to share, you could download music from the web (granted these were considered bootleg/pirated copies and that alone could have killed Apple had they been held partially liable)

But I would say the one thing that he had his company develope - the thing that made he first HUGE difference in our lives - was the iPod.

Unlike cd or tape players you didn't have to carry a ton of extras with you - you just down loaded the 10 CDs or so that you liked he best and took it with you ... perhaps it was a few more than that but it wasn't a lot the first time ... they only had about 350mb or so - yes we were still talking mb, a "gig" was a booking for a band.

The Internet was in it's infancy ... There was IMB-compatible and apple systems and ne'er should the two meet ...

At least until the turn of the century when suddenly apple offered an open-ended programming concept that allowed just about anyone who wished to to program in apple-language.

Hackers were almost encouraged to try to break their programs so security-holes could be patched - so there were very few viruses designed to attack an apple product.

From there everything sky rocketed ...

So where we use the phone everyday (even the cell phone) and electricity without a thought or care - Steve Jobs is in our lives everyday as well.

From the blogs we write up, to the devices we use, to the way we view music, to the way we shop ...

We wake up with Apple ... many work everyday with Apple in one form or another ... and we go to sleep with Apple as well.

Car sound-systems have been designed these days around the Apple music system ...

Work systems are now being formed around the iPad product line -

But the thing that really makes Apple such an intricate part of everyday life is how it's devices work TOGETHER and not just together but in such a way that you can set it up so that when you download something onto one device it is instantly downloaded onto the others.

The invent of Apps (the name itself congers a subconscious link to Apple) allowed anyone willing to do the work/programming a piece of Apples pie ...

THAT is the real contribution that Steve Jobs will leave behind - the feeling that ANYONE can do it ... That anyone could be the next Steve Jobs.

(just wait until I have to write one of these homages about Bill Gates, I'm not even that big of a fan of Apple in reality)