Apple & Me

So I've been a little obsessed with Steve Jobs and Apple Computer in general for the past week. Like staying up way too late watching "Triumph of the Nerds" and TiVo-ing "Pirates of Silicon Valley". See, the whole Steve Jobs thing really got me reminiscing about my first computer, which was in fact, an Apple IIc. My parents got it for us for Christmas in 1986. I think it was supposed to be the family computer, but my parents had no idea how to use it, and I pretty much played King's Quest on it all the time anyway.

The next computer we had was a Macintosh LCII which we got sometime in the early 90's. I went off to college in 1994, and didn't have a computer for a few years, but the "Computer Lab" (remember those?) at Baylor was filled with Macs. The point is, for 25 years I've used Apple products. In fact, the only time I deviated from this was in medical school because UTSW required that we purchase a PC for some lame computer-based curriculum. In retrospect, I should have refused and dropped out on principle. That's what SJ would've done.

I have read a lot about Jobs in the past week. And I am grateful for the contributions that he made to personal computing and the technology that we enjoy. As a Christian, I had been struggling a bit with how to reconcile my faith with all of the praise for his creative genius. After all, I do love my iPhone, but the bottom line is that technology, no matter how much it improves our life on this earth, doesn't mean much for our life after it. I loved this blog post by Albert Mohler: "Christians cannot leave the matter where the secular world will settle on Steve Jobs’ legacy. The secular conversation will evade questions of eternal significance, but Christians cannot. As is the case with so many kings, rulers, inventors, leaders, and shapers of history, Christians can learn from Steve Jobs and even admire many of his gifts and contributions. Yet, we must also observe what is missing here... unerring taste, aesthetic achievement, and technological genius will not save the world."

Just a couple more things. Since this blog often deal with adoption issues, I wanted to bring up the fact that Jobs was adopted. As is discussed here, his life and his contributions make a strong case for the pro-life, pro-adoption position. He was an unplanned pregnancy, and could easily have been another abortion statistic, even more so if he had been born 20 years later in the post Roe vs. Wade era. Another thing I found interesting was in this article. He never liked the term "adoptive parent." To Jobs, it just didn't make sense. His adoptive parents were the only parents he had ever known.