It's impossible to overstate the influence of Steve Jobs on technologists, particularly his passion for beautiful, usable products. We work harder and have higher standards because of the bar set by Apple's experiences, and I don't know what WordPress would look like today if not for the inspiration he gave all of us. As the shock at his premature loss has given way to a celebration of his life it's been amazing to read all of the personal anecdotes of those lucky enough to have known him.
Yesterday one of the tributes I noticed was the website Boing Boing switched their theme to one reminiscent of the original Macintosh interface, one of the several times Jobs would make a ding in the universe through his work. It seemed fitting, and we wanted to make it available to all of you, so our theme team worked through the night and here it is:
Dress up your blog with retro, chunky-grade pixellated graphics and evoke some serious computer nostalgia. This theme is a whimsical homage to the days in black and white, celebrating the magic of Mac OS. It displays your menu items, year archives, and categories as folders and icons on the evoked desktop.
For all the memories it brings -- and its throwback design -- this theme has modern functionality under the hood. Create your own custom menu to replace the first set of icons in the sidebar, upload a custom header image to display below the blog title, or set a custom background. Also included are two footer widget areas and a full-width page template that drops the sidebar.
Originally created by Stuart Brown, Retro MacOS is now available in your WordPress.com dashboard. You can activate the theme there as usual, from Appearance → Themes, or directly from the Theme Showcase.
I want to leave you with two quotes:
We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn't build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.
When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
And finally:
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Do something great.
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