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Apple’s Army of Whiners
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The emoting over Steve Jobs' secret liver transplant has clarified, says Douglas Rushkoff, just how childishly dependent consumers have become on his company’s products—and him.
Feel better Steve, but what about me? I mean, I know cancer surgery is no picnic, but what does the possibility that you'll reject your new liver mean for my Apple share price? Or my iTunes collection? Should I be converting it all to MP3? I just got a friggin’ iPhone – what if you leave us before my five-year contract with AT&T ends? I made a commitment…How about you?
Sorry, but that's the emotional current underlying nearly all of the coverage I'm seeing about the Apple founder's just-revealed liver transplant operation in Tennessee for his metastasized neuroendocrine tumor. It's not what I expected from the Apple community, but perhaps it does serve as the most accurate expression of where the once-renegade personal-computer company has ended up.
To buy an Apple product is to bet on the longevity of the closed system to which we've committed ourselves. And that system is embodied—through marketing as much as talent—by Steve Jobs.
"He said all he needed was a little rest!" one commenter on the Fortune magazine Web site complained. "This is bullshit." On Bloomberg, all the talk is about share price, Apple's chronically cryptic and delayed press releases on Jobs' health, and whether this deputy Tim Cook is capable of taking the helm. Such "me-first" sensibilities don’t fit with the highly humanized, creative individuals celebrated in Apple's early commercials—but rather the cultish consumers and shareholders that those commercials, and the products, actually succeeded in generating.
Don't get me wrong: I'm an Apple user myself, and appreciate the elegance of the technologies and their interfaces. But Apple's products and policies have always been biased toward childish, whiny, and self-centered behavior, and now the company’s stakeholders are mirroring that.
The very concept of a personal computer seemed foreign and unnecessary to the many high-tech companies when Jobs and then-partner Steve Wozniak approached with their idea for a standalone, non-networked, home computer. Yes, the PC makes personal computing possible, but computing was never understood as a personal pursuit before. The processors were always a shared resource--the only "personal" part of it was the terminal. (A computing memory at least someone at Google recalls, since that’s the logic behind their GoogleApps cloudcomputing plan.)
As the PC proved popular with consumers and businesses, it was actually Microsoft that sought to develop a computer-literate user capable of issuing the commands that make a computer operate, while Apple worked toward the simplified world of icons, metaphors, and clicking. Users didn't know how any of it worked; Steve just made it so.
And if that hadn't created a dependent-enough user base, the company's Apple-only peripherals policy made them even more so. Windows was the operating system that tried to accommodate everyone, welcoming so many hardware drivers from so many companies that the system often crashed as inevitable conflicts arose. The Macintosh maintained a much more stable system by restricting what could be attached. It was ultimately the less-democratic approach, and a more closed computing universe.
No matter. Steve Jobs' personality more than compensated for any fear of corporate fascism. The Macintosh division started as a rebellious unit within Apple, formed to compete with the company's less graphical computers. By 1984 and the famously Orwellian Super Bowl commercial, the enemy was the Death Star alliance: Microsoft, IBM, and Intel. It was Jobs' narcissistic personality disorder against Gates’ Asperger’s Syndrome—and we all know which one plays better on a webcast.
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
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Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media studies at The New School University and producer and correspondent for the PBS Frontline Digital Nation project, is the author of numerous books, including Cyberia, ScreenAgers, Media Virus, and, most recently, Life Inc., released this month by Random House.
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Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media studies at The New School University and producer and correspondent for the PBS Frontline Digital Nation project, is the author of numerous books, including Cyberia, ScreenAgers, Media Virus, and, most recently, Life Inc., released this month by Random House.
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Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media studies at The New School University and producer and correspondent for the PBS Frontline Digital Nation project, is the author of numerous books, including Cyberia, ScreenAgers, Media Virus, and, most recently, Life Inc., released this month by Random House.
Chuckv
But Rushkoff ignores a very important point: Apple works. Windows is a clunker that spits and sputters and always threatens to die. I was a PC user until my Dell suddenly died and I refused to consider a computer with Vista. After a couple of months of using my new Apple, I realized that I felt uncomfortable when I was leaving my computer. I figured out that I was so habituated to updating virus lists, security updates, or defragging the hard drive that I felt I was leaving something unfinished when I just got up to go without starting some maintenance program. All my hard earned computer geek knowledge is worthless, unless a friend with a PC has a problem. That still happens.
rushkoff
Agreed. I'm an Apple user, too, and tried to point out twice that the technology does work. Better than the rest and better than Windows.
DavidBarron
Windows works fine, but OS is becoming less important anyways in favor of web-based or networked applications (as the article references). If I were going to completely break off with Windows, I'd go Linux before I'd go MacOS. There's more open-source, free programs with better support for Linux, and many of those programs are on Windows, whereas MacOS is usually in last place for such. The future is open source, collaborative software and web-based applications, not proprietary hardware/software.
SteveStone
Talk about emotional overflow! Mr. Rushkoff's sophomoric screed serves as a template for psychological projection. Has The Daily Beast sunk this low?
piktor
To Mr. Rushkoff and his son, Mr. Ciarelli, stop whining and moaning. Sirs, have you no shame?
A man is very sick, fighting for his life and his lost health. That is what you to should be writing about. I could not care less about your petty Apple Inc. complaints. You two, sirs, are contemptible jerks for it. GROW UP!
rushkoff
Exactly my point. Glad you agree!
piktor
Mr. Rushkoff, I have read on other internet sites the gabby comments on Apple's future and on Mr. Jobs untimely health issues.
You wrote here at TDB about a mugging on Christmas eve and it is clear on the first half of your story how you felt about the events that followed after you made it public in the blogosphere. The second half of your story you dedicate to an altogether different subject, mainly the promotion of the ideas in your new book, I think.
I find it unseemly and clumsy of you to dedicate, in this present story of yours, but a few lines to a gravely ill human being but have no qualms about reviewing a corporation and its products for the remainder of the story. emdawgz1 and sophia5 point this out, too. Because we are communicating via internet does not mean all your readers are techies, computer-literate or Apple clients.
Perhaps it is you who should re-read your own words. It is infuriating that by you mimmicking the tone and style of the callous conversation around Mr. Jobs's illness you think you can best make your point.
Again, a fellow human is gravely ill and you chose a solipsistic and roundabout method to mark your disapproval of the gabfest out there on this subject. Is it a techie thing? Or plain akward, to say the least
vboone
Take a pill.
emdawgz1
A human being..ANY HUMAN BEING... who has liver cancer deserves our concern. Your contention that we (i'm a shareholder) should be more concerned about the stock, than about the man who created the company in his mom's garage?!?! WOW!
rushkoff
Exactly. That's the very point of the article. Learn to read, and then make the same comment except as agreement rather than disagreement.
SteveStone
Mr. Rushkoff, better you should learn to write!
justinf
Did you even read the article, or did you just read the first paragraph and decide to comment? You're saying precisely what Douglas says throughout the article.
Margot62
I wish Mr. Jobs god speed in his health and recovery. His genius has transformed our lives.
I'm not a cultist techie, but I'm certainly a convert. I have a grave yard full of newish PC's that bit the dust over the years and have been laid to rest in my basement. When we send our kids off to college now---it's with a Mac.
How do you replace Steve Jobs?
You don't.
Margot62
,
drmarkklein
Bought my first Apple product, the new 3GS phone. An extraordinary phone at a very reasonable price. Beats me why the author is so critical of Apple when it clearly created a better smart phone mousetrap. Plan to drop my Blackberry off at an EBAY store to try to recover its residual value.
Veronicaxy
I use Linux, Windows and Mac. Apple users aren't childish - they buy the more sturdy, dependable OS that is simpler to set up and run and is housed in a form that anyone would be proud to have in their home.
As a geek you'll find me frustrated at the Mac UI because so much is hidden in the name of elegance so I switch to the command line. I get teased that I'm too lazy to go online and hunt down the 'how to' shortcuts, but please.
Microsoft in comparison is a company with a cult of feature stuffing, and often they include those features in the menu so I can find them. When I'm at the command line in Windows it's because something has gone wrong. Have to say I'm at the Window's command line far more often.
Jobs deserves respect for what he's lead and accomplished. It doesn't have to be fan-boy respect, but respect nonetheless.
I don't belong to the Jobs cult at all but the name calling and the unsubstantiated characterizations of him and Mac users make the author sound like he's got some grudge that has made him lose sight of his judgment. That might be the more interesting article.
cacarr
I've no Idea how you come to that reply from his article. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn't read it all.
Zahnster
I'll agree with you on one point: all the whining about the realization of the extent of Steve Jobs's health problems is unjust and stupid. Certain shareholders with this belief are indeed being inconsiderate, petty, and childish, and they're also dead wrong in their beliefs.
If anything, the last 5 months have proven that Steve Jobs doesn't need to be the figurehead he's been for Apple. The ship that is Apple can hold it's own, and continue on one day once Jobs steps down from the role for real.
