When Steve Jobs died this week, I found out via my Twitter feed. I was working on my Mac and putting together a presentation discussing our plans to continue innovating on the Apple platforms - I had just dropped in a graphic of Apple's new iPhone 4S.

When I read the news, I gasped. I sat for a second and, almost by reflex, just typed "Steve Jobs is dead," sharing the news with my online community. Within seconds, my Twitter feed was an avalanche of disbelief, and for hours, people from around the world shared their grief, the vast majority of them sharing their words on Apple devices.

I grew up as an Apple kid. In fact, Finder 1.0 and I have the same birthday! My first computer was a Mac--the Fat Mac, which I got for my 8th grade graduation. I can tell you without hesitation: that computer changed my life. Almost every day since then, I have looked at a Mac screen, indeed, my entire career has been based on the fact that I have literally grown up with the platform, and I feel tremendously lucky that I work with a team whose mission is to make the Apple platform and its users safe and secure, no matter what they are doing, no matter where they are, without distracting from the magic that is the Mac experience.

There are hundreds of websites out there discussing the impact the work that Steve Jobs and his companies have made on the world. Indeed, if you are reading this, you are well aware of how Steve's incessant drive to make technology that helped us experience the world in meaningful, natural, and, yes, beautiful ways. Ironically, it was Apple that put the "personal" in "PC." I will not try to catalog the fundamental ways Steve Jobs has changed the world - you can see this for yourself just by looking around.

The Mac team here at Norton is made up of people like me who have used the Mac platform for a very long time - many of us have been working on the Mac since it came out. Today, we are looking at ways of empowering Mac users in a variety of different ways, and I look forward to introducing a whole slew of services for every Apple user. People ask us why we do what we do, and I always give them the same answer: we do this because we love the Mac. We care, deeply, about the platform and its users and work with Apple to provide the safest and most enjoyable technological experience in the world.

Steve Jobs taught us to think about the user first and always. We strive to make applications that make sense that are relevant to the Mac user. While we leverage the powerful protection technologies from our Windows products, we create each Mac application from scratch, producing software that feels natural to a Mac user. From iconography to the language we use in our notifications and alerts, we strive to maintain Steve Jobs’ directive of making an experience "for the rest of us."

Steve Jobs and Apple gave me a gift, they gave me a life that I will always be grateful for, and I know there are millions of people who feel the same way. Wednesday was painful; the mood around our Mac area was somber and quiet. We had all lost someone that made a profound difference in our lives, and each of us continues to mourn the loss in a truly personal way.

Thank you Steve Jobs, for changing the world – and providing the tools and technology for the rest of us to do the same. #onward