21 Gun Salute for Steve

With the death of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc. the world has lost another pioneer. The picture above taken at the white house shortly before his death, shows him and fellow pioneers, raising their glasses to the future of American innovation. A future which unfortunately, Mr. Jobs will never see.

But one which has already been imagined, and by Microsoft no less! Check out the video of their future vision below.

To me, the video looks like iPad gold. It's full of highly interactive touchscreen devices. Essentially the depiction of a future where every surface could be a touchscreen device... and all thanks to the innovation of Steve Jobs.

Yes, there were touchscreen devices before the iDevices, and there have been non-Apple touchscreen devices after them. But in my opinion the level of usability took a huge leap with the introduction of the iPhone. So much so that touchscreen devices before and after it cannot even be compared to each other.

Perhaps as a Computer Scientist myself I should also talk about the many other contributions Steve Jobs made to the field. But frankly, I only became a fan of Apple products about a year ago and talking about any of that old stuff would be boring. Besides, even if the iDevices were all that Steve contributed to the world, I think that would be more than enough.

We may all have our likes and dislikes as concerns Apple Inc and Apple products, but there is no doubt that the man behind the company, the man called Steve Jobs, changed the world with his ideas. So I propose we all take a moment and raise our glasses (like the people in the picture above) and make a toast to the man, the pioneer, and the innovator, known as Steve Jobs.

And if the future does turn out to be anything like Microsoft has imagined, then I think we'd have even more to thank him for.