Steve Jobs dies

It is the end of an era. Steve Jobs, founder, visionary, CEO of Apple until 6 weeks ago, has died.

Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple with the Apple II (the Apple I was a prototype) - that eventually got accepted in schools (Minnesota was actually one of the early states to go with computing and Apple II's).

The Apple II was quite a change from the existing models of the day - maybe the most 'popular' was the TRS-80 (from Radio Shack) - a black-and-white 16K (yes 16K) machine; while the Apple II had floppy disks and a color screen.

One of the earliest success stories was that of VisiCalc - a revolutionary package known as a 'spreadsheet' (wow!!!). I taught a VisiCalc class in 1981.

Apple had some early successes and some early failure (like the Lisa - ahead of its time). By the late 1990's with Steve Jobs at the helm, it came out with 'hit' after 'hit' - with the Macintosh (the old job was Windows 1995 was Macintosh 1990). Apple found a great niche with the iPod and iPhone and now the iPad.

Rest In Piece Steve Jobs!!!