The World Without Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs.  What more needs to be said?

The epitome of innovation, the man that changed the way America works, the company that offers snake oil for the masses.

I have no problems with Steve, nor want to denigrate the memory of his superlative efforts.  I just recognize what he did and didn't do in his short life.

He had an innate quality of divining what would sell and built it.  To him, the concept of being a computer company was way too limiting.  Apple was a product company, working on turning some of the desires of people into products he could sell.

During the late 70s and early 80s I had really high hopes for Apple.  Alas, Apple as a computer company wasn't the goal.  I recognized this as NeXT didn't become a player, even with its advanced operating system and clearly forward looking product design.

Steve had the ability to determine the new even before the rest of us knew it was new, but somewhere between being kicked out of Apple by John Sculley and the Board of Directors, and his triumphant return to Apple he became a marketing maven, rather than a technological innovator.

Now everyone is touting his technological innovation today and I can't blame them, but it is the appearance of the man, not the man himself.  He didn't invent the cell phone, he expanded the capabilities of the cell phone.  That is not innovation.

He created the iPod, but there were already numerous mp3 players on the market.  I even have a couple.  The concept of really mobile music is a product of Sony.  He just went to the next step.

Now I admit, I don't have a single Apple product in my home.  Nor in my car, although one of them has an "iPod" input, which is a simple 1/8" TRS plug which I could adapt to put my entire recording studio through.

It's an input people, not an iPod input.  We have standards.  Apple never set a standard until Firewire, and they gave that up in the first two years.  Any standard that Apple has worked on has ended up being the old standard that no one uses anymore.

But I digress.

I met Steve in 1983 at a meeting to promote the Mac before it was introduced, and I ran an in-house computer store for a corporation trying to move desktop computers in through the front door rather than allow them to be moved in through the back door.

The idea was to know what computer system was doing the work, but really the requirement was to have systems consistent with company policy.  I'm not saying that Macs didn't have a place, I'm just saying that Macs weren't the prominent item sold.

As a guy that had access to a number of different desktop computer systems I was involved with many company contracts, so I had to stay on top of the newest, best bang for the buck technology, and NOT ONCE was an Apple computer a part of the equation unless someone on a contract wanted to output a pretty product.

There were no computational capabilities at all.  No functional work could be done.  Limited accessibility in upgrades, and I even had to remove the 68000 processor to have a hard drive in the newest units.  And special tools and training were needed to access the internals.

Now I realize that this isn't going to go over well with a friend of mine, nor the millions of Mac fanatics, but hey, if you can't get your Mac to work, you're stuck.  I can always get my PC to work.  It might take me a while, but a while is a lot less time than NEVER.

My above friend is having this problem now.  His MacBook is dead.  Pretty little computer not doing anything for $2k because it is not a product, but a desire.

I'm sitting here in my recording studio with 24 inputs from a beautiful console (my friend has the same one), and I can record.  He can't.  I have a PC, he has a number of Macs all the way back to the original Mac.

Now I realize that this seems to be a tome bashing the Mac, and it was started as an article about Steven Jobs, but the fact is that both are one in the same.

The abilities of the products Steve developed with Apple have rarely been based upon the usability of the product out of the box.  His products have been the usability of other people's ideas, even if it were the iPod and using the MP3 format for presenting music, along with ear-buds, which were already on the market.

I mean, other than the Mac, what did Steve and Apple do?  Nothing but jump into the fray and do a better job than the others.

And why do I seem so pissed?  Because Steve had the opportunity to do something no one else had.  He could have changed computing as we know it, but still we're stuck with the lack of real work capabilities.

In my studio I can do what I want.  But in the studios of the world, Pro Tools rules and 90% of the time most people can't get Pro Tools working on a Mac without help.  What?  The computer for the "rest of us" isn't the computer for the rest of us.

So the fantasy is that the Mac is for the rest of us when the work is being done by the most of us on PCs.

Let's look at the iPhone.  How many accidents or deaths do you suppose the iPhone or iPhone-like devices are responsible for?

We don't even care.  We support laws that say hands-off phones are necessary for communications, but leave texting up to some yet undetermined law.

Not all technology is good.  Its not necessarily bad, but when things become too easy they are generally going to become bad for society.

About 15 years ago I predicted that all music would be available via satellite and subscriber based.  That way, if you bought a song or an album, you could access it no matter where you were, nor the device you were accessing it from.  Well, the market hasn't quite yet gone that way, but it will get there.  And yes, Apple was moving into that arena.  But they failed to move further towards that goal.

Once a song is purchased, it only requires checking a database to verify your license and you get to listen to the song.  That hasn't come about and in fact, even Apple fought against the idea.

But a license is a license.  The functional capabilities of maintaining that license and yet allowing the licensee to use their license is not yet in place.

The concept of a license is not universal yet, and it creates an environment that is similar to banking where you pay for a service time and time again.

Good corporate design.  Not exactly what you would expect from a Steve Jobs, right?  He's been the designer of many of the concepts of single use licensing since the RIAA.

Even as Steve was fighting the RIAA he was supporting them, being, once again, less than the visionary that people wantd him to be, and that is the problem.

Steve Jobs was not the visionary that the people thought he was, but because they thought he was that visionary, he not only became bigger than life, but he sold more product that people didn't need than most anyone.  I almost can't conceive of billions of products sold.  Yeah, everyone needs a refrigerator, but not everyone needs an Apple product.  To sell millions, nay, billions of product says more about Steve Jobs than the product itself.

And without Steve, Apple is doomed.

Comments

[Bill Perkins]

Interesting take on Jobs. I'm a little surprised since I thought the Mac was so strong in the music applications--I thought you might have been a fan. As a business practitioner and accountant, I've never been a fan of Apple since they shifted to the Mac. However, I started out with an Apple I/II and Visicalc back in the day. I've resisted the iPhone and iPad, although the latter is pretty cool. I'm just not sure how much I'd use it for serious business applications. Once you separate me from a 10-key pad I'm in trouble. While it defeats the separate marketing of iPhones and iPads, it would be neat to have an earphone blue-toothed into the iPad for cell use while you're carrying the iPad, or a detachable module from the iPad smaller than the iPod for when you just need a simple mobile phone. Then, when you reattach the module, all activity could be synced to the iPad. Come to think of it, I bet there are already cordless 10-key pads out there that work with the iPad.

[Alwas Correct]

Having a camera on a cell phone is very handy. Just had a crash? Take photos of the damage. That weird guy hanging out in the parking lot looking in cars? Take a photo of him for the cops. Need that license plate of the drunk driver? Take a pic!

I could go on and on. Get my drift?

[Roger W. Norman]

Yeah, I know. The problem is the requirement to learn to use all the functions of a device you only need for one purpose. There will no longer be any "cell phones" after a while. They will be the closest thing to Dick Tracy we'll have come to.

I like to think that the positive is not capturing someone doing something questionable without context, but perhaps more along the lines of the Black Panthers watching police treatment of blacks during the 60s.

Yesterday it was reported that France, without a First Amendment, stopped the website that allowed people to pay attention to what the police were doing, but the police get to videotape any of their actions, using only what they would like to present in court.

The point being that, if all things are equal, then fine. But when they aren't equal, or used to create evidence when one has to assume they know of the person's intent, then it might not be the best thing in the world to always have a camera in your pocket.

How about I'm breaking into my car because I left the keys in the ignition (yeah, I have one car like that)? Should I be charged, or worse yet, should the police be involved when it is my property and they have better things to do?

Roger

[giubbotti belstaff outlets]

Liked you on Facebook, too. =)