Steve Jobs' Mantra & Call to Arms

Image source: Jobs & Woz, with Apple I and II computers, from CiCorp's "Steve Jobs' Garage" Site

Want no further proof that Jobs, like his rival Bill Gates, saw himself as an outsider, in Tim Wu's sense of the term?

While Microsoft quickly eschewed the maverick image to become a necessity for, and symbol of, corporate culture, Apple claimed, but Wu would contend, did not ultimately remain true to Apple's famous quotation from the "Think Different" advertising campaign:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

As a personal note, I still believe in that quotation, and will not own a PC that isn't running the Mac OS. Whether Google seduces me to buy more than a phone remains to be seen; I'm not so sure about Apple's closed iOS ecosystem or, for that matter, any closed system. MS Office's ability to play with other software well has kept me loyal to that aspect of Microsoft's "ecosystem," as well as their well-designed mice. Unlike Steve, Bill Gates' firm knew that a multi-button mouse would prove more attractive to consumers.

In so many other cases, Steve knew better than the rest of us, even knowing what we want before we wanted it. Gesture-based computing will replace the mouse, ultimately. I compare what Jobs did to Microsoft after his return to Apple, in the mobile-computing era, to a car company inventing a starship instead of a better car to outflank its competitors. They are both transportation systems, but one meets yet-to-be-needed needs.

So first came the iPod, then the other iOS devices that tumbled after it.

No consumer could imagine the practical use of a starship, but if one appeared even at a premium price, it would find early adopters and soon, a mass market. That was the mark of Jobs' genius, and I think some of that comes through quite well in Martyn Burke's Pirates of Silicon Valley. At the same time, I'd much rather have had a beer or Woz or Bill Gates.