Yah, my first program was done in an Apple ][+. My friend and I grew up programming on his various Apple machines (I had a Commodore 64).

For the past 10 years I've made a living developing on all kinds of Macs. Couldn't imagine work without them.

Best of all, I loved watching Steve's keynotes. No one can distort reality the way he did.

I didn't even know him, but I feel like I'll miss knowing he's there, ready to present:

"one more thing.."

I can see that I am not the only one whose life was changed by those early experiences with the Apple ecosystem. From my own 30-year-old memories:

On any given afternoon around 1981-1982, the geeks at my middle school could all be found gathered around a dozen Apple II+ and Apple IIe machines in the computer room. The British instructor who had set them up and taught us code fundamentals really encouraged us to explore and experiment (and fought a losing battle to keep us from bringing our game floppies into the room).

Mine was an Apple IIe, and likewise it really opened my eyes to the world of computing and gave me a life long passion for technology.

I thank him for that as well.

My first was an Apple IIe at age 12. I was thinking the same thing.

I'm another dev whose first computer was an apple IIgs. I don't know if I'd be a dev today if I hadn't spent far too many hours poking around in basic typing in games from magazine, modifying them, and writing my own.

For purely selfish reasons -- what could Steve have imagined next? -- he passed far too soon.