Flowers, letters, and gadgets at Apple store 'shrines'
Grateful fans flocked to Apple stores across the United States Thursday erecting makeshift shrines to deceased co-founder Steve Jobs to thank him for inventing the gadgets that revolutionized their lives.
Jobs, who died Wednesday at age 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, has been hailed by world leaders and tech moguls, but also by ordinary consumers, including in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, where the sidewalk in front of the Apple store was strewn with flowers and candles.
"I'm here to pay tribute to Steve Jobs, someone in the universe who made it possible for me to be engineer," said Clarence Labor, a worker for hi-tech company Intel.
And he had a special tribute for Jobs, depositing three early Mac computers in front of the store.
"Those Macs are my very first computers," said Labor, an unabashed fan who compared the Apple visionary to American inventor Thomas Edison.
Labor, who purchased the computers at an early "Macstore" in California, said he considered himself lucky to have met Jobs in person.
"I met him in the late 80s when he came to an Intel conference to announce that Intel would be part of Macs," he said.
"We lost someone we should be privileged to admire," Labor said. "We can tell our children and grandchildren we knew him."
As he spoke another man placed a silver iPod on which he had written "Thank You, RIP" outside the store. While yet another person placed a white apple mouse on the ground, upon which the words "thank you" had been written.
Mixed in with these electronic offerings were more conventional tributes, including flowers and notes.
"Thank you for making my life better. I will miss you jobs," read one letter. Another signed by someone called Alex Smith read: "Steve Jobs was like pure gold, you had to shine it to.. get it to shine brighter."
"Your innovative mind will live with us," the letter added.
There were similar scenes at an Apple Store in the Soho neighborhood of lower Manhattan, where Gregory Littlely late Wednesday placed two roses and a candle on the sidewalk next to his iPhone with the words "We will miss you Steve Jobs" typed on its screen.
It's a sentiment shared by many ordinary users of Jobs' iconic gadgets.
"I really have reverence for Steve Jobs," said Littlely, a 30-something employee of a start-up in the hip district of Manhattan, after making the ad hoc tribute to the Apple founder.
On the other side of the country in Los Angeles Priana Baldwin too, paid homage to Jobs at the Apple Store where she once worked.
"I expected it, I knew it was happening but still it is so sad," Priana Baldwin, 23, a graphic designer, told AFP at the trendy Grove shopping mall.
"I've been a fan of his products my whole life, he is in my whole life, he created all the gadgets I have," she said.
"You know he changed the technology world."
(c) 2011 AFP
