Then, yesterday – when I first heard the news at 7.45 in the morning (Singapore time) – things changed. And the subject of the piece became clear.

I was going to talk about about how a ‘disappointing product from Apple’ – the 4S – will still manage to be the world’s largest-ever selling phone.  Instead, it’s time to reflect on a man who built a company – a company whose ‘disappointing product’ will trash all others when it comes to sales.

Much will be written about the man himself and about the company, and my efforts would probably add little to a subject and melange of content that will attract the world’s best journalists and writers.  So, when it comes to my own 2 cents’ worth, I just want to touch on a brief period in history – a time when, for me, and for millions of others things changed.  For ever.

That time – that thing – I shall always remember was all about Apple and, specifically, all about the iPhone.  It was the time when all that talk about the mobile internet came true.  

As an avid technology fan and confessed geek, I’m always looking for the ‘next thing’.  Indeed, a couple of times in past jobs that I’ve had, I’ve even tried to convince others of the next thing.  I remember blabbing on about WAP services in the late ’90’s whatever they were supposed to be.

I’ve even been lured by false prophets masquerading in many forms promising some of these ‘next things’.  On my desk at home is my O2 xda pocket PC ‘mobile’ device – something I bought in 2003.  It ran (and still does) some rubbish windows operating system with a browser. The browser (manipulated by the always-needs-re-calibrating stylus pointing device) was also rubbish and I remember suffering a large bout of buyers’ remorse following that stupid purchase. I can’t remember ever using the browser. I suspect the first few minutes were so painful as to dissuade me from ever trying again whilst the wonderful brain did that cover-up thing to minimize the trauma.

What Jobs and Apple did was bring that browser experience to us in a way that, quite simply, made sense.  All talk now (and for some time), of course, is about applications and they invariably provide a far superior experience, but the early Safari browsing experience on the first iPhone was good and it tipped the ‘talk of the mobile internet’ towards people actually ‘doing the mobile internet’.

Whilst the innovation, the technology and all the other good stuff was brought together to give that to us, people at Apple, and, I have no doubt Jobs himself, never let go of that one simple core consideration – ‘Will people want to use this?’

And by asking that question and by bringing us something that answered it with a resounding ‘yes’, Apple transformed everything.  They, unlike those responsible for the thing on my desk, gave me and everyone else, something we wanted to use.

You can still feel that same consideration resonating through everything Apple do.  It’s a simple consideration and one that I talk about a lot in my work with people.  It’s also a consideration that a lot of companies still don’t pay enough attention to when it comes to their products, their services and all their consumer touch points.

In the triangle that is technology, good business and consideration to what people want, desire and need, Apple and Steve Jobs have shown us just how important that last bit is.

As I read the tributes to him, some of whom are from people like Bill Gates who knew him personally, I realize that Mr. Jobs knew us all that little bit more than most.  In knowing us – in knowing what we want – and building a company around that, he has created a legacy that will resonate at a very personal level for a lot of us.

Everything about Apple, for me at least, pivots around this point.  And a cursory look at Twitter, at Facebook and all around today would suggest that it appears to be the same for a few others too.

Thank you, Steve.  

(It might sound ridiculous to say. ‘from the bottom of my heart’, but, you know what? – it’s from some place not that far from there.)