iAm a PC.

Yesterday on the drive back to LAX after a work meeting, a coworker was checking her iThing and announced that Steve Jobs had died.

"Oh." That was all iCould muster. iFelt a little bad about that, so iAdded what iThought was an appropriate follow-up comment: "Wow."

And then iWent back to decompressing after the all-day meeting.

iKnow this is monumental - epic, in fact. Like most people my age, iLearned simple commands on a Mac at summer computer camp (um, you went to computer camp as a kid, right? it wasn't just me, right?). iWatched most people my age move into the Mac world at one point or another over the past decade and rave about the products. iUsed to live in the Bay Area where the annual Macworld was a mecca for geeks worldwide. When iNeeded a new computer iAsked for advice and all iGot was "OMG YOU MUST BUY AN APPLE." A flight attendant asked everyone to turn off "everything that starts with an 'i'" before we took off the other day.

But iAm a late adopter who just wants to be able to send an email now and then, preferably from the comfort of my couch, and listen to music on something portable, and edit photos occasionally. iHave not followed Apple. Like, at all. iBought an early version of the iPod several years after the first was released, mostly on a whim. iAppreciate my hand-me-down iTouch and Nano but really, iWould never have purchased them if left to my own devices. There are so many other products that do all iNeed for a much cheaper price. And iHate typing on those tiny keypads.

And then it occurred to me (and thus ends the snippy i's). Without Mr. Jobs, I would not have access to all these other, cheaper products. And then I saw this quote: "We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much — if at all."

[Ed. note: you know what? Never mind. I still like the quotes and I still hope he has free wifi though.] I've seen many similar humble posts on Facebook and elsewhere, and I now realize he was just a regular, stand up guy... who happened to be a genius billionaire.

So thank you, Steve. I hope you are comfortable and happy in your new home, wherever that may be. I'm sure there's free wifi. If there's not, there will be soon. iJust know it.

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Another fave: "I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television — but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent."