| Wednesday, July 10, 2002 |
11:49 - The Man and the Myth
http://www.macnet2.com/comments.php?id=110_0_1_0_C
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John Manzione has an article pleading for proper homage to Steve Jobs and his vision and contributions to the computing world throughout his career. He's taking exception to all the rumor sites who have had their MacWorld press passes revoked, and who are lashing out personally at Steve in frustration; Manzione wants to remind everybody of just how much we owe Jobs and how underappreciated his efforts have been.
I do agree that Jobs is a visionary, and a great one; he's one of my personal heroes, and I can't stand to hear people rail ignorantly against him. And I applaud the general thrust of the article, though its motives seem to be clouded in controversy.
BUT... I disagree that Jobs is personally responsible for all the things Manzione lays at his feet.
The Internet, for example. It was well on its way to becoming what it is today before Macs could even do TCP/IP networking. As a university research resource, it had reached its full penetration by 1992; and even the recreational aspect of it was up-and-coming fast. When I wrote my first websites in 1994, it was on HP-UX workstations, with the understanding that they would be viewed on other UNIX workstations. At the time, putting a Windows machine or a Mac on the Internet sounded like proposing to ride a bicycle on the freeway.
(It should be noted, though, that the first Web browsers were developed at CERN on... <drum roll> NeXT boxes. So there is a Jobs/Web connection after all... even if it is sort of a fortuitous one.)
Without Apple, business computing today would probably be full of DOS terminals. (It wouldn't be all men in white coats and tape reels and punch cards, as Manzione thinks it would.) Remember that in the 80s, Apple was just one of many makers of text-based computers with rudimentary GUIs. The Apple I was indeed a pioneering machine for programmability, and Jobs was the one who told Woz he thought he could sell it; and the Apple II was what popularized the personal computer. But remember, it wasn't until the IBM PC that DOS became the standard environment in which you operated, rather than in whatever application you booted into. The IBM PC was the first to envision an all-purpose Operating System for consumers, rather than just a platform for running programs. Jobs then was responsible for taking that to the next level with the Mac GUI.
Jobs' vision encompasses things like what people will actually find useful-- hence his Digital Hub strategy, and his staunch backing of music consumer rights against the RIAA and record companies. Those are the modern visions that Jobs is responsible for, and probably more likely to strike a chord with today's computing audience.
He's been able to predict trends and figure out how to kick-start them, even if the solutions he comes up with don't end up being the cheap, second-generation, mainstream version that ends up taking over the world. He actually likes it that way. He wouldn't be able to stand being second to implement something; he would much rather be seen as a penniless pioneer than as a wildly successful copycat. That's the crucial difference between him and other CEOs, and between Mac users and Windows users. We're willing to give up some convenience and some classical success for the idealistic satisfaction of being in on the ground floor.
This isn't without its downsides, though. Jobs is an egomaniacal perfectionist; his vision is so powerfully right in his eyes that he refuses to listen to dissent. As I said yesterday, Jobs often infuriates and frustrates engineers no end by repeatedly and unceremoniously sending less-than-perfect-in-his-eyes prototypes back to the labs to be completely reworked. (If Jobs hadn't personally involved himself in its design criteria, the new iMac would have been just an old iMac with a flat screen, vertical components, and with the back lopped off.) As Robert Bundy, one of the article's respondents, very astutely says:
First of all, your notion that Steve Jobs may not have ahd anything to do with ANY policy shift at Apple is either naive or disengenuous. If it wasn't him, or if it was not an expression of his views, then folks would be fired for it. That's the precedent set by history, like it or not.
Second of all I don't hate Steve Jobs. Not even a little. I am a die-hard, committed Mac-user. But Apple's not perfect and I understand many people's frustration with Apple and thier perception with its fearless leader's control freak/perfectionist tendencies. A good analogy can be found in popular Science-Fiction. One of the stock characters of sci-fi is the evil megalomaniac that thirsts for unlimited power. While striding around his secret hideout he's likely to say things like, "When I have ultimate power there will be no more wars, hunger or homelessness! I will create a Utopian society-- ruled by me!" The hero inevitably points out that even God grants Humans that thing which allows them to define themselves: Freedom. Freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom to publicly speculate on the future of thier computer platform without fear of reprisals.
Steve Jobs is a wonderful visionary who has gifted the world with some wonderful ways of working through his orchestration of other, truly gifted people and his legendary charisma. But the deal should be: Apple makes something, defines a price, you either buy it or you don't and the world at large gets to say what they want about it without fear of censure. Is it any wonder that many in the Press are bridling at the sight of many of thier number being turned away for refusing to simply parrot press releases or be undiscriminating cheerleaders?
This is a battle of ideals, and as such it's describable in sci-fi terms. Sci-fi and fantasy likes to tell about struggle, adversity, change, and the underdog winning. But in real life, we prefer stability, prosperity, leisure, peace, and the status quo. That's why nobody's going to be able to write a successful novel about 9/11 and its aftermath; who wants to read about a huge and successful society, seen by many as oppressive, crushing the idealistic revolt of a few downtrodden, religious rebels leading a quixotic charge against the Beast? No, Star Wars takes the side of the rebels, and we accept it as gospel that the rebels must be right and the Empire must be evil. Maintaining the status quo hardly makes for good reading.
Jobs lives in a fantasy world, and so do those who follow him. To us, our cause is righteous; it's not perfect, we do make mistakes, and victory is not guaranteed even though it all feels so storybookish.
It would be terribly tragic to see so many people so horribly deluded... if only it weren't working.
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