Long after his death last week at 56 years old, you’re going to hear a lot of stories about how Steve Jobs designed and contributed to technologies that brought people together through Apple’s products. I feel fortunate to have experienced this firsthand.

In 2002, I purchased one of Apple’s shiny white iBooks and used it for everything from checking email to writing business documents. Later that year, I met a girl.

She was smart, pretty, and an Apple fan. As we got to know each other better in the initial months of our relationship, my use of the iBook was fading because I was doing more work from home and reverted to using my trusty Apple desktop, a Power Mac G4.

When I mentioned that I was thinking of selling the iBook one evening, her eyes lit up and she said “I’d buy it.”

We agreed on a price and I carefully prepared and packed the iBook for it’s new owner. After making sure that all of the manuals and cables were accounted for and packed into the box, I placed my business card on the very top of the contents and took it to her the next day.

While I explained the business card to her as, “call me if you have any questions,” the real meaning was, “I hope that you’ll call or email me anyway.”

She did, and that was the beginning of a wonderful journey that culminated in a move to Chicago in 2006 and a beautiful baby girl for us 11 months ago. A family. In the 9 years since we first met, a Christmas and our wedding were celebrated with new iPods, a birthday with a new MacBook, and my wife won an iPad weeks before giving birth our daughter (it was waiting for us the day that we brought Eleanor home from the hospital).

Starting this November, we will be documenting our daughter’s life on iPhone 4S’s - taking photos and videos and sending them instantly to our blogs, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. We will be doing video calls with her and our family with Apple’s Facetime software, and sending photos and texts of her via Messenger. Seamlessly.

We will probably do most of this without even realizing that we are holding a powerful computer in our hand. Because that is what Steve Jobs demanded of his products - make life simple for everyone without being overbearing or awkward.

Last week the world lost a visionary. Steve Jobs is now spoken in the same sentence as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and his primary role model, Edwin H. Land. He brought great design, great user experience, and innovative products to millions, resulting in everything from laptops that turn on in seconds to taking high quality photographs of your family on a smart phone. 

Why Apple? Because it just works.

Thanks Steve.

Check out my wife’s blog for her perspective on this here.