I was totally shocked today to learn that a former co-worker, Mr. Tom Dowdy, passed away this past Saturday.

If you’re a Mac user, you know Tom’s work. When I joined the QuickTime group at Apple Computer, I remember being blown away to learn that Tom had written SimpleText. The dude wrote SimpleText! If this isn’t impressive to you, then perhaps you can appreciate that every time you light up a joint, get good and baked, throw on some tunes in iTunes, and zone out to the iTunes Visualizer, you can thank Tom for that.

He was a great coder, chef, loved wearing black (and subsequently walking the line) and listened to the worst music on the planet. This is for you Tom…