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Let’s talk about Steve Jobs. I’m sure my opinion will cause my email inbox to fill up with comment moderation notices after people read this, but I don’t care. In fact, if you’re just going to bitch about me being an insensitive asshole, don’t bother leaving a comment.
Yes, Steve Jobs is dead. Cancer is a sonofabitch. It’s sad to some degree when when anyone dies, mostly to their family and friends. Everyone deserves an obituary, and I don’t begrudge anyone that. It’s no surprise when a celebrity dies, it affects family, friends, strangers to a lesser extent, and sometimes corporations. Many people. But the news of Jobs’ has brought about an outpouring of apocryphal mourning throughout the social networks. Oh, I don’t doubt the Apple fanboys and fangirls are saddened by Jobs’ death. I simply question the veracity of their anguish. Facebook and Twitter were filled with teary public adulation. Many if not most tech web sites pushed out gushing eulogies praising Jobs’ contributions to the Human way of life in the 21st century. Even news anchors reported his death and exalted his life with a quiver in their voices while enumerating their various Apple products. Really? Since when did we start to idolize businessmen over other “less-then-famous heros” who have sacrificed far more for the Human condition. If I was employed, I’d wager real money that most of these blubbering Apple-praising technosheep didn’t shed tear one when their grandparents died. Publicly crying while wiping snot bubbles from your nose over the death of a middle-aged CEO seems terribly disingenuous and completely undeserved. I imagine these people look like this stupid bitch.
Personally, I think this contrived pseudo-lachrymosity a lugubrious game of one-upmanship, just as purchasing a piece of Apple gear is the patronal simile of techno-cock waving. “My friends posted emotional goodbyes to Steve Jobs on Facebook with their iPhones… I can eulogize him better with my iPad candle app.” I read a comment in some forum, written by some pantywaist with an over-sized mangina. He wrote the “4S” part in Apple’s new iPhone 4S, released one day prior to Jobs’ death, means “for Steve.” Jesus titty-fucking Christ! Get a grip, people!
I talked about Jobs’ perceived innovative prowess on Google+ with a couple friends, making the point that Jobs was not the omnipotent tech deity Apple customers and many tech pundits make him out to be. I read in someone’s blog (linked from Facebook) that he will be remembered as “a giant of innovation, like Edison.” Seriously? We’re comparing him to Thomas Edison? Jobs was not the innovating demigod who bestowed the computer, MP3 player, and smartphone upon the clamoring gadgetless masses, and a national sobfest of teary-eyed memorials outside every Apple Store cannot change that fact. Let’s refute some of the obvious milestones.
Some folks say the Apple I was the first personal computer, but it was simply an fully-assembled circuit board and the customer still had to provide their own power supply, a power switch, keyboard, video display, and case. Yes, I said case, as in a box to put everything in. And if you insist on saying the Apple I was the first personal computer, remember that Steve Wozniack actually developed and built it and the Apple ][. The Apple ][ may have been the most successful personal computer -- mainly because Apple had a beachhead in schools -- but it was not the first mass-marketed personal computer. The Commodore PET beat Apple by about five months, and it was half the price of the Apple ][. Contrary to popular belief, the Lisa (precursor to the Macintosh) wasn’t the first mouse-driven GUI computer, either. The Xerox Star was first, and Apple benefited greatly with an unknown amount of assistance from former Xerox developers that helped design the Macintosh. Maybe you think the iMac was revolutionary? Nope, the Commodore PET (again) and the Kaypro II were all-in-one personal computers that preceded even the first Macintosh. You’d be incorrect again if you thought Jobs’ invented the MP3 player. The fist digital audio player (playing MP3s) was available more than five years before the first iPod. Even the first hard drive-based MP3 players beat out the iPod by two years. And the beloved iPhone? Not the first smartphone. The Ericsson R380 was the first touchscreen smartphone released seven years before the iPhone. I personally owned an HTC Wizard running a custom Windows Mobile ROM nearly a year before the iPhone dropped. And we all know that the iPad wasn’t the first tablet computer… in fact, I’d argue the iPad is just a giant iPhone minus the calling capability.
No, Steve Jobs wasn’t as innovative as he will surely be remembered being. Nor was he the “father of creative technologies.” His company has it roots firmly in the infancy of the personal computer boom of the 70s and 80s, but Apple garnered its fame and fortune by producing gorgeous copies of gadgets that appealed to hipsters and technophobes that refused to embrace the much larger market share. Steve Jobs’ vision was really a fantastic marketing campaign. He sold (some of) us what was already available with an exclusivity concept that reached a cult-like zenith, and got insanely rich in the process. Everything Apple has ever done, while humanly accessible and visually sexy, is over-rated and over-priced. That’s fine if you like Apple’s products; they make good computers and music players and phones, oh my. But they’re just products, marketed by a large corporation, formerly headed by a man who had a great sense of style and showmanship. As for human greatness, I don’t think I’m qualified to pass judgment. However, Jobs was never a great philanthropist, and chasing profits as a CEO of a giant corporation doesn’t make you a Messiah.
Steve Jobs will be missed in the tech world, and I offer my sympathies to his family and friends. Apple’s products, while not original, were definitely imitated, and that is one of the great forms of flattery. Let’s just hope that Apple doesn’t fall into the same slide they did for eleven years while Jobs was off building the NeXT computer.
