[Video Link] BusinessWeek asked me to write my "Story About Steve." I never met Steve, but I had a story to tell. Here it is.

In May 2002 I got a call from my friend Alberta who asked if I'd like to be in an Apple TV commercial. Alberta had a friend who was an art director at Apple, and he needed people in Los Angeles who'd switched from a Windows machine to a Mac. That was me.

The next day, I got calls from Apple and Chiat/Day, and they e-mailed me a thick stack of forms to sign. Most of them swearing me to secrecy.

The day after that, I drove 15 minutes to a soundstage in Hollywood. At least 100 people from Apple and Chiat/Day were on the set. Errol Morris, the director, was hiding inside a white tent on the far end of the warehouse-like soundstage. I could hear his voice booming through an amplifier. Someone on the set told me he was using his invention called the Interrotron to interview the switchers. "Just wait until you see how it works," she said.

My taping was scheduled for 12 p.m. I was a little early, so I grabbed a bagel from craft services and looked for a place to sit. All the chairs on the set were occupied, but not by people. The Chiat/ Day workers had set their laptops and backpacks on all the chairs with hand-drawn signs that said "DON'T TOUCH." I asked a young woman in a smart gray outfit where I could sit. "Someplace outside," she said.

Read the rest: Mark Frauenfelder: My Story About Steve

A brief roundup of some of the pieces observing the passing of Steve Jobs, by journalists who covered Apple and Jobs, and peers who knew him.

Steven Levy's piece in Wired was beautiful. Levy first interviewed Jobs in the mid-1980s.

At the New York Times, John Markoff wrote the obituary. Markoff has been at it in Silicon Valley for about the same number of years, and he wrote the book What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer , in which Jobs is a central figure.

Brian Lam, the former Gizmodo editor who now runs Wirecutter, wrote a very personal story about his interaction with Jobs around the infamous "stolen" iPhone 4 prototype.

John Gruber's piece is a must: "Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot".

Walt Mossberg shared some personal observations at the Wall Street Journal.

PBS NewsHour hosted a panel last night with Vint Cerf (Google), Steve Case (AOL), and me. The video for that segment is here. Both Cerf and Case knew the man personally, and had interacted with him and the company he ran, for decades. Just before we went on-air, a member of the NewsHour team pointed me to this amazing 1985 NewsHour segment on Apple and Jobs, during a time when the company was fumbling. John Sculley was CEO. "I believe there is no such thing as a home computer market," he says in the piece. Things were different then. Lots of mullets and mainframes.

Rachel Maddow led the Rachel Maddow Show with coverage of Steve Jobs' passing on the night he died. Video here. I was a guest on the show that night. Video is embedded below. John Sculley was a guest last night on Maddow. "He was an artist," Sculley said. Don't miss that interview. Video also below.

Read the rest

Mike Daisey wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times arguing against Jobs hagiography. Some might say "too soon," but it's a compelling piece, with much to think about.

The Steve Jobs who founded Apple as an anarchic company promoting the message of freedom, whose first projects with Stephen Wozniak were pirate boxes and computers with open schematics, would be taken aback by the future that Apple is forging. Today there is no tech company that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial than Apple itself, a testament to how quickly power can corrupt.

Daniel Kottke demos the Microwriter (Photo by Avi Solomon)

Avi Solomon interviewed Daniel Kottke at his home in Palo Alto on 2nd September, 2011. He says:

I had a wide-ranging conversation with Daniel Kottke (Apple employee #12) on Silicon Valley's innovation culture. Daniel also talked about his trip to India with Steve Jobs during their hippie years. Steve Jobs did not find miracles in the ashrams of India but he made the true magic happen in a garage in California.

Daniel Kottke interview by Avi Solomon

Here I am, days after I was born, being held by my father in front of the family Macintosh.

Our family has spent an enormous amount of time and effort growing with Apple. My brother and I spent years playing with Kid Pix and Shufflepuck Café. We stayed up late reading through the manuals for Myst and plotting our progress in the provided journal. We collected the bunnies in Power Pete.

My dad bought the iLife suite as soon as it came out. It was a regular joke at home that we were "living the iLIFE!" I made videos for class. We started saving photos on the computer and sharing them with family. Recently, my dad finished scanning all our family photos and videos. It's an invaluable gift to be able to smoothly find photos of my parents' wedding, or to watch my brother being silly at the kitchen table before a cub scout meeting.

When I chose to go to boarding school in northern Maine for my last two years of high school, I bought my first iMac to celebrate. I would never have survived the unexpected challenges of living with a hundred other students surrounded by fifteen feet of snow had I not been able to retreat online and to talk to my mom on iChat on a daily basis. I still IM my mom nearly every day.

And when things went wrong, it was okay to expect perfection from Apple. They made things right for us, every time. We knew Steve– through his company –would take care of us. They replaced computers for us, gave us time and space at the stores when we needed it, and patiently answered our questions or let us vent. When I was too far away to bring my computer into a store, they sent a repairman straight to my bedroom to fix it there. Three times.

I have long felt the details and deep thought that goes into these experiences. This guided experience has made me appreciate technology and business for what it can be, and the good beyond itself that it can do. This touch towards the better and the flexibility and tools for others to expand upon it. The reassurance that someone I trust has held everything to the highest standard. I value this even more now that I work with tech professionally.

Last night the employees at the 1 Stockton Street Apple Store gave me space to mourn, and a place at their table to upload my photos so I could share that process with Boing Boing's Twitter followers. I am deeply grateful to them for that. I am also enormously grateful to Boing Boing for helping me to see my idol, a man I consider practically a family member although I never said one word to him, the last few times he appeared publicly.

I return Boing Boing back to its normal design now, and as a company we end our vigil. Now we must all pick up that uncompromising care for beauty and excellence and push the world forward ourselves.