Corona | Coming Attractions

Nearly everyone connected by a digital umbilical cord is tweeting, updating their status and writing blog posts about the passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. I won't spend time going over what you already know about how Jobs changed the way we live our lives in the digital age because you already know that. You may even be reading these words on a iPad or iPhone or Mac.

Instead, I'm going to spend some time talking about how Steve Jobs changed the Hollywood system.

In 1986, the year that he was fired from Apple, Jobs bought an underperforming animation company from George Lucas. The company was called Pixar, and it was trailblazing a new frontier: creating computer made animation and pushing ahead how technology could be used to tell stories.

If Jobs ever spoke on record to a member of the media why he bought Pixar, I can't remember reading it. Something tells me that he didn't see the potential for Pixar to become a titan in movie production. Instead, I think he was a guy that saw how cutting edge the Pixar gang were, and where things could head once the technology became better.

In 1986 Steve Jobs purchased Pixar from Lucas for $10 million dollars. 20 years later, in 2006 Jobs sold Pixar to Disney and pocketed $7.4 billion dollars. With that sale Jobs became the biggest holder of Disney stock. Today, Pixar has ushered in not just a new age of animated filmmaking, they have also redefined the way storytelling is done for the youngest to the oldest movie patrons. Pixar has changed the way we watch movies.

The second major way that Jobs has forever altered Hollywood is still unfolding. The invention of Apple's iPhone and its iPad are reinventing the way people enjoy media, and that includes longform movies and short films. Apple's iTunes might have shown the music industry the light sooner, but tablets and mobiles will bring about a revolution in how we watch television and movies. It might take a little longer to see the transformation and switch over happen for Hollywood, but it's happening right now -- and the road ahead is much clearer thanks to the innovations that Jobs and his team at Apple gave us.

When a celebrity passes, often the only aspect of their lives that the newspaper writers and bloggers latch on to are the things they gave us -- their music, their movies, their books, their talent. It's a natural tendency for this to happen. After all, we didn't know the celebrity as a person. We don't know if they were a bad or good or average spouse, parent, child, boss or friend. The world loses more than any one of us by losing a visionary like Steve Jobs by way of all the technological ideas that could have happened had he lived on another ten, twenty, forty or more years. But let's not forget that a wife has lost her husband and four grown children have lost their father. Those losses shouldn't be overshadowed by the contributions of the man to show business, computing or our daily lives.