My Steve Jobs

I have never owned an Apple product. In fact, I have always been annoyed by what seemed to me to be the cult-like attitude that many Apple owners expressed towards Steve Jobs, the Mac, and the variety of iPhones, iPads, and iWhatevers.

Then I read Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography. I still don't own an Apple product, but I have a better understanding of and empathy for the Apple mind-set. In particular, I realized the other day that I have my own Steve Jobs. His name is Elon Musk.

Musk has done something similar to Jobs. He has not only been a pioneer in shepherding a technological revolution, but he has done so in multiple industries. Musk was a founder of PayPal. He then started Tesla, the only spectacularly successful electric car company. Not satisfied with that, he started SpaceX, the first private rocket company to service the international space station. To top it off, he inspired SolarCity, which has become a quite successful solar power company in California.

I watched this video today with rapt excitement, listening to the adoring crowd soak in Musk's presentation, and realized how similar the event was to those many times in which Steve Jobs unveiled new Apple products to the similarly devoted.

I guess that this makes me kind of a nut, but it is a burden that I will have to bear.