“Apple Computer is 30 years old on April 1. What follows… is not for geeks, it’s for aesthetes. Apple, with its laptops and iPods, is certainly, from one perspective, a geek thing; but, from another, much more interesting perspective, it’s an art thing, the story of how, even in our time, art and art alone can make, break, remake and, above all, express a contemporary cultural reality,” Bryan Appleyard writes for The Sunday Times. Steve Jobs’ 2006 keynote address at the annual Macworld Expo “should really be watched as a feature film; it is just the right length, and is replete with narrative, character, drama and revelation. Jobs annually uses this event to announce new corporate triumphs and new products. He is never speculative. Apple does not believe in deferred gratification; almost everything Jobs announces is in the shops as he speaks, and he never trails the future. The event is a prayer meeting, full of gasps and cries of affirmation from the audience of believers. The preacher’s message is: join us and be free.”
“Whatever the public cause of Apple may be, its private cause is Jobs. Considered as a work of art, Apple is the product of two artists,” Appleyard writes. “The second is the designer Jonathan Ive, but the first is Jobs. Considered in terms of a religion, Jobs is God, Ive his son.”
“Apple has always gone to extraordinary lengths to make its systems beautiful and, when asked what he most disliked about Microsoft, Jobs answered, with measured disdain: ‘They have no taste,'” Appleyard writes. “Go to any one of the extravagant Apple temples — the word ‘stores’ falls laughably short of the actual experience — and you will see people (sometimes me) not just using the machines, but stroking them… I will not wax too lyrical about Ive’s current designs. I will only say that I know of no product, the most refined cars included, that comes close to attaining their strangely glowing celebration of their functionality.”
“Apple’s key technical — and world-transforming — innovation was the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Well, it was copied from a Xerox experimental lab, but it was Apple, not Xerox, that knew what to do with it. It gave us multiple windows, the mouse and the computer paradigm of point-and-click,” Appleyard writes.
MacDailyNews Note: We break the fervor here to point out that Apple did not “copy” Xerox. That is a myth. You can read what actually happened from people that were there here and here.
Appleyard continues, “I couldn’t have written this article about Dell, BMW, BP, Microsoft, Sony or IBM. No company I can think of is quite as consistently interesting as Apple, and I can certainly think of none that might qualify as a corporate work of art. So, on the sole basis that interesting me is a good thing, happy birthday, Apple, and many more of them.”
Full article here.
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Related article:
30-year-old Apple now a goliath with iPod+iTunes, will anti-trust concerns arise? – March 17, 2006
What happens when Steve Jobs dies? – August 20, 2003 (Jonathan Ive, Apple Computer CEO circa 2025)
Brian Appleyard is one of best newspaper and magazine columnists writing in Britain today. He writes about politics, about art, about popular culture. He’s not a kid (probably in his mid/late 50’s) and when he writes you always feel that he has real knowledge, if not actual experience of his subject.
He always seeks to write positively (an unusual trait in the cynical world of journalism) and his article is very admiring of Apple. But it is also insightful and is also very aware that 99 percent of the people who read it will only know Apple superficially and from the outside.
Even I have to admit that the Apple stores are a bit like Temples; I took a friend to the Regent Street flagship store and he thought the Moonies had come back to London!
And of course it could go horribly wrong – anything can – but by his very tone and analysis Applyard, at the very least thinks it unlikely – at least for a while.
A “subordinate clause”?
I thought a subordinate Claus was an elf.
I really wish I had the excess time, energy and money of the mindless, immature, ego-centric, geeks on here.
About 25 years ago, you had to have a better-than-average IQ to operate a computer. Our society still sadly fosters the myth that an avid computer user is intelligent. As such, there are now swarms of socially inept misfits that think they can emulate a social life via blogs and chats, and emulate intelligence by riding that old myth.
Today, it takes an IQ slightly better than an ape to operate a computer, and I have much greater respect for the alcoholic sitting at the end of the bar. At least he knows how to socialize and carry on a real conversation, perhaps risking entering into a lively face-to-face debate, and the courage to stay till the end knowing he may lose. He isn’t wasting his whole day hiding at the end of his anonymous DSL line, cowardly throwing out quips behind a fictitious alias, only to scurry back to his lifeless room, with the thing he calls pride being created from refuting his equally dull peers with worthless one-liners and obtaining a new “power” in World of Warcraft.
Spending the day in front of the computer, creating nothing of substance, is an useless as watching the television. But, its danger lies in that it is well cloaked under the self-induced illusion of intelligence.
I pity you and the world you are creating.
Mike, so now you want to joins us?
Mistyped “join us”…
As a Christian, what some would consider “religious,” this talk is silly at best and offensive and sacreligious at worse.
Apple is simply the epicenter. It’s a cultural mantra that has consistently said, “It’s okay to be creative, and rebel against conformity.”
Sure, some of that is artifice, but over the years there’s been a subtext: “The synchrony of our equipment, and software quietly, transparently allows you to push just a little deeper into your potential.”
That is Apple.
Temples? Prayer meeting? Religion? Preacher? God? Son of God?
These writers need to GET A LIFE!
People like Apple because they like the products they make. They just work, well, the way they should. Why other companies can’t match Apple’s commitment to software and hardware design is something writers should be asking those other companies.
It does sell papers.
HA HA
Oh god, that post by the MacDude clone had me rolling.
Not only that was the responses to him were also hilarious.
On one hand you got a few who want to be able to shut out posts like that, but there are tons of other boring sites that do just that.
So MacMania take your little weak sissy a$$ someplace else were your little mind can be carefully filtered of all bad information.
