9407: iRreverence For Steve Jobs.

From The New York Times…

iToo …Could Have Known Steve Jobs. Or Did I?

By Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron is the author, most recently, of “I Remember Nothing.”

I, too, did not know Steve Jobs.

In the days since his death, I have struggled to find a connection to him.

I thought about him often when he was alive, particularly when I was working at my wonderful iMac computer, and also when I was trying to type an e-mail using the infuriating touchscreen on my iPhone. I thought about shooting him an e-mail about that touchscreen, but I never did, in part because I didn’t have his address. If I had, perhaps he would have written me back. Perhaps we would have become friends. Perhaps he would have done something about that touchscreen.

Sometimes I can’t help wondering what it must have been like for his birth parents to give him up for adoption, to not know for years what became of him, and then to find out that a baby they gave away was now a national treasure worth $8.3 billion. There should be a word or a phrase to describe this — something as good as schadenfreude, or déjà vu, something that means “regret about the careless behavior of your youth, especially when it makes you look like a jerk.” I’m sorry I didn’t coin it, because it would link me to him.

I just read Aaron Sorkin’s piece in Newsweek about how Steve Jobs called him one day, out of the blue, after Mr. Sorkin was quoted somewhere saying he wrote his screenplays on an iMac. I guess Steve Jobs didn’t know that I, too, write screenplays on an iMac. Had he known, I’m sure he would have called me, and there’s no telling how strong my connection to him might have been. Stronger than Mr. Sorkin’s, that’s for sure.

Mr. Jobs invited Mr. Sorkin to write a movie for Pixar and asked him to come up to Northern California to see his operation, and Mr. Sorkin never did. I would have gone. I would have written the movie. I would have won an Oscar for the best animated feature, and you can bet I would have thanked Mr. Jobs in my Oscar speech. Millions of Apple users would have been jealous of my connection to him, even though it might not have been remotely intimate.

By the way, I live near a really good vegan restaurant, and I like to think Steve and I might have gone there together, perhaps after a fabulous test screening of our Pixar movie.

At some point I would definitely have asked him how to pronounce his last name, which I’ve never been sure of. I have been fascinated to learn about the women Mr. Jobs dated, or might have dated, and I couldn’t help wondering if I was one of them. I don’t think I was. But you never know. In any case, I’m sorry I didn’t start a rumor that I dated Steve Jobs, because my name could now be on the list of people he might have dated, along with Diane Keaton, whom I’m pretty sure he never dated but what do I know? I never met the guy. I read Mr. Jobs’s Stanford commencement speech in 2005. I told many people to read it, and I’m sure they told many more people to read it, and that undoubtedly accounts for its reputation as the greatest commencement speech in history. I wish I had written that speech. I wish I had bought Apple stock 15 years ago. I wish I had thought of that thing where you connect the “i” to the next word.

iWish, iWish, iWish.