The world lost a great mind today. Although I had warning, I am still more deeply affected than I would have expected. I have admired and respected Steve Jobs and adored his products for almost 30 years. Apple is almost entirely responsible for two of the most abiding passions of my life – a fascination with technology and what it makes possible, and a love of excellent design. When well executed, computers are, as Jobs called them, “a bicycle for the mind.” There is no business figure I have read more books and articles about, watched more of, or followed with greater interest. Watching him get sicker and sicker over these last years has been truly awful, and, as odd as it is to say about the CEO of a for-profit company making consumer electronic devices, I feel like a little piece of me died today as well. I truly will miss him. I can think of no better way to mark his passing than to dig up the following note I wrote him right after his liver transplant, a month after the iPad debut, when he had begun to make regular headlines for answering the occasional private email, and Apple was taking a lot of heat for refusing to support flash on the iPhone.