Not that I wouldn’t be upset – I’m typing this on my MacBook Pro (my 5th Apple laptop), I heard the news via my iPhone (my second), I watched the reports coming through last night on my iPad (which I had hooked up to my television via Apple TV), so all in all you could grade me as a dedicated Apple customer who has been more than touched by Steve’s vision. But, like everyone else, I’ve also known that he’s been ill for a long time, and when he went on extended medical leave in January and finally stepped down as CEO in August, things didn’t look good. So if last night’s announcement was a shock, it wasn’t wholly unexpected. But still, I’ve been near catatonic all day.

And it’s not because I love Apple products so much or that I fear the company will lose its way and we’ll never have another amazing, life changing product from them ever again. I do love Apple products, and I will be eternally grateful for the day that Steve rejoined the company and made most of the contents of my house possible. But then again, Steve didn’t come up with it all by himself. He surrounded himself with skilled and talented people from Jony Ive to Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall, Greg Joswiak, Bob Mansfield and current CEO Tim Cook, who are all still there and I have no doubt will lead the company and the product line to plenty more amazing places that I’ve never even imagined.

What I realised today, was that what’s been making me really depressed isn’t seeing my iPhone and thinking: Steve did that, it’s watching the clips on youtube of him talking about changing the world and making things better and doing things that others say can’t or shouldn’t be done and won’t work if they are.

If Steve Jobs gave the late 20th century and early 21st anything, it was a kick up the arse and the message that Good is never good enough. OK will never do. If it isn’t awesome, you’re not trying hard enough. Steve was a brave and fearsome knight in the battle against mediocrity. Yes he gave us technology that did what we wanted it to do, that ‘just worked’, that was limited only by our imaginations, not by the constraints of computer engineering. Yes he made technology human, and tactile, and beautiful, and something for everyone to be excited about not just geeked over. But if you want to know Steve Jobs’s real mission, the answer wasn’t in the iPhone, but in the box it came in. Sleek, minimalist, stylish and brilliant in the way that with a tab here, or an indent there, it allowed you to effortlessly tease the new love of your life out into your hand.

Where other manufacturers saw a box, Steve Jobs saw part of the experience. A detail to be got right. A small thing that could be endlessly improved to make seeing it, holding it, opening it and keeping it (my house is full of Apple boxes I can’t stand to throw away) a better, more enjoyable experience. From the packaging to the retail stores, from the design of a power supply to the workings and rendering of the OSX operating system, Steve’s attention to the detail spoke to the best in all of us. He showed that it’s not about making it cheaper, it’s about making it better. It’s not about doing something that works, it’s about doing something that you’re proud of. It’s about saying that it does matter, it is important and it really does make a difference. That Apple became one of the most successful consumer brands at the height of the worst economic downturn in 60 years, proves that he was right.

So I’ve realised, what’s made me really sad today, isn’t that the man who brought me my iPhone and envisaged the iPad has died at 56 years of age (he did, after all, achieve more than his share in that time), it’s not that his wife and children have lost a husband and a father, it’s not that there will never be another Stevenote or ‘one more thing…’ It’s that the person who stood-up, parted the raging seas of mediocre, average shit and showed us that we are all capable of and deserving of ‘amazing’, isn’t going to be around to remind us just how ‘Awesome’ life should be.

For that, more than anything, he will be greatly missed.

Wired.com’s amazing video tribute to Steve Jobs. Only downside is it’s in flash which means you won’t be able to watch it on your iPhone or iPad, which would piss the great man off no end (probably his biggest career regret would be not living quite long enough to be proved right about html 5).

If ever inspiration about life and love is needed, you’ll find it here. Keep looking, don’t settle. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Cool Snow White and The Joker iPad vinyl stickers.

If I had an iPad I might be tempted by a gothed-up Snow White.

Objectified, the new documentary feature from Gary Hustwit of Helvetica fame, which gets its world premier in March at this year’s SxSW, will include a rare interview with Apple design guru, Englishman Jony Ive (I know, a bit jingoistic, but we have so little to shout about these days). Rarer still, the interview, from whence the above picture came, was filmed inside Apple’s Design Studio. Might not sound like much, but it’s on a par with pulling back the curtain and catching a glimpse of Oz.

Ah, the eternal question: What is cool?

Always followed by: And why have some people/places/things got it while others haven’t?

Are cool and style the same thing?

Are all stylish things cool?

Does something have to be fashionable to be cool? Or is cool about doing your own thing?

Is cool the same as the other indefinable quality we call x-factor? Or can you have that special star something and still be naff?

Is cool passion, authenticity, confidence, lack of effort or all of the above?

How do you know when you’ve got it? How do you know when it’s gone?

Is it something you’re born with?

Can you acquire it?

Can you buy it?

Can you sell it?

Is it something you can learn to be or does trying result in instant disqualification?

What’s your definition of cool?

Would it be the same as mine?

If it really is indefinable, then how come we all seem to know that those pictured above – Barack Obama, Steve McQueen, Apple’s iPhone, New York, Philippe Stark’s Juicer, Keith Richards, Miles Davis, James Dean, Adidas Shell Toes – all have it. Or maybe you don’t agree that they do.

How important is it anyway?

All my life I’ve been fascinated by the concept of ‘cool’, something you can’t see or touch yet we all instantly recognise, and react favourably to. Cool people/places/things are always popular, always respected, usually successful, invariably admired. Why? What have they got? What do they know? Can they themselves define it?

That’s what I’m intending to find out with The Definition Of Cool, my own personal journey in search of that magic formula. But first I need your help. I need to know your definition of cool. Who are the people, places and things that you think have it? And how would you put it into words? Don’t be too clever. I’m trying to get together a solid cast of characters I can go and interview – or in the case of products, places and dead people, those who know/knew them well. So don’t be afraid to be too obvious – obscure may be cool, but for our purposes it won’t get us very far. Pick people, places and things which are widely known and recognised, and tell me why you think they’re cool, along with your own definition, in the comments. Once I’ve got a sufficiently cool long list, I’ll be running a series of polls here on the blog to narrow it down to a short list of interviews for the book so don’t forget to sign-up to the mailing list here or subscribe to the RSS feed here, so you won’t miss your chance to vote.

It’s my 5th Apple laptop. My first was a little grey scale PowerBook 150. The internet was a new invention, colour was way out of my price range and the trackball was quite possibly the most exciting thing I’d ever seen in my life. My last Apple laptop was the last PowerBook G4. And when I say last, I mean last. I ordered it online via the Apple Store first week of Jan 2006. Second week of Jan 2006 Apple launched the MacBook Pro. Gutted doesn’t quite cover it. It took a little under two weeks to arrive. By the time it did it was already obsolete. As laptops go it was alright, but it didn’t have the new Intel CoreDuo chip, it was bulky and from the off I knew it wasn’t going to be a classic. My new MacBook Pro on the other hand, this is vintage Apple. In years to come I’ll look back in that misty way I do when I think about my little 150 with its golf ball sized trackball.

I am, totally in love.