Get tough or get lost.
The real MaçDude
If Apple is a religion, Steve Jobs is God, Jonathan Ive his son
Don’t forget the rest
1) John Scully is the traitor Judas
2) Bill Gates is the devil
3) Windows is Hell
Enough with the ridiculous deifications already! I, for one, am sick of it. Get over it. Steve almost died of cancer! He’s human. Brilliant and visionary, but nothing more! No wonder why we’re called a cult. What an embarassment.
“Appleyard continues, “I couldn’t have written this article about Dell, BMW, BP, Microsoft, Sony or IBM. No company I can think of is quite as consistently interesting as Apple, and I can certainly think of none that might qualify as a corporate work of art.”
This guy should get out more often….. While he is out he should stop at his local Lexus store. He will see a constant and consistent supply of new product on the showroom floor that are “ART” by every sense of the word! Concept Cars that are in RP! Not one or two the whole line. This is just what is exported to the NADM. The products that go elsewhere is even neater. Not necessarily under the Lexus tag, Many are Toyota brand vehicles elsewhere. The higher standards are just a given. Less is unacceptable. Innovation, Quality and Reliability at least on par with Apple.
No, I do not work for Lexus. However all aspects of motor vehicles are my profession. Have been for 40 years. So I base my opinions in personal experience and fact.
FYI:My first Mac was a 128K in 1984 so I have a long history with Apple as well.
Great parallels between the 2 companies. When looking at the TCO (total cost of ownership), it is always very low. In fact for me, it has been a net positive for both. I Always sell for more than I paid.
IMHO
Steve almost died of cancer! He’s human.
And Apple will decline if he does die because Apple is presently personality driven.
Once Steve Jobs and his Reality distortion field evaporates…
Brilliant and visionary, but nothing more!
He’s a good marketer and organizer of creative people. Not a visionary, most of the things that came out of Apple are a result of buying other people’s/companies inventions.
Walt Disney was a visionary.
For instance, a engineer on his own created the iPod and took it around to companies before ending at Apple.
The iTunes visuals was created by a smal company and bought by Apple.
No wonder why we’re called a cult. What an embarassment.
See this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field
Jobs may have done some great things, but he is certainly not God.
Ives is an excellent industrial designer, but not someone to worship.
Bill Gates has done much evil, but isn’t nearly as evil as the devil.
Windows is Hell? As tempting as it is to defend that comparison, you can end Windows by getting a sledge hammer and smashing your PC to bits. Hell would be a little harder to get out of once you are in it.
Update!
MacDude still hasn’t found a life.
What a Pity..
You people are sick. Y’all need to get out of the house more often. Ride a bike, go sky diving, boating, etc. All computers SUCK!!!
can’t actually seem to find to cited article in the NY Times Today. . .
Misha Bawa,
How very highly inappropriate and ignorant of the gospel story. Who knows how many kids read this site. Jeez…
The author of this article couldn’t have been more right (except the stealing from Xerox thing – inspired would be more accurate AND Xerox basically said, “we aren’t going to do anything with this concept – here take it”)
When will people ever get over this whole, “Apple is a religion” kick? Apple is not a religion. There is tangible, irrefutable evidence that Steve exist. Apple is a way of life.
Bryan Appleyard reckons that Apple’s GUI was copied from Xerox.
He surely can’t think that copying others is a bad thing, or else he’d have come up with something more original than comparing Apple to religion, as a thousand other talentless hacks have done before.
Apple prayer
Hail Jobs, full of vigor
Your computers make me blue,
Blessed are thou creations before the Mac faithful
And blessed is the fruit of thy servant Ives
Holy Jobs, pray for the sorry Windows users, now and until the hour of their death
*Aphewy*,
excuse me I sneezed
A Lexus is as boring as a Honda is as boring as a Toyota is as boring as a Cadillac. Hate to break it to you, cars don’t do much but roll forward and backward.
“People who know use Mac”
Yea, worshiping computers like a god is a awlful waste of time.
I mean really, people here accuse me of not having a life, but then they are here spouting their mouths and chanting the same sorry a$$ dribble.
There are some computers and operating systems better than others, like the Mac for instance.
But to go as far as walking around in some sort of cult daze, standing in line for hours at a Apple store to be sit down like a child is a sign of a serious mental disorder.
Well I’ll tell you all this, hopefully you sick machead fanbois will break out of the cult daze and realize you have spend so much money and are not a bit happier than you were before.
I’ll tell you my story, I always desired the bad boy of Mac computers, I got a Powermac and 30″ and all sorts of other toys.
Am I happy now? Do I agrravate people here because I’m happy?
No, because I realized I was searching for happiness in the computer world and now realized it’s not possible, it’s a marketing trick by the smooth marketing dweebs at Apple.
Will I buy another PowerMac? Will I buy another expensive computer?
No I won’t, I got all my music on iPods, once that wears out I’ll get a satellite radio.
Apple involves people too much, their computers are just about as insecure as Windows.
With Windows you learn computer to keep it running, with Mac’s you worship the cult figure Steve Jobs.
Both suck you in, alienate you from normal people by talking like a geek.
The sorriest sight I’ve ever seen is about a half dozen geeks tapping on their laptops at a beachside bar with drop dead gorgeous babes walking by, people playing volleyball and other fun things.
The guy with the Mac laptop has this sick smile on his face and the Dell users had this depressing look.
I wish I had a picture, it was truly the most sorry image you can imagine.
I was willing to bet none of them got laid in years.
I couldn’t agree more.