Dear Steve
I should have written this letter long time back, when I had a chance. When I had hope that there was this slight possibility that you would read this and maybe slighter possibility that you would reply to it. I never did.
I was too afraid to never hear back from the one person who I looked upon as an idol. A figure who through his years of actions had set a guidebook for me to reference when life threw a puzzle I had no answer for. Now I know, that fear of grief was nothing compared to the hollow sinking feeling when I know you will never read this. When I know that the guidebookâs last pages have been written and there are no more comebacks, lessons and magical things to come.
I have never met you or seen you in person. The closest we might have come tangentially would be when you spoke of Pulse, the company I was to later work at or when you and others at Apple had decided to give Pulse the Apple Design Award while I had just joined them. For every other moment of my life I have come only as close as using a Mac or the iPhone or the iPad and wondering if I could ever tell you how thankful I am for all these creations.
Had it not been for you, I would not be a lot of things I am today. It was my first MacBook that inspired me to become a designer. It was my first Apple blog that got me into blogging. It was my first iPhone that made me get into photography. It was your 2005 speech at Stanford that made me take the final plunge into the world of design and leave a conventional career behind. It is my first iPad with which I write this. However, you will never know and I will never have that elated feeling for which I wanted to do great work all my life so that one day Steve would take note. For someone who I never knew personally you have sure touched my life on so many levels. I do not think I have it in me to cry for losing a person in my life but the closest I could ever come to that I did when I heard about you. You had set out to create a dent in the universe you ended up changing it for all of us.
Steve, Thank You!