Steve Jobs and me.

If you're a Steve Jobs fan, or if you've read his Wikipedia page you would know that Steve Jobs's biological father is a Syrian man, and to be specific, from my city, Homs.

His father's family is one of Homs's big families, it's the Jandali family, and since I have relatives from that family, I can say that Steve Jobs was a relative of mine, but that's not what I'm going to talk about in here.

Steve's father fell in love with an American woman and she got pregnant, and since they weren't married and had issues, the Jobs family adopted baby Steve and raised him well.

Now we all know that Steve was the brains in Apple. He is the father of Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, but what you might not know that many people and companies were directly affected by the brilliance of this man.
People like Bill Gates, who created Windows after he supplied Jobs with apps for Mac.
Jobs sued Gates saying that he stole the soul of Mac and made Windows, but that was settled when Jobs dropped the lawsuits against Gates and worked with him on other projects.
No one can deny that Mac was the reason Windows existed, and between Windows and Macs I believe we cover more than 90% of the world's computers.

Then we saw the iPod which was copied by every other company and that's how we have MP3 players.
Then the iPhone was the savior from Dumbphones like Nokia, and the success of the iPhone was the reason Google adopted and developed my precious Android (Yes, I'm an Android fanboy), and those control the Smartphone industry after the death of Black Berry.
Then the iPad showed up, and Google as well followed Apple's steps on making tablets.

After this glimpse of some historical facts, let's see what would've happened if Steve Jobs was raised in Homs Syria, his father's hometown.

First, Steve might've been called Mustafa, and would go to our crappy public schools were his brilliance would've been killed slowly and painfully.
He would've had to get a job at a restaurant to help his father support the family, and then waste the best years of his life following a dream of leaving Syria to study or work in another country, like Saudi Arabia or the UAE.

Now he would've faced one of two choices, he could either go to Saudi Arabia to work for years and send his savings to his family in Syria hoping he could come back to Syria someday after making a fortune that can never really be made, or he could stay in Syria, get a job with a very low income, and live in a cheap house in a cheap area like Baba Amr or Khaldieh, and eventually get killed while the city is being bombed by the military or get arrested for tweeting something about freedom

That means there would be no Mac, Windows, iPod, MP3 players, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, iPad, or any other tablet, Smartphone, or decent computer or software. Steve Jobs didn't live in Syria and didn't face these challenges we're facing.

His brilliance affected every single one of us and changed the world to a better place. How many Steve Jobs could my city and my country bring to the world? How many Steve Jobs have been killed by Assad's army in the past 41 years?

Steve Jobs is half Syrian, so we know for a fact that Syrians can do great things if they got the chance. I hope that the next Steve Jobs gets the chance of a decent education were his brilliance can be discovered in his hometown, in Homs, in Syria.