Steve Jobs wrecked Andrew Lewis’ business.
“But I didn’t sell my Mac,” after Jobs canceled Lewis’ agreement in 1997 that allowed DayStar Digital to soup up and sell Macintosh computers in Hall County.
Jobs’ sometimes hard-edged and driven — but always customer-oriented — genius is still an inspiration to Lewis and many in metro Atlanta who can trace their entrepreneurial genes to the Apple Inc. co-founder.
His business decisions affect how many of us live our lives, from the constant and addictive presence of glass-faced smart devices in our hands to the AppNation business conference for software developers and suppliers that’s coming to Atlanta Nov. 7.
People saw in Jobs someone they could relate to, as an innovator, pitchman and personality.
Jobs died shockingly, if not unexpectedly, Wednesday night after a long battle against cancer.
Lewis’ relation with Apple began in the late 1980s, when his engineers at DayStar figured out how to cram four Apple processors and its operating system into one computer. DayStar was one of a mere four companies licensed to do work by Apple, known for secrecy and keeping its system closed to extra-company developers. DayStar got its license only after Jobs was temporarily forced out of his job by a differently minded board.
When Jobs regained the company throne, he slammed the door on licensing, catching Lewis’ 8-year-old company in the business decision.
“He was even more of role model for me when he came back,” Lewis said, because of the tempering the time off had given to his personality and because of what he stood for: high standards, simplifying the complex and a consumer-oriented vision for the possible.
One of Jobs’ later decisions was to reopen Apple’s door to small entrepreneurs by allowing programmers to create and sell apps for iPhones and iPads that do everything from helping a driver remember where he parked a car to finding a favorite Bible verse, and it has given a new generation of Atlantans entre to the world of Apple.
Jesse Lindsley’s Thrust Interactive has a new game for the iPad, Boomblastica, coming out within a week or so for sale on iTunes.
He said apps make it possible once again for one person writing software in a garage to start a tech company and make an impact and a living.
“When we started in ’04 indie development was team of five to six guys,” Lindsley said. “What he has done is indie development can be one guy or two guys again.”
Stephen Fleming, vice president at Georgia Tech and head of the Enterprise Innovation Institute, was attending a performance of “Wicked” on Wednesday at the Fox Theatre when news of Jobs’ death began arriving in a felicitous manner.
“Everybody’s iPhones started going off,” Fleming recalled. “People were crying ... strangers were talking about it with one another.”
Before Jobs arrived in the technology space, “There wasn’t anybody thinking about revolution,” Fleming said.
“He did, and he dragged everybody with him,” he said. “He was the Edison of our generation. This was someone who changed the world.”
Keith McGreggor, the director of Georgia Tech’s VentureLab, which helps develop and market university-based creations, was head of graphics development for Apple in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He met Jobs briefly.
“What he did, was make it OK to use the computer,” McGreggor said. “Before, they were not a part of us, and his insistence was we shouldn’t have to conform to them, they should conform to how we are.
“Now, you can’t walk around without seeing someone looking down at their device. Every time you touch a mouse or click or swipe on a piece of glass now, you can think it’s because he somehow made it OK to do that.”
