“The rise of Steve Jobs in American business life has always been a story about exceptionalism. He’s been the alternative. The other. The anti-Gates (with Gates representing the triumph and profitability of hegemony, constancy, mediocrity). Jobs is the artiste as businessman—famously odd, difficult, flaky, rude. His businesses, even his successful businesses, have been, in a sense, unbusinesses. The formative point about Apple, which turns 30 this month, is that most people didn’t want one. From an adult-company perspective—that is, a Windows perspective—Apple has been a child’s company, a Peter Pan company,” “Michael Wolff writes for Vanity Fair.
“But now it turns out that Jobs is not marginal, or eccentric, or even fanciful at all. His is the at-one-with-the-American-consumer golden gut. He’s the ultimate media guy. Everybody wants to know what Steve knows. Everybody wants to know what Steve wants. Whereas his evil twin, Bill Gates, his epic rival, his Moriarty, finds himself smacked upside the head by every Internet entrepreneur and, often, as flummoxed by the direction of modern life and technology as everybody else,” Wolff writes. “This goes further. For most players in the media business, it’s all about blindly groping through a bollixed up, destabilized, haphazard, random world. Nobody can see what’s going on. If you survive, you survive by luck and chance (and always with diminished prospects and a lagging share price). Steve, however, proceeds with the greatest assurance and aplomb and ever increasing value. He has special radar. He’s the official One-Eyed Man.”
“But further still. With some perspective—and 30 years will do—it turns out that in critical ways the media business is such a tectonic-plate-shifting, existentially precarious place because of Steve Jobs. What Jobs has been doing these last 30 years, while everyone thought that all he was up to was his specialized, la-di-da stuff, was literally re-inventing, revolutionizing even—thinking truly differently about—every aspect of the media business,” Wolff writes. “The bite-size and broken-grid elements of nearly every printed page owe themselves to the Macintosh. The plasticity of pictures, of video, and the ease and economy with which the visual world can be manipulated, in which everybody becomes his own director, in which the barrier-to-entry costs fall every day—the full effect of which has yet to be felt by the media industry—is a Mac by-product. The transformation (or death, depending on your point of view) of the music business is Steve and the iPod—and, shortly, the iPod will do for video what it’s done for music. And this is not to even mention the personal computer itself, whose very look and feel and identity and fundamental metaphor come from Jobs.”
Steve Jobs is “not just McLuhan in the media business, he’s Edison—the autodidact garage inventor. And, too, he’s Henry Ford. Part of the great frustration so many people have had with Jobs is that, in this virtual, transubstantiating age, he has always wanted to act like an industrialist. One of his real loves is manufacturing. Building factories. Making things—which certainly distinguishes him, because there is nobody now working in the American media business who has ever actually made anything,” Wolff writes. “To Jobs, with his 99-cent-song and $1.99- video downloads, content is the commodity. The machine is the precious, unique, coveted, valuable, holy vessel. The machine is the idea.”
Full article with much, much more and highly recommended here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “iceforest” for the link.]
Advertisements:
• Apple’s brand new iPod Hi-Fi speaker system. Home stereo. Reinvented. Available now for $349 with free shipping.
• Apple’s new Mac mini. Intel Core, up to 4 times faster. Starting at just $599. Free shipping.
• MacBook Pro. The first Mac notebook built upon Intel Core Duo with iLife ’06, Front Row and built-in iSight. Starting at $1999. Free shipping.
• iMac. Twice as amazing — Intel Core Duo, iLife ’06, Front Row media experience, Apple Remote, built-in iSight. Starting at $1299. Free shipping.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
This article was so pumped up it made me sick.
Steve Jobs is just a man who put’s his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us.
Sure he’s a bit more exceptional at media marketing and cult generating, but he’s no Walt Disney.
If he and Apple produce safe, secure and reliable products I might buy them.
But I don’t buy into all this hoopla about Steve Jobs, I know more about the man than I really wanted too.
“If he and Apple produce safe, secure and reliable products I might buy them.”
An easy one to switch. Would you like directions to any Apple store?
Actually, since Apple bought NeXT (which was more Steve’s DNA than the original Mac OS), Apple and Steve have become one in the same.
Steve Jobs is just a man who put’s his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us.
“Except, when I (Steve Jobs) put my pants on, I make Gold Records!”
~ Bruce Dickinson
Dear Neil
After you create your own multi-billion dollar, word-wide reaching, leading edge company then maybe you will be worth listening to.
Until then you just sound small, petty and dumb.
Good grief, I’m so sick of people writing articles without doing any decent research… any Apple follower would see that this article has been written by someone without a heck of a lot of knowledge of Steve or Apple for that matter. This article is just filler fodder for the masses – certainly not anything valuable for we Mac lovers…
Lame.
“flummoxed. bollixed. transubstantiating.”
Too much sugar in Michael’s fruitty peebles one morning.
