Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Screen capture from Apple.com today.

I actually wept a tear at the passing today of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and - not to be forgotten - the equally magical Pixar Studios.

It was partly a Gaelic good wish for his passing from a friend on Twitter that brought tears to my eyes, but also the fact that Apple - and in particular Jonathan "Jony" Ive, designer of the iPhone, iPad, iMac and iPod - were inordinately kind to Hudson on his seventh birthday this year, thanks also to the kindness of our wonderful friend, Stephen Fry, who arranged the introduction.

Only yesterday, Hudson, Paradise and I were watching the opening of the original Toy Story (the first computer-animated feature, which revolutionized animation as much as anything Walt Disney ever did) and were reminded of Steve Jobs' credit as executive producer. His faith in Pixar and in the potential of computer animation - which has reached astonishing heights with works of beauty and wonder such as WALL-E - was as radical and farsighted as his original creation of Apple, and perhaps just as remarkably, the rebirth of the company when he returned in 1997, essentially to save his creation from bankruptcy.

Perhaps there is also an element of identification, in that Steve Jobs was born a month after I was in 1955. But whatever the case, his passing feels extraordinarily personal for a man I never met, and I wish all those who knew and worked with him, not least Jony Ive, a sense of peace at his loss.

If you are interested in my account of Hudson's - and our - hugely enjoyable trip to Apple in Cupertino (a trip we repeated a month or so later with our friend, Andrew Hale), please read my earlier post: Hudson, Apple and Jonathan Ive.

And may Steve Jobs pass into the extraordinary white noise - the perfection and silence - that is the cosmos.

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