My youngest brother has muscular dystrophy and is now quadriplegic, with just about enough movement to steer his electric wheelchair. A few years ago my mom found that someone had put together a bluetooth computer controller allowing the user to control the computer using the wheelchair joystick. The family clubbed together a bought him an iMac with a plan to give him back some of his independence. It all connected wonderfully, the mouse moved, some keyboard software and we were set.. we thought. The only problem was that the mouse move juddered, pausing then racing across the screen to catch up with the movement, rendering the whole set up useless. A lot of testing later, showed that it worked perfectly on a Windows PC, just failed on the iMac.
My mom spent a lot of very frustrating time talking to Apple support here in the UK, who essentially said that it was an unapproved bluetooth device and tough luck we were on our own. Out of sheer frustration my mom wrote an e-mail to Steve Jobs venting her frustration at what was happening, never expecting a reply. The surprise was a remarkably prompt, somewhat curt (as he was prone to) reply from him. He had assigned a group of technicians and programmers to resolve the problem. They carefully researched the problem and discovered that it was due to a very slight error in the implementation of the Bluetooth stack in OSX that was almost unnoticeable. They then built my brother a bespoke update to OSX to solve the problem. An update which appeared a couple of updates later in the routine updates for everyone else.
This brief interaction with Steve Jobs resulted in an effect that changed my brothers life and had a huge, wonderful effect on my family. We never thought a CEO of a corporate would care. He did, he didn’t have to, but he diverted resources to make a difference to just one person, the difference between dependence and independence in a number of important ways. Thank you never seemed enough for what was done and for all he did in the corporate world and all of the incredible things he introduced to the world it is for this one act of human kindness he will forever be in the heart of me and my family.
Naked Lunch 