That was the worst written article I’ve ever read. Five pages of rambling.
Neil,
Steve Jobs single handedly popularized the graphical user interface. He is one billion times more important historically than Walt Disney.
“That was the worst written article I’ve ever read.”
You must not read much.
Just an awful article. This guy talks and thinks too much. Wordy, like a lot of American stuff these days.
And always stretching to link everything in the world with politics, and Bush and Clinton.
Don’t waste your time with this crap.
I liked that article until the guy compared Steve Jobs to Michael Jackson.
That’s all I’m going to say.
Whatever you think about this,
Steve Jobs is the Henry Ford of the computer world. And Thomas Edison. I hope that textbooks point to him, not Gates – because though he may be a fine person/businessman/whatever – he is not responsible for making computers useful to all of us.
John Gee – “Gates… a fine person”? What are you on? Crack? Just a guess.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Neil – If you don’t own/like Apple products, what are you doing hanging out on a Mac site? Got Apple envy, perchance?
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”rolleyes” style=”border:0;” /> Go troll elsewhere.
“The bite-size and broken-grid elements of nearly every printed page owe themselves to the Macintosh. The plasticity of pictures, of video, and the ease and economy with which the visual world can be manipulated, in which everybody becomes his own director, in which the barrier-to-entry costs fall every day—the full effect of which has yet to be felt by the media industry—is a Mac by-product.”
Let’s try to focus on this and how everything Apple does stems from and comes back to the Mac. For those who feel that Apple has become “the iPod company,” understand that the device, the software, Apple-branded applications and peripherals are all but worthless without the Mac.
Absolutely the worst piece of propoganda I have ever read, and MDN considers this “highly recommended”??
Marlin, if you don’t understand, then just say “I don’t understand.”
People will actually think better of you for it.
WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT THIS MORON WROTE. GAWD, GO BACK TO 1ST GRADE WRITING, IDIOT!
Methinks that “Neil” and “durkadurkastan” and “sg” and “Arghh” and “Marlin” are all the same poster.
Nice try, clowns.
Err, clown.
It started out as a good piece in the first part, then things got a bit illogical and strange, like the Michael Jackson comparision there is no similarity of age of starting success or world contribution, so I don’t get that.
The Edison and Ford comparisions were more logical.
I don’t understand the comment “Jobs delivered (in his disconcertingly high-pitched voice) a commencement speech” –What?? I’ve heard MANY of Steve’s keynotes in person and via Quicktime and his voice is of average pitch. Certainly not high.
I felt like the writer was grasping for straws to add “color commentary” in the piece and instead sounded ridiculous. But it’s Vanity Fair, which caters to the star struck, fashion crowd, so I don’t expect high intelligence from the writing staff.
“What’s more, with the Mac converting to the Intel chip this year, there will be no practical barriers to the great corporate Windows culture’s finally accepting into its midst the better machine.”
I realize the writer of this article is not a “tech” writer per se, BUT, the Intel chip has nothing to do with it. No practical barriers??? I think big business could list billions ($$$) of practical barriers. I wish they would embrace the Mac in droves, but sadly they are locked into the Windows world by default. It’s like the little old lady in the commercial saying, “Help me I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”.
Apple designs great hardware and the OS is primo – nothing can touch it, but Apple is not aggresively going after the corporate market (except for graphics professionals). I don’t have a problem with that. The computer you use at work is meaningless. The computer you use at home is a PERSONAL CHOICE and THAT means something much more powerful than the corporate choice can ever match.
“Steve Jobs single handedly popularized the graphical user interface.”
The Lisa & Mac teams and Chiat/Day had nothing to do with it?
Although Steve was (and still is) the motivator that drove much of it to reality.
Steve Wozniak is Thomas Edison (and possibly Karl Benz).
Steve Jobs is Henry Ford. Who’s mistakes led to his company being eclipsed by General Motors (Microsoft).
The computer you use at work is meaningless.
This is true.
From a corporate perspective, when you have hundreds or thousands of workstations to equip, you’re going to use the lowest-cost and most readily-available hardware you can find. You need it to be functional and disposable. A true commodity. Currently that honor goes to the likes of Dell.
For an auto analogy, compare, say, vehicles in a large taxi fleet to what you’d personally own. There’s likely a big difference.
Different products, different markets.
“but he’s no Walt Disney”
Sorry, I’ll have to disagree with that, and I love what Walt Disney created.
autos,
Steve was gone before Apple was eclipsed by Microsoft. Don’t know what Steve would’ve done if he was still at the helm.
Years later, Steve would say the other Apple leaders made a mistake by going for profit instead of market share. It’s clear with the iPod that Steve is going after market share and not profit. But again, don’t know what Steve would’ve done back in the late 80’s.
In any case, you’re wrong to blame Steve for Apple being eclipsed by Microsoft.