first cover of macworld (1984), via kuodesign.com

To quote a film he financed, Steve Jobs has now gone to infinity and beyond.

As we mentioned six weeks ago when he announced his official retirement from Apple, Jobs and partner Steve Wozniak weren’t the only guys in the mid ’70s to think of building small computers around those newfangled microprocessor chips.

There had been, and would have continued to be, microcomputers for avid programming mavens, and microcoputers for grunt number-crunching in business.

But Jobs and his crew had bigger dreams.

I’m writing this while watching Rachel Maddow’s reminiscence about Jobs’s first defining moment on a mass stage, the debut of the original Macintosh:

That was revolutionary. Personal computing for persons; for people who didn’t know from computers. It was the first real breach of the distance between the immense power of computing and regular people’s ability to act on that power.

When Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 from an eleven-year exile, he took this concept to newer levels. His company created entire product categories, even entire industries.

Many people have taken many lessons from Jobs’s life and work.

What would I add in?

Just one of his more enduring slogans.

“Think Different.”

Don’t settle for conformity, or even for conformist nonconformity.

Mix-and-match artistic disciplines, business models, cultural influences, technical pathways, creative procedures, and philosophical visions.

Put everything in the pot.

Keep stirring.