Winchester Resident Receives Condolences on Passing of Steve Jobs

Ross Williams never met Steve Jobs. He never spoke to him about the iPod, Mac computers or iPhones.

Jobs, the founder of Apple, passed away Wednesday at the age of 56, having lost a long-fought battle with illness. 

And on Thursday, the day after Jobs' death, Williams received call after call from his clients offering him their condolences.

“I was their link to Apple,” said the Winchester resident, who sold Jobs’ products for the last 12 years. “They see me as part of Apple.”

Even though his loss was expected, it still took Williams and others off-guard.

“It’s something that you knew was going to happen,” Williams said. “Steve was able to beat so many things, but he just couldn’t do it.”

“It’s an end of an era. We all knew he was going to die,” said Winchester resident and owner of , Walter Hubbard. “We just didn’t know it was going to happen so quickly. He was truly a visionary.”

“I was shocked,” said Alan Ruben of the . “I was sitting at my Mac, when a tweet popped up on my Twitter feed. He made all this possible. He made it reasonable for a person to have their own computer.”

Hubbard has been using computers for the past 40 years, but it wasn’t until Jobs invented his Apple computers that Hubbard realized the full potential of the computer.

“He brought the personal computer to every individual,” said Hubbard, who paid $4,000 for his first computer in 1983. “Jobs brought the computer into the mainstream.”

When Williams started selling Apple products at the end of the last century, many of his friends and colleagues questioned that decision.

“People were telling me it was a waste of time,” he said, “that they were going out of business.”

But over the last decade, Apple has produced popular items, such as the iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBooks. And according, to Williams, it’s the simplicity of the items that has drawn him and his clients to Apple.

“I’m not a computer geek,” Williams said. “Its simplicity is what makes Apple so easy to sell. [Jobs] looked at the phone and wondered why people didn’t listen to their voicemail. He decided to list the names and numbers so people can see who’s calling them. He just made everything easier.”

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