Jobs Loss, and the iHipster

Alas, technology mogul Steve Jobs has shuffled off the mortal coil. Besides (Steve) Jobs, the last decade has also seen the deaths of (Bob) Hope and (Johnny) Cash. With the loss of Hope, Cash, and Jobs, we seem to be descending ever faster into at least the first level of hell with the loss of things everyone loves. Given the rate of loss of the good things, I'm seriously worried that next up will be (Kevin) Bacon.

In any rate, the loss of (Steve) Jobs has of course signaled a plunge in Apple stock, notwithstanding that Jobs left the company's CEO seat in August. But he was still - technically - chairman of the board of the directors. Besides, Apple's stock, and its reputation as a whole, has historically been based on excellent marketing and hipster mystique, so was destined to drop when it's guru did. What I really wonder, like lots of other people, is where the company is going to go from here.

The initial technology developed by Apple (mostly by the Other Steve) was good, but not spectacular. Mostly, it was good because it could do about everything a PC could do, but could be produced out of the Other Steve's garage. Funny that developments in the meantime resulted in the tables being turned: over the years - and notwithstanding that the technology has been proprietary to Apple, while the PC has dozens of manufacturers - the Mac has become substantially more powerful a platform than can be provided by any popular software for the PC, but with the production cost far outstripping the PC, and the added problem that nobody outside Apple is able to provide decent tech support. Other than the computer graphics industry (which genuinely benefits from the increased processing power of Macs over PCs), pretty much everyone who uses a Mac is paying a huge markup for computing power far beyond their requirements. Really, other than playing computer games (which are processing-power intensive, because of the graphic interfaces) the average computer user needs a mp3 player, a word processor, email and internet applications, and possibly basic accounting software. Except for music and online functions, decent versions of all of those programs date back to the Commodore 64. None of those applications, including the music and online functions, really require gigacycles per second of processing power. Amazingly, the public managed to figure this out, and for lots of years (especially after the Windows OS made PCs about as easy to use as Macs), most people bought cheap PCs that could do everything they needed done, rather than expensive Apple/Mac computers that had capabilities they didn't really need.

But Apple and Mac computers re-entered popularity - not through financial or technological advance, but rather through hype and pop culture - when Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997. After helping found the company in the 70s, Jobs left Apple in 1985 to become the controlling shareholding of Lucasfilm's computer-animation spin-off. (Pixar. You may have heard of it. I think I might have mentioned the historic connection between Apple/Mac and the computer animation industry as well.) Getting him back as CEO resulted in substantial changes in Apple's operations, which we still see today. First and foremost, Jobs kicked off some truly spectacular ad campaigns, with a very specific target demographic. Way back when Apple was first successful, one of Jobs' programs was to get kids using computers: Apple donated thousands of Apple IIe desktops to public schools. I grew up in Sunnyvale, California (Google it). My elementary school, my junior high school, and my high school (which is the same high school that the Other Steve graduated from) had an Apple computer in every classroom which was almost never used, as well as a dedicated computer lab, where there were 20-30 more machines. This dates back to 1981, when ANY computer was really expensive, so this was not just a token outlay by Apple. But it turns out that one megacycle and 64 kilobytes of RAM was more than enough to get kids turned on by (or at least interested in) computers. Getting kids involved was explicitly part of Jobs' grand plan, based loosely on the Wayne Gretzky-ism of "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." Jobs is on-record as a huge fan of this quote.

So guess who Steve targeted his marketing towards when he re-took the helm at Apple? While Steve was busy at Pixar from 86 to 97, lots of kids who tinkered with Apple computers in grade school/junior high/high school grew up, got degrees, and started earning disposable income. People who who can't remember a world without Apple computers, finally at an age where they're climbing ladders, and making headway in wresting control of The Establishment away from the older generation(s). Chords were struck by commercials with young, hip, Justin Long - sporting zip-up hoodies and facial scruff with roots in Pearl Jam's 'TEN' tour - poking fun at a stodgy Bill Gates look-alike with pure dialog before a plain white background. Other ads were released on the exact opposite tack: purely technical (and spiffy) blue-screen transition work, set to catchy tunes from indie rockers, without even a voice-over. All of it was - in typical Steve Jobs fashion - innovative, fresh, and beautiful in subtly nuanced simplicity.

People ate it up, and we saw the culmination of Steve Jobs' decades-old efforts. Under the light of the Jobs 2.0 marketing campaign, and out of soil seeded with lavish outlay of the Apple IIe 20 years ago, we saw the birth of Steve Jobs' greatest and least appreciated creation: the iHipster. Apple under Steve Jobs pulled off the Oceans Eleven heist of the business world: it created a product, and then created the market for its own product. Sure, Apple made neat stuff, but lots of companies do that. That's not the remarkable part. The remarkable part was convincing the public that the iHipster was something they wanted to be, and that paying the premium for Apple stuff was TOTALLY worthwhile.

You know the iHipster. Odds are that you might be one. The young, savvy, technology user. The 20-40 year-old upper crust (and/or any pretenders thereto) of the Fight Club generation. Traveling light, fast, and green, thinking outside the box, and trying to break free of stagnation and stereotype. Nothing except Apple products will do for the iHipster. The iHipster thinks nothing of paying the markup for Steve's computers, phones, and other electronic toys. It's Apple. This is THE company of the generation. Started in a garage by a couple guys. Built from nothing except innovation. Non-establishment at its core. Dude, haven't you seen the commercials?

Brilliant.

Alas, alack, the King is dead. While he has already been cannonized in the computer world, Apple is now back were it was in 1985: with a good product and excellent goodwill, but without Jobs. I'm curious to see where things go from here, since the reality is that the iHipster image really has nothing to do with Apple's actual operations, or with any other reality. Indeed, Apple is every bit the corporate monster that the iHipster purports to rail against. Example: have you ever actually read the iTunes user agreement? All 68 pages of it? Suffice to say that if you have ANY worries about Big Brother, Dystopia, or the New World Order, you should be a hell of a lot more concerned about Apple than about the United Nations.

While Apple hesitates not at all to recruit talent with the innovation of its founders, and loves to point out that the company made millionaires out of lots of people, that's fluff. The truth is that Apple treats its employees like absolute dog shit. People are hired, assigned absolutely outrageous quotas, worked until they burn out, then fired based on their failures to meet the original outrageous quota. Oh, and any ideas that employees come up with while working at Apple (even those developed in the employee's own time, say, for example, while tinkering in the garage with their high school buddies) are contractually the property of Apple. Didn't you read that fine print? Their standard employee agreement is shorter than the iTunes contract. A bit.

Apple is currently green(ish), but only after it (and Jobs) was repeatedly and thoroughly lambasted by people who are legitimately green. While I don't doubt that Jobs owned a Prius, that's primarily for press-release purposes. (His usual ride was purportedly a $130,000 Mercedes.) Yes, he was paid ONE DOLLAR per year by Apple. But he also owned 5.4 million shares of Apple (currently trading at $405.80 per share) and another 138 million shares of Disney (currently: $35.39) from their takeover of Pixar, so bragging about earning just a dollar was really just a flaunting of how little he really needed payment at all. Without going into details, suffice to say that Jobs spent at least his share of time acting like a petty asshole (google 'Lisa Brennan-Jobs'), and really only got around to being charitable when he had so much money that he literally couldn't spend it all.

So, given that Apple's business current sales model is based largely on perception and/or illusion, and given that, while there are plenty of businessmen capable of running Apple, none of them look nearly as natural in a black turtleneck, 501s, and running shoes, I wonder what the future holds for Apple. Because while they are currently amