Not
many of us get the opportunity to witness our own funerals. Steve did. When he
announced that he was stepping down as Apple CEO in August, 2011, every news
portal was eulogizing the man as if he had already bought the great data-farm
in the sky. Journos across the globe suddenly forgot how much they hated iTunes
and hammered out misty-eyed pre-death obituaries. They detailed how Steve had
single-handedly carved the PC from a single block of hype, convinced millions
to stop pirating music and start paying for it, delivered a smarter-than-smart
smartphone to the masses… and probably gave us world peace – or, at the very
least a mirage of peace if you wander through his utopian Apple Stores. Not
surprisingly, most of the glowing tributes were written by the “money media”…
Forbes:
Apple became a huge Ferrari responsive to his touch
alone. Like a great conductor, he assembled a vast orchestra of skilled
players who obeyed him with complete fealty. When he tapped the podium,
all noises ceased. Like Solomon, he commanded his minions to undertake
great projects and summoned them to show him the results. [1]
Money.CNN:
Apple's fans flocked to Twitter and other
social-media sites to mark and mourn the CEO
torch-passing. "The end of an era!" one Twitter user wrote, while
another voiced the fears many share: "I pray it's not bc [because] of his
health.” [2]
Wall Street Journal:
The news of Mr. Jobs's
resignation quickly became the talk of the Internet. Overwhelmed with traffic,
the blog Cult of Mac temporary went
offline. "This thing is melting down," said editor Leander Kahney,
about an hour after the news broke on Wednesday. [3]
Fortune:
The tech community tonight experienced its version
of an earthquake. [4]
On the BBC News, Steve-Stalker
and comedian, Stephen Fry, became deadly serious for a moment to talk about the
resignation of his man-crush. He intoned with the gravitas that only the
British are capable of expressing:
I don’t think there’s a
human being on the planet who has been as influential in the last thirty-years
on the way culture developed. I don’t think there is anyone who has proved
quite so conclusively that passion and taste and belief are more important than
a hard bitten business head. [5]
(For
God’s sake, Stephen)
The
first big thing the new Apple CEO Tim Cook did was unveil the latest iPhone. It
would be safe to assume that Apple should have something pretty darn special to
compensate for Steve not taking the stage. You can get away with a great CEO
holding aloft a boring product; but you can’t get away with a boring CEO
holding a boring product.
With
Old Man Steve off the premises, unfortunately it seems that Apple’s engineers
decided that they could goof off and hand in half an assignment. The new iPhone 4S relied upon customers appreciating its inner beauty. On the
outside, it looked no different than the iPhone that Apple chumps had bought
only a year ago. If Tim Cook’s Apple knew anything about the market, they would
realise that their customers prefer that their latest gadget look different
than the last one precisely so they can advertise that they have the latest
one. Applytes need to know that a skyrocketing credit card debt and lining up
for hours outside an Apple Store is worth all the grief. Apple should have at
least stuck some superfluous gizmo on it, or painted it bright magenta –
anything, so long as it looked different from the last iPhone. Apple’s failure
was giving its customers credit enough not to be so shallow. Good luck with
that, Tim.
Apple “didn’t
quite understand how revved up expectations had gotten,” said Frank Gillett, an
analyst at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research Inc. Some users
were looking for a more revolutionary iPhone 5, rather than just a faster
iPhone 4, he said . [6]
Months
before the new iPhone, a viral video appeared featuring an iPhone 5 armed with
a holographic keyboard and display.[7] It got everyone excited around the water
cooler at work. This did not help the ridiculously high expectations.
Currently,
there are over twenty Google/Android-loaded smartphones already on the market
that beat the 4S on spec. They have 8MP+ cameras, over 4inches of screen space,
longer battery life, and dual-core CPUs with 1Gig+ processors (Apple A5 chip?
– whatever, Dude).
Google
has recently bought Motorola Mobility– Apple’s arch nemesis in the mobile
arena.[8]
The deal will make mincemeat of the iPhone 4S which has now proven that it was
all sizzle and no steak. Perhaps the “S” in 4S
is a cheeky Apple engineer’s code for “Shortchanged”?