Personally, I think his time away has been good for Apple as a company. Tim Cook's been a great leader, and Apple's released some great products in the last few months, focusing on issues that have burned them in the past (their ecostandards) while also upping the quality of their product line and reducing the cost to consumers. Steve Jobs or no, Apple's been hitting home runs.
As an Apple shareholder, I don't expect to know every nuance of Steve Jobs's health. I really don't think it's any of my business. I didn't invest because of Steve Jobs's liver, I invested because he's built something real in Cupertino, a unique innovative company which will bear well in this mess of a market and come out on top.
So, to all the people who thinks Apple's share lives or dies with Steve Jobs, get over it. Realize that while he's been one of the most influential businessmen of our era, and that his unique skills are what's shaped Apple into what it is, Steve Jobs is just a human like the rest of us. He's obviously been dealing with very serious medical issues, and the last thing we should be doing is complaining to him about what he wants to disclose about his health.
All of that said, I do think I speak for most shareholders when saying, "Welcome back, Steve." Glad to see you're well.
Stavros54
Mr. Rushkoff,
Nicely said. The comments here only prove and strengthen your point. Without them, your article wouldn't be as effective.
clave54
I have been using Mac computers since 1987. AND nothing, NOTHING compares to it!
NYUKULELE
Say Rushkoff, why don't you do a piece on the absence of privacy due to media vultures jumping all over someone's suffering and using it to self-promote? You aim at Apple-gabbers, but heap it on yourself.
I don't have any Apple products. I don't have any Rushkoff books either.
"Learn to read" -- is that how you speak to your students, as well, you smarmy twit?
DeaconDrJones
Yes, learn how to read you idiot. His article says the same thing you are saying, but you are bitching about it. Huh? Read the article before you comment.
NYUKULELE
My point is that none of this is any of our business. Jumping on this bandwagon of reportage, from whatever angle, is evidence of a lack of respect for the individual's privacy. It also demonstrates the lack of an imagination capable of creating something original and contributing something worthwhile to society. Or at the very least, finding something to write about that's actually important.
I did read the blog post (it hardly qualifies as an article). I also read the one where he said that Twitter is the end of totalitarianism. Would you like to place a wager on that, deacon? Want to bet that 6 months from now the ayatollahs are still in charge in Iran? What Twitter does is allow people to communicate with less critical thought than ever. Look at Ashton Kutcher's current Twitter campaign "against" hunger. He wants people to DONATE money to a giant cereal company. Not to local food banks or some other worthy volunteer effort that actually does something to alleviate the problem of hunger, but to the publicity effort of a company that's up to its neck in genetically modified corn.
Rushkoff's, and many of the other new media touts', philosophy seems to be "I can do it, therefore it's important."
My philosophy is a knucklehead is a knucklehead, and computer access won't change that.
rushkoff
"So, to all the people who thinks Apple's share lives or dies with Steve Jobs, get over it. Realize that while he's been one of the most influential businessmen of our era, and that his unique skills are what's shaped Apple into what it is, Steve Jobs is just a human like the rest of us. He's obviously been dealing with very serious medical issues, and the last thing we should be doing is complaining to him about what he wants to disclose about his health."
Beautifully stated. Listen to the way they talk about him on Bloomberg, or read some of the chat boards for a while, and it will truly turn your stomach. He's a human being, and his decision not to share his liver transplant news with iPod users is not a betrayal.
Kevlovian
I think A lot of the crit comes from the headline to your article. "Apples Army of Whiners" lumped all fans, users and stock holders of Apple in the same boat. That being said, I basically agree with the point of the article. I personally feel for the man, and my heart goes out to him and his family.
Visionaries like him are few and too far between. Especially in profit driven American corporations. I wish him the best.
spotted
Like Martha Stewart, Jobs made himself an integral part of the Apple brand. Accordingly, he had an obligation to disclose facts that materially impacted the business. Jobs' statement released months ago of a "hormonal imbalance" was clearly and intentionally misleading.
Nice line about Narcissism/Asperger's.
eclairage
All that and you get the name of the company wrong? Apple, Inc dropped the 'Computer' from their name in January of 2007.
And you're a professor of media studies???
rushkoff
Yeah, headlines have a way of doing that. It's the army of whiners I'm mad at, I guess, but I don't think all apple users fall into that category. Especially being one myself (though I am slowly becoming more of an Ubuntu person as I learn those ropes).
Thank you.
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