The builder

Farewell, Steve Jobs! The Wall Street Journal this morning had an editorial with "Jobs" in the title, but it was not about unemployment, but with the man who more or less by himself built the most valuable company in the world. I personally don't care for the Apple experience--it's too closed for my taste--but I can't imagine life without my iPhone. I work at my computer every day from five o'clock to noon, and visit it occasionally in the afternoon and evening, but it is an anonymous tool, like the chair I sit in. My iPhone by contrast is part of me. I carry it wherever I go. I use it to check my mail, to listen to music, to read books (I do own a Kindle, mostly to check how my own books look in digital form, but I prefer to read on the iPhone), and even occasionally to make a telephone call.

While Barack Obama spends trillions of our dollars in a fruitless attempt to get American growing again, Steve Jobs built Apple into a company worth $346 billion, at no cost to the taxpayer. He made our lives easier and more amusing, and he became rich in the process, adding both to our Gross National Product and our (and the world's) Gross National Happiness. Good on you, Steve, though I could do without that iTunes interface. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford