Showing posts with label ipod. Show all posts

Steve Jobs' estranged marriage of hardware and software

During his keynote announcing the iPhone, Steve quoted Alan Kay, "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware… So we're bringing breakthrough software to a mobile device for the first time".[1] After watching the iPhone unveiling, Alan responded in kind to Steve’s homage by stating, “Steve understands desire”.[2]

Steve loves to quote Alan Kay when he’s trying to convince us that the same people who make the hardware should make the software. This is the high horse he mounts whenever he is attacking the fragmented relationship between a HP computer and its Windows software. Steve tries to sell this lovely idea that his hard- and soft-ware guys get together and build a machine as a cohesive team. When the job’s done, they all have a group hug and together they send their baby out into the big scary world. Many hands make light work in a common spirit of integration, right? In reality, Apple is no less fragmented than its competitors. Steve’s obsession with guarding his secret projects means that his “team” consists of a load of people isolated from each other. Each person builds a separate element, with no idea what the final sum of these parts will look like. ''We have cells, like a terrorist organization,'' chuckled Jon Rubinstein, ex-Apple hardware chief, ''Everything is on a need-to-know basis”.[3] Jonathan Ive decried the process in the 2009 documentary, Objectified:

As designers, it’s easy so get so far removed from the actual objects …prototypes can be made remotely …the actual product is manufactured in another continent [China]. It used to be that it was manufactured downstairs and you would develop the product in such a fluid, natural, organic way with how it was going to be made and that’s not the case anymore.[4]

You can understand why Steve likes Jony to keep quiet about how Apple does business.

Fortune Magazine had this to say about the iPhone launch:

Even some senior Apple managers whispered during the keynote that they were seeing the iPhone for the first time… The software development was done without needing to provide a hardware prototype. In some cases, Apple deliberately disguised software builds, known as "stacks", to keep programmers from seeing the actual interface… Cingular [now AT & T] worked with Apple software developer on breakthrough features ... Even so, Apple didn't show Cingular the final iPhone prototype until just weeks before this week's debut. In some cases, Apple crafted bogus handset prototypes to show not just to Cingular executives, but also to Apple's own workers.[5]

Veteran Apple commentator, Leander Kahney of Wired reported that Steve’s secrecy tastes like something out of a John Le Carre spy novel:

Recent stories about how the iPhone was kept secret mentioned tactics like nondisclosure agreements, misinformation and phony prototypes… Jobs also keeps information on a need-to-know basis. Different product groups are told only what they must know to finish their parts of the product. It's a classic cell structure, like a spy organization… Take the iPod name. The only department in Apple that knew the name of the iPod ahead of its unveiling was the graphics department, because it designed the product packaging and advertising materials. Everyone else referred to its code name, "Dulcimer."[6]

“I was at the iPod launch,” said Apple systems Engineer, Edward Eigerman to New York Times. “No one that I worked with saw that coming.” [7]
His marriage of software and hardware is one where husband and wife are told to sleep separately to avoid pillow talk. Steve’s paranoia began with the theft of the Mac GUI. His old marketing guru, Regis McKenna explains to New York Times that Steve’s secrecy runs deep:

But what most people don’t understand is that Steve has always been very personal about his life. He has always kept things close to the vest since I’ve known him, and only confided in relatively few people.[8]

Apple’s secretive honeycomb of blind worker-bees resembles a relic from the industrial-age. It has more in common with dinosaurs like General Motors than its open-minded, open-planned egalitarian neighbours in Silicon Valley. Apple has become what Steve always detested: Big Blue Brother. Are his fashionable customers just another part of the Apple hive mind?

[1] Block, R. (2007, January 9) Live From Macworld 2007: Steve Jobs Keynote [Live blog]. Ngadget.com. Retrieved from http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/

[2] Elkind, P. (2008 March 5) The Trouble With Steve Jobs. Fortune Magazine.

[3] Burrows, P. (2000, July 31) Apple: Yes, Steve, you fixed it. Congrats! Now what's Act Two? Business Week.

[4] Swiss Dots (Producer). (2009) Objectified [DVD].

[5] Lewis, P.H. (2007, January 12) How Apple Kept its iPhone Secrets. Fortune Magazine.

[6] Kahney, L. (2007, June 3) Steve Jobs, Spymaster. Wired Magazine.

[7] Stone, B. & Vance, A. (2009, June 22) Apple’s Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger. New York Times.

[8] Stone, B. & Vance, A. (2009, June 22) Apple’s Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger. New York Times.

Steve Jobs on The Simpsons

Apple and its customers raised the image of their precious iPod to an almost Holy Grail status. However, one can always rely upon satire to chop down the lofty pedestal of the proud. The sharpest axe in American satire is also one of the most popular television series in U.S history - The Simpsons. Episode seven of season twenty, Mypods and Broomsticks, summarised the hubris of Steve and his customers in just three short acts. It begins as a Mapple (Apple) Store opens in town of Springfield. Lisa Simpson, the snooty liberal, easily fills the role as the perfect Mapple customer.

“It’s so sterile”, Lisa gasps with awe as she looks up at the glass palace emblazoned with the Mapple logo (the Apple logo with two bites rather than one).

Perched at the Braniac (Genius) Bar is an overweight pony-tailed geek, ComicBookGuy:

"My question is the following statement. Operating System 4.2 has sloppier architecture than a Tijuana ant hill."

Braniac: "Did you get peanut butter in your Ethernet cord again?"

ComicBookGuy: "No, I got mayonnaise in the CD drive."

Lisa's father, Homer, is staring with wonder at a row of glowing Cubes.

"I see you're admiring our MyCube. It's fuelled by dreams and powered by imagination," says a cool soul-patched sales rep.

Homer: “What does it do?"

Salesman: "You should ask yourself "What can I do for it?"

Homer is on his knees in front of the cube: "OK, what can I do for you? Please I'm begging you..."

Salesman: "Sir, it's not even turned on yet."

Homer: "But it's glowing."

Salesman: "That light confirms that it's off."

Lisa is at the retail bench: "I can't afford any of your products but can I buy some fake white ear buds so people will think I have a MyPod?"

Saleswoman: "Sure. Those are called MyPhonies. Oh... And they cost $40."

Lisa puts away her money: "Oh I'll never get a Mapple anything."

Local clown, Krusty walks through the store complaining: "I hate this MyPod. I can't watch movies on a screen this small and the music today... Don't get me started... Here kid, you take it.” He throws the Mypod to very grateful Lisa.

An announcement is heard on the Mapple store speakers: "Attention, Mapple Universe. Prepare for a live announcement from Mapple founder and Chief Imaginative Officer Steve Mobbs."

The crowd gasps:

"Steve Mobbs!"

"He's a genius!"

"He's like a god who knows what we want," exclaims one hipster goateed Mapple fan-boy.

Steve Mobbs appears on giant video screen. Rather than the resonant voice of God, Steve has a weasily lisp: "Greetings! It is I, your insanely great leader, Steve Mobbs. I'm speaking to you from Mapple headquarters, deep below the sea (a mythical narwhale swims in the background), with an announcement that will completely change the way you look at everything. (The crowd gasps and begin to pull money from their wallets.) And that announcement is-"

Lisa's brother Bart plugs a microphone into the sound system and overides Mobbs' announcement:

"You're all losers! You think you're cool because you buy a five-hundred-dollar phone with a picture of a fruit on it? Well, guess what. They cost eight bucks to make and I pee on every one!"

The crowd drop their Mapple gadgets on the floor in disgust.

Bart: "I have made a fortune off you chumps and I've invested it all in Microsoft. Now my boyfriend Bill Gates and I kiss each other on a pile of your money!"

ComicBookGuy: "Traitor! Your heart is blacker than your turtleneck!"

Inspired by Steve’s 1984 Mac commercial, the blubbering and disillusioned ComicBook Guy charges the screen with a large sledge hammer. He throws it in slow motion at Steve’s Big Brother video image.

Mapple Employee: "Who dares question the boss we fired ten years ago and then brought back?"

Lisa: "It was my brother, Bart!"

Mapple Employee: "Flay him with your ear-buds! Flay him, I say!"

All the Mapple staff take off their ear-buds, twirl them in the air medieval-style, and advance upon Bart. He backs up then spots and MyCube. Bart presses its button hoping for assistance

“MyCube, take me away”. The cube does nothing but display the current time and play the song, ”Lovin you is easy cos you’re beautiful.”

Bart escapes outside and complains,

“Stupid angry mob chasin’ me because I shine a harsh light on modern society.”

The next day, a big beautiful box with the Mapple logo is home-delivered to Lisa.

“It’s a gift from Mapple. Oh, such beautiful packaging! I never thought a company could be my soul-mate."

Inside is a bill the size of a Tolkien fantasy epic. The MyBill total is $1200. Lisa faints.

Later, Lisa attempts to confront Steve about the MyBill. She is transported underwater in a giant USB stick. As it plugs into the side of Steve’s Bond-villain style underwater lair, a voice-over announces, “Welcome to Mapple headquarters, the cost of this journey will be added to your bill”.

Steve is surfing the net using a giant Minority Report-style multi-screen holographic computer. He is Googling his name to see how many results he can tally. “Yes! sixteen million results ”. An assistant enters, “Mr Mobbs, there’s a surface dweller here to see you, MyTunes member jazzgal62”

Steve: “Mmm, oh, Lisa Simpson, send her in!”

She walks in the with the brick sized bill.

Steve: “Lisa! Its insanely great to see you”

Lisa: “Um, Mr Mobbs … I …sort of ..downloaded too many songs onto my MyPod. I don’t have the money to pay for them.”

Tears well in her eyes.

Steve: “I’m sorry, I know our posters say ‘Think differently’ (finally Apple's bad grammar is corrected), but our real slogan is ‘No Refund’.”

Lisa: “Can’t you open your Mapple menu and click on the compassion bar? oh please.”

Steve: “Lisa, how would you like to work for Mapple?”

Lisa: “Hah! Would I ever!”

The next shot shows Lisa dressed up as a giant disgruntled MyPod begging on a street corner for people to “Think Differently”.

This harsh dig at Steve was broadcast only ten months after he called The Simpsons Movie one of “the great films of the year” at Macworld. Later in the conference, the owner of the show, Fox Chairman, Paul Gianopulos, announced that “Homer’s on board” with Apple. Consider, if you will, that it takes less than ten months to create one episode. Despite plugging the show, Steve learnt that no one is immune from the sharp pencils of show’s writers.

In a wonderful example of the law of ‘six degrees of separation’, Lisa Simpson’s Grandmother was named after Steve’s sister, Mona. Her ex-husband, Richard Appel, was a writer for the series.[1]

The Unofficial Apple Website invited feedback from members about the episode. Note that these comments are written by Apple fans:

"Satire or not, the notion that think different is ultimately just a slogan is pretty dead on."

"Wow, probably the smartest, yet easiest to get, answer to the changes Apple underwent in the past years yet… Apple has become nothing more than a money loving company not listening to its customers anymore… overpriced and hyped by the best salesman known to man and sought after by an immense number of "want" customers."

"I was a pretty funny rip on Apple even for us fanboys."[2]

Nice to see fan-boys can laugh at themselves.

[1] McGee, C. (2010, July 28) Mona Simpson Writes For Crowds and Avoids Them. Washington Post.

[2] Palmer, R. (2008, December 1)The Simpsons Take on Mapple. Tuaw.com. Retrieved from http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/01/the-simpsons-take-on-mapple/

Steve Jobs' thoughts on music

It’s not rocket science to make a decent device that plays music. Apple evangelist, Guy Kawasaki admitted in an interview with Bloomberg that the real genius behind Steve’s iPod is iTunes. [1] This may explain why the Macworld audience only politely clapped at the unveiling of the Apple iPod; whereas, the crowd went wild for iTunes.

Steve demonstrated his iTunes player by selecting an audio file of a poem by Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The poem asks that we don't lay down and die without a fight. Steve’s iTunes was a life preserver thrown to a music industry drowning in an ocean of music pirates like Napster. His iTunes allowed people to buy songs legally for a price low enough to compete with Napster’s $0. Before beginning serious work on the iTunes idea, Steve had sent for the big-four music companies to visit his office. He demanded, “If I can’t sell a song for 99 cents, I am not selling it.” Steve decided he would get a thirty per-cent cut of any music sold on iTunes. The then Executive VP of Universal Music Larry Kenswil told Bloomberg that Steve’s approach was unlike any other CEO the big four had ever dealt with. There was no negotiating with Steve. These were his terms and he was not shifting. After these four men had killed the 'single' music format in the '90s, Steve reanimated it as a binary stream. Seven years later, iTunes became the biggest music retailer in the U.S.[2]

An average billion songs per year are legally purchased via iTunes. It could be argued that Steve has saved ten billion songs from piracy. However, there are those who still believe that audio theft deserves the highest national priority. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has declared war on pirates so that starving artists like his ex-model wife won’t lose precious royalties. Nicolas is listed as number 56 on Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful people, Steve follows at his heels at number 57. (Both men were born in '55). Nicolas decided to call his piracy task force Big Brother.[3] Perhaps The French President doesn’t understand the negative connotations of the phrase in the same way that Steve does.

Steve likes to show his appreciation to those who buy music rather than pirate it. On February 24th, 2010, Steve made a phone call to grandfather of nine, Louie Sulcer of Georgia.

'This is Steve Jobs from Apple.'

Louis replied, 'Yeah right,' "

Louie later told Rolling Stone, "I have a son that loves to play tricks and he does that every now and then — calls me and imitates somebody."[4] Steve tried to explain to Louie that he had just downloaded the ten billionth iTunes track when he bought Johnny Cash’s "Guess Things Happen That Way". An exasperated Louis said to Steve, "Come on now, who is this?" Then he looked at his caller ID that simply read "Apple". Steve gave the 71-year-old $10,000 credit to spend on more iTunes stuff.

Of course, Steve’s revolutionary music shop did not impress 77-year old Yoko and her Apple Corps lawyers. She refused to allow the Beatles’ richest fan to sell her property on his fancy software for almost a decade. Did she understand that every Beatles song could be pirated in minutes? In August 2010 Yoko stated, "There's just an element that we're not very happy about, as people. We are holding out”.[5] When Yoko said "we", did she really mean “me”? Perhaps she was holding out for more money from Steve. On the other hand, Paul McCartney showed his support for iTunes by appearing in 2007 Apple commercial encouraging everybody to "dance tonight" with their iPod. Three months after claiming she was "holding out", Yoko finally relented and allowed Steve to sell his beloved Beatles music on his beloved iTunes. Ringo Starr’s reaction was “At last, if you want it - you can get it now”.[6]

Clearly, the long wait was not the boys’ fault. Anybody who wants Beatles music on their iPod would have ripped or pirated it by now. However, this did not matter to Steve. It was a personal victory. At 3pm on the 17^th of November 2010, Steve celebrated by filling the entire apple homepage with an iconoclastic 1969 Bruce McBroom photograph of his boyhood idols. During the following month, Steve programmed all his stores to play his favourite dozen Beatles songs over and over and over and over again. One Sydney Apple genius confessed to this author that since the Beatles loop played at her store, she has grown to hate the fab four. She now cringes at the opening refrain of “Yellow Submarine”.

It could be argued that Bill Gates has more in common with The Beatles than Steve. The Beatles’ “Please, Please Me” mass-market approach is pure Microsoft. Steve’s company is closer in nature to the group’s darker twin - The Rolling Stones. Both Apple and The Stones are brands that purport to represent an avante garde rebellion suitable only for acquired tastes. Consider Steve whilst reading the lyrics of The Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil:

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith

But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby

As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, um yeah

Steve has never had to chase The Rolling Stones to licence their wares on iTunes. The old rockers dumped fifty years-worth of music onto Steve's lap from the day iTunes began. The Stones have always been there for Steve. In September 2009, The Stones performed at the iPod event named after one of their many classic tracks "It’s Only Rock and Roll, But We Like It."

On the other hand, another rock veteran complained very publicly about Steve and his iTunes. Jon Bon Jovi told Sunday Times Magazine that the "magical" experience of buying albums in a store is dead now that Steve made it too easy to buy individual tracks from iTunes.

Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it. …God, it was a magical, magical time. I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?' Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.

After The San Francisco Chronicle re-reported the article, there were many comments claiming that Jon killed music industry with his music. They complained that his cynically crafted albums contained two or three guaranteed chart toppers while the rest of the albums were filler. The general consensus was that lazy musicians were now forced to make every track a good one or no one would buy it. [7]

It’s easy for Jon to wax nostalgic about fossicking for vinyl gems at his local music boutiques. He was lucky enough to grow up in New Jersey. Before iTunes, country folk could only browse for music at the one lonely row of vinyl at Kmart. Meanwhile, the local AM station would play the same 34 songs ad nauseum. Steve's iTunes enlarged the musical world of remote places by allowing people in small communities an ocean of music in a desert of mediocre music outlets. A kid in outback Australia with an internet connection could drown himself in more music than he could possibly hear in one lifetime.

There are still some artists who don’t want to be iTuners: AC/DC, Bob Seger, Kid Rock, Garth Brooks, Def Leppard, and Tool. Steve has never chased these musicians to join the iTunes library. He doesn’t seem to mind if trailer park residents can’t buy Highway to Hell via Apple. Hillbillies are not his demographic. If you watch the iTunes online tutorial, you will see the cheerful demonstrator typing “Steve’s iPod” into the username field. Yes, this is Steve’s iPod, and only he gets to decide what music is played at his party.

[1] Bloomberg.com (2010, October 14) Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/video/63690380/

[2] NPD (2008, August 5) The NPD Group: iTunes Continues To Lead U.S. Music Retailers in First Half of 2008. Retrieved from http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_080805.html

[3] Chrisafis, A. (2010, December 29) Nicolas Sarkozy's internet police warn 100,000 illegal downloaders. The Guardian.

[4] Elmer-DeWitt, P. (2010, February 26) Steve Jobs' chat with the iTunes winner. Fortune Magazine.

[5] Newman, J. (2010, August 6) Time to Give Up on The Beatles on iTunes. PC World.

[6] Apple.com (2010, November 16) The Beatles Now On iTunes. Retrieved from: http://www.apple.com/ca/pr/library/2010/11/16beatlesonitunes.html

[7] San Francisco Chronicle. (2011, March 14) Jon Bon Jovi slams Steve Jobs for 'killing' music Retreived from:: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/dailydish/detail?entry_id=84985#ixzz1JBGSkgPS

The iPod Mystique

It wasn’t just an Mp3 player, the iPod and its cool white tangle-free ear buds became synonymous with the Mp3 player concept, so much so, that even devices made by Apple’s competitors were colloquially referred to as iPods. The iPod’s piece de resistance was its hype. Steve made sure this simple mass-manufactured thing was promoted, not just as another electronic gizmo, but as a work of fine art. The little jukebox was the pampered child of designer, Jonathan Ive. Its euro-minimalist stark white chic was copied from the German 1958 Braun T3 transistor radio designed by Jonathan’s idol, Dieter Rams. The iPod’s signature click-wheel is unapologetically a carbon-copy of the T3’s channel wheel. Dieter was delighted that his famous fan felt ‘inspired’ by him. He said, “I am an admirer of Jonathan Ive's work and I like to take it as a compliment.”[1] In the documentary, Objectified[2], he gushed over Jonathan’s designs. He spoke from his home, a sterile and stark-white modernist take on the Japanese tea-room with a lot less color. He said of Jonathan:

Today you find only a few companies that take design seriously as I see it, and, at the moment that is an American company. It is Apple.

Dieter’s voice rose a notch when his said the word, ‘American’– as if it were a surprise that he were not praising a European company. Dieter has been designing for Braun since the year Steve was born. Back in the T3 days, the wunderkind designer used to sport black turtlenecks like Steve does today. Now Dieter is almost eighty, he no longer requires an arty signature costume because his legend speaks for itself.

Dieter and Braun’s "less is more" mantra of humorless design fetish found a new home in Apple. Like his hero, Jonathan took a fistful of circuitry and wrapped it in puritanical chic. No one was more pleased than his boss. Steve loves minimalism – which is just a nice way of saying idiot-proof.

In Jony and Steve’s haste to lift Euro-styling, they neglected the Braun credo, which was proudly displayed at Dieter’s 2008-2010 international exhibition:

Braun categorically rejects the idea of motivating people to buy its products by adding features that toy with the psychological sub-terrain of the consumer's consciousness. Braun refuses to swell sales by exploiting human frailties: neither its products nor its advertising use such seduction techniques.[3]

Dieter’s products were designed for immortality. If one can afford the auctioneer’s US$800 starting bid, one can pick up a Dieter Rams Braun T3 radio that will still broadcast the football results. By contrast, the iPod is designed to be obsolete and in the bin within six months to make way for the next world-shattering minimal revision (if the battery doesn’t fail before then). Steve takes his cue from high fashion. His products, like his staff, are treated as the coolest new thing today, but yesterday’s news tomorrow. Perhaps Steve thought Dieter’s philosophy of “less is more” meant less value, more profit?

In the UK, the iPod developed into a cool brand name to rival Aston Martin.[4] The prestige auto manufacturer partnered with Apple to allow the driver to dock his iPod to the roadster’s digital display. Aston Martin’s very British website reads:

Once docked with the cable connection, the iPod menus are replicated on the DBS's main display. The driver can use either the selector wheel or two steering wheel buttons to replace the iconic click wheel interface of the iPod, allowing one to safely navigate through the music on the iPod without the need to take your hands off the wheel.[5]

The convergence of Jonathan’s two favourite things was not just a business partnership, but a well-orchestrated example of cross pollination branding – two cool brands merging to spin a marketing synergy of ultra-cool.

The next move was to select the right celebrity association. Jonathan offered a special slick black iPod to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. However, Gordon was advised by his advisors that the iPod was too expensive to be accepted by a politician as a gift, and decided to purchase one out of his own pocket. The iPod was indeed overpriced. There was deluge of similar mp3 players on the market without the hefty "mystique mark-up" typically bundled with an Apple product.

[1] The Local (2010, February 17) Less but better: Design according to Dieter Rams. Retrieved from http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100217-25321.html

[2] Swiss Dots (Producer). (2009) Objectified [DVD].

[3] McGuirk, J. (2009, December 4) Braun and beauty: Dieter Rams comes to London's Design Museum. The Guardian.

[4] Sweney, M. (2007, September 13) Aston Martin tops cool brands list. The Guardian.

[5]astonmartin.com (2011) Retrieved from http://www.astonmartin.com/eng/thecars/db9/ipodintegration-2

iPod, therefore I am

Fortune Magazine: Can we expect Apple to move into related consumer electronics businesses?

Steve: If Apple can find things that are complementary to its core, that's great … I won't go into what other complementary things there might be, but when you look back in a year, it will all make sense.[1]

The world waited, not one, but three years for Steve’s next big Apple thing. He released it hot on the heels of a political and emotional maelstrom that even Steve didn’t see on the horizon.

Three days after 9/11, President George W. Bush grabbed a bullhorn and made history in front of workers at ground zero.

“I can’t hear you,” a worker yelled.

“I can hear you!” W responded. “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”[2]

Around the time of W’s call-to-arms, some guy was mailing envelopes of lethal white powder to reporters. Apple was also mailing mysterious invitations to journalists regarding a secret new gadget. Steve included a teaser, “Hint: It's not a Mac”. Chief technology correspondent for Newsweek, Steven Levy, would usually be the first to arrive at such events. However, he was so depressed about the atmosphere of terrorism, he decided to stay at home. Apple had a messenger drop a unit at his office instead. It was something called an iPod.

This nifty gadget succoured Steven, and millions of other happy customers, in the wake of 9/11. He wrote a book, The Perfect Thing as a homage to a device that healed more than a shrink could in a year’s worth of therapy:

I plugged in the iPod and the world filled up with the Byrds singing 'My Back Pages …The faces around me suddenly became characters in a movie centered around my own memories and emotions. A black-and-white moment of existence had sprung into Technicolor. I held my iPod a bit tighter. …I wasn't exactly forgetting about 9/11, but I was getting excited -- once more -- about technology and its power to transform our world. [3]

Steve was more than happy to sell his techno-placebo to a depressed market looking for a bright light:

I think that we're feeling good about coming out with this at a difficult time. Hopefully it will bring a little joy to people. It's a tough time, but life goes on. It must go on.

At first, it just played music. Five generations later, it included video playback so you could watch Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 on its QGVA display. If you paste your eyeball to its tiny 2.5-inch screen, you can just make out W’s self-satisfied grin as he tees off at the country club.

It took a few years on the market before the device devolved from an escape from terrorism to a terror magnet. An iPod was the alleged detonator in a foiled terrorist plan to blow up twelve passenger jets above five U.S cities.[4] The iPod was then specifically banned from flights leaving the U.K. "Eight hours without an iPod, that's the most inconvenient thing,” complained one young woman from Manchester.[5] A week later, the bomb squad and their dogs were all over a plane at Ottawa Airport after a young guy accidently dropped his iPod in the toilet. Disembarking passengers were questioned by armed police in a utility shed for several hours while “Operation iPod” ran its course.[6] By 2011, both W and 24 were no longer on television fighting terrorists. Rabid anti-terrorism had begun to look a tad silly by then. However, that didn’t stop Air Canada jettison a boy and his father from their flight before take-off. The airline decided to do a Jack Bauer after the child was spotted watching 9/11 footage on his iPod.[7]

When video was introduced to the gadget in 2005, it gave iPod sales a multi-million dollar spike, and gave Robert Semple of Credit Suisse a hard-on for Apple stock. The chief analyst for the multi-national financial services titan reported that the key to the iPod’s success wasn’t new customers but old customers constantly buying new versions. An interview with Forbes Magazine explained why:

…customers appear to be replacing their iPods with new models quicker; Semple estimates the current "lifecycle" of the iPod at approximately 1.5 years, down from two years. … [Semple stated] “it took Sony over 10 years to sell 50 million Walkmans, while Apple reached the same milestone in half the time despite lower market share and stiffer competition”.[8]

Steve had trained his customers well. They had become high-speed consumers, and were getter faster every year. They lined up to buy each new micro-revision introduced with biblically proportioned fanfare. Steve had nurtured a thriving garden of consumerism at its best (or its worst).

[1] Schlender, B. (1998, November 9) The Three Faces Of Steve. Fortune Magazine.

[2] Giulani, R. (2002, September 1) Getting It Right At Ground Zero. Time Magazine.

[3] Levy, S. (2007) The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness. New York: Simon & Schuster.

[4] Laville, S. (2006, August 11) 'A plot to commit murder on an unimaginable scale'. The Guardian.

[5] Welch, D (2006, August 10) Mid-air terror bomb plot foiled. Sydney Morning Herald.

[6] Knight, A. (2006, August 18) Flying the paranoid skies. Ottawa Citizen.

[7] Peat, D. (2011, July 22) Man, son yanked off airliner. Toronto Sun.

[8] Kang, P. (2006, May 23) Apple Still In 'Early Stages' Of IPod Expansion. Forbes Magazine.