Steve Jobs fathered my children

It’s far from funny but close to the truth.

I’m the proud baby daddy to 3 cute and noisy boys, to be specific, twins who’re almost 8 and a 5 year old. Together with my wife they are the center of my universe and like all parents we strive to be well informed on best practices and do the best we can to raise them in a safe, stable and nourishing environment.

When my wife was pregnant with the twins she did all she could to prepare; selecting, reading and re-reading the best books on the market, speaking with friends-n-family and most importantly getting the home ready for the new arrivals. When I say get the home ready I don’t mean painting the room (though she did this single handedly in her 38th week of bed-rest boredom), what I mean is she prepared the ‘home’ emotionally to welcome the living breathing sprogs that would change our lives for the better for forever.

I used to laugh at her as she consulted Dr Google with what seemed like every twinge or emotion during the long 9 months of bun-making. This obsession never really let-up, though it has evolved from hours sitting at the PC using more and more advanced search terms and deeper contextual digging into search results to find the best crowd sourced answers to every day questions new parents are faced with. Now she’s rarely without her smart phone and the wealth of remarkable parenting apps installed.

For this I blame Steve Jobs, his genius has left an indelible mark on how most of us now discover-n-consume content and communicate within our digital social neighborhood.

In the 8 short years since the twins were born there’s been a revolution in the way we discover and consume content. We used to think we we’re so smart in using Google to access endless pages of content indexed allegedly using the most advanced algorithms to deliver the right content at the right time to answer questions we didn’t even know how to ask. Things today have moved on.

When Steve Jobs stood on stage at Mac World on 29th June 2007, almost exactly 1 month after the birth of our boys and announced the launch of the iPhone, little did we know the impact it would have on the parenting of our kids. In a few short years an eager community of developers and entrepreneurs have transformed a clunky and noisy www into a sleek and intuitive world of mobile apps. Now, there’s no need to bookmark websites and login for every session, funky apps are now in the palm of our hand 24/7 delivering instant notifications for things we should be doing, reminders of what to do, how and when to do them.

Far from being big-brother, the multitude of applications that not only curate the wisdom of the crowd, but deliver custom information at the most critical and crucial times. In Kiddyup we have an app that among many cool features, tells you where you can find a child friendly restaurant to change a diaper or pull out a boob to feed, and in Momily you can anonymously ask all those sensitive and possibly embarrassing questions to mothers in your neighborhood. If you’re stuck for something to do, there’s theVillage where you can find like-minded mothers in your neighborhood. While if you’re one of those busy schedule obsessed mothers there’s Playdate where you can schedule & manage kids’ social lives quickly and easily.

Not to mention the life critical apps that monitor baby sleep patterns, or will even lull a baby to sleep with a customized sound and light show.

Steve Jobs true legacy should not just be the beauty and simplicity of apple products, but more the legacy of creating an ecosystem where his name is stamped over the child development of the next generation of technology consumers and creators.