Except for occasionally saying hello at the salad bar at Cafe Macs on the Apple campus in Cupertino, I never had much direct contact with Steve Jobs while I was at Apple. I regret that now. If I had a chance to meet Steve Jobs again I would of course thank him for creating Apple, but not for the reason you may think. The reason I am grateful most is because if Apple had never been invented, then I would not have met the woman who is now my wife and would not have our amazing little daughter. A long time ago, I used to be the president of an Apple User Group in Japan. The woman who is now my wife had just returned from getting her B.A. in Design from California and wanted to be a member of our Mac community as it contained a lot of designers and meetings were held in English. Over the years we became friends and she even visited Apple in Cupertino sometimes. Well, about 5-6 years after our first meeting, we got married. If Apple had not been invented there would have been no Mac user groups and it's hard to imagine I would have met my wife. So for me, this is the biggest reason why I will always have a special place for Apple in my heart. Below are a couple of pics from when my wife (then just a friend from Japan) visited me in the spring of 2001 in Cupertino.

ABOVE: My wife (on my left) with her friend, also a designer from Japan.

ABOVE: My (now) wife and me in my messy office on the Apple campus. The director of the department gave me the framed "Here's to the crazy ones" poster behind me.

Saying Thank You to Steve (Woz)
I never had a chance to say thank you to Steve Jobs, but I did have a chance to speak to Steve Wozniak a couple of years ago at TED in Long Beach. Just by chance, Woz sat next to me during one of the sessions. During one of the breaks I told him that if it had not been for him (and Jobs) then I would not have met my wife. "How do you mean?" he said. I then told him the story of how I met my wife. He seemed a little surprised and said "I'm touched" while he put his hand on over his heart. We laughed and chatted a bit and then went our separate ways at the conference, but I was really happy that I could at least thank 1/2 of the Steves for making Apple. Though, if truth be told, if Steve Jobs had not returned to Apple in 1997, there may not be an Apple today. In any event, no matter what happens to Apple in the future, it will always have a special place in the hearts of our family.