I got my first home computer in 1982. It was a present for my ninth birthday. My dad picked it out.

It was not an Apple computer. It was a TI-99/4A, from Texas Instruments.

A few years later, we got a home computer for the entire family.

It was not a Macintosh. It was a PC.

I was never a Mac person. I grew up on PCs. When I went to college, my dad got me a Windows box, a 486. In law school, I got a laptop with Windows 95 on it.

In 1999-2000, I used a Mac while working as an editor. I worked at a very small company — four employees — and my boss was totally a Mac person. The Mac I used at work had OS 8, or maybe it was OS 9. See? I don’t even know which OS it was. I didn’t particularly like using it. I was a PC person.

When OS X came out, it looked really pretty. I started to think I might want to get a Mac someday. But I was a PC person, and it seemed like switching to the Mac would be a pain in the ass. Plus Macs were so expensive.

I didn’t get my first iPod until December 2005 — the 5G, the first video iPod. I got my first iPhone, the 3G, in November 2008.

Finally, just over a year ago, in the summer of 2010, I bought my first Mac — the 21.5-inch iMac.

And I love it.

I wish I’d grown up on Macs. I’m free associating in my head right now: the mid-80s, the Macintosh, the 1984 Summer Olympics in L.A., Diff’rent Strokes and Family Ties, Ronald Reagan, the Star Wars trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, a booming economy, optimism, being a kid, elementary school, computer labs, the Smurfs and the Superfriends on Saturday mornings, G.I. Joe and the Transformers on weekdays after school…

It seemed clear when Steve Jobs stepped down from Apple six weeks ago that the end was near. But it was still a shock to see the headline. Right there on the screen of my iMac, of course.

He was 56? That’s way too young. And yet sometimes I couldn’t believe he was only 56. He’d been around forever, for so long, that he had to be older than 56.

I’m sad that he won’t get to see how technology develops over the next few decades. He should have lived another 20 or 30 years. He should have been part of it, inventing the iTeleporter (nah, too long a name: the iPort?) or something nobody can even think of today.

But then again, he wasn’t an inventor. He didn’t create things out of thin air. He just made certain things the best things they could be.

The future was supposed to be about flying cars, and jet packs, and Dick Tracy-ish wristwatch communicators. Well, we still don’t have flying cars or jet packs. But we do have those crazy futuristic communicators, although we carry them in our pockets, not on our wrists.

I am not in love with my iPhone. But there are times when I use it, or just look at it, and I think: wow. Look at this elegant little device and the dozens of things it can do.

We are totally living in the future.

Thank you, Steve Jobs.