Over the past few days since the announcement of Steve Jobs’ death, I’ve been thinking about what I should write. After reading hundreds of blog posts, news articles, tweets, Google + and Facebook posts, I really didn’t know what more I could add. So I decided to write about a topic very specific to how Steve Jobs influenced my life: Sleep.

Or, more specifically, lack thereof.

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself an Apple fanboy, but I do enjoy the Apple products I own very much and I tend to get a bit overexcited when new products are about to be announced. So what does this have to do with sleepless nights? May I introduce the adult geeks replacement for Christmas morning: The Apple Event.

About fives times a year, Apple fans and the tech industry as a whole are treated to an Apple event. These used to take place only a couple of times a year during MacWorld Expo’s in January and June. But now that those conferences have all but dried up (and Apple is large enough to attract it’s own audience) we now have Apple events. We Apple fans have been treated to some brilliant product launches by Steve Jobs and company since his return in 1997. The iMac, the iBook (and it’s surprise wifi), the G4 Cube, the iPod, Mac OS X, Intel processors, the iPhone, the MacBook Air, the iPad, I could go on and on. For months beforehand, each one of these events is meticulously created and then rehearsed over and over again until Steve thought it was perfect.

No other tech company has as much news coverage BEFORE an event than Apple, never mind afterward. For weeks in advance of an event, you can cut the anticipation with a knife. Which brings me back to where I started: sleepless nights.

I believe the prime years of Steve Jobs’ keynotes were from 1998 with the introduction of the iMac through 2007 with the introduction of the iPhone. During these 9 years, I would not get a wink of sleep the night before an Apple event. And during the years that Apple would webcast the events, I would literally take the day off from work to experience the event live. One of my top three favorite events would have to be the iPhone launch and how Steve slowly brought the audience up to climax with the tease of “three revolutionary devices” only to reveal it was only one actual device: The iPhone. Not to mention the mind-blowing iPhone user interface demos that came over the next 45 minutes. It was an amazing and exhausting keynote and I loved every minute of it (and still do).

I don’t like the idea of a world where Apple events will not be hosted by Steve Jobs. Sure, we’ve seen a few of them over the past few years when Steve’s ill health has prevented it and others like Tim Cook and Phil Schiller have stepped in to help. But Steve was still running the company and I’m sure had a large influence on the event even though he wasn’t there. Unfortunately, that time has passed.

I will forever miss the Christmas morning anticipation of Apple events hosted by Steve Jobs. I would give up a weeks worth of sleep just to see one more.