If God had a blog...

One benefit of Twitter is that it alerts you to things in the New Yorker that you initially missed, including this.

Steve Jobs

This will date me, I know.

But back in junior high I was introduced to something a little different: the Apple computer. I'd seen computers, of course, even personal ones -- IBM was making heavyweight, in the fullest sense of that world, home computers that didn't even have hard drives (yes, yes, I'm old; let's move on now). But the Apple, we were told, would be a little bit different. And it was.

We could write programs on it.

My very first little programs. We learned how to type in words that would allow pictures to appear on the screen, and, if you were better at this than I was, even have the pictures move.

Shortly after this, we moved to Connecticut, where the high school had decided that we would be better off learning on IBM clones since IBM and DOS/Microsoft had cornered the business market. I learned, not well, to type in little Pascal and Fortran programs and even learned a tiny bit of COBOL. But somehow, those computers were -- I don't know -- just not as much fun. And the word processors were never quite as easy to use.

I still use Microsoft dependent products - a Sony laptop is before me as I type on quite another device. But a few years back, I was persuaded to give iTunes - and its ability to let me buy just one song, instead of the entire album a try. I was hooked. An iPod became inevitable.

It's safe tonsay that the iPod was inevitable. And that it was a transforming experience. I'd never really had the money to invest in CDs, so I always felt out of things musically, and never felt able to explore much. But now - I could and did sample all sorts of songs. My music library grew. I got a iTouch, which let me track email and twitter on the go.

I'm typing this on an iPad.

To be fair, I've also used the iTouch and the iPad for considerably less creative things -a certain game called collapse, for instance. But when I am on my trike, listening to songs shuffle through this tiny device in my pocket, not even half filled with it's 5000 + songs, and the joy that music brings me...

Also, of course, pixar.

And all of the art things that I am just beginning to explore on this device.

Thank you, Mr. Jobs.