The Wrong Focus On Jobs

No, this is not the new iPod prototype.

OK, I've thought I'd said my piece about Steve Jobs.  I was wrong.

We still continue to see the encomiums about Steve Jobs.  Meanwhile, the other jobs story comes out: basically flatlined job growth, with continued shrinkage in the public sector dragging down growth in the private sector.

Then I saw this.  It's kind of what I thought all along.

Do you know why iPhones and iPads are so sleek and chic?  I'll give you a hint.  Steve Jobs didn't do that.  It's a guy named Jonathan Ive.

Ten years ago, we were all genuflecting at the altar of Bill Gates.  I would argue that Gates did more to "democratize" computing than did Jobs.  Apple stuff has always been more expensive, more of a status symbol, than PC clones.  And Gates became a latter day Midas because of it.

But Gates was not a genius programmer and neither was Jobs.  They are CEOs.  Very successful ones, but they represent also the Cult of the CEO.  Gates exploited his virtual monopoly on PC operating systems to build a software package that is literally everywhere.  Jobs took personal computing to the next level.  But neither of them were doing the actual creative work that made these things happen.

It's not wrong that they got rich for it and it's not wrong that they are lionized as business men.  But Apple is Apple as much because Ive is a genius at design, as it is because Jobs was a visionary.

And so, even while it is painfully apparent to the "99%" that the story about jobs is that people don't have enough of them, we continue to engage in an Irish level of keening and wailing over a guy who represents the same glorification and cult of personality of celebrity CEOs that created Lloyd Blankfein and Sam Fuld.

It's just that in this case, hipsters like iPads more than CDOs.

I always teased my Glorious and Dedicated Wife that she's an Apple cultist.  Frankly, that seems really on the mark these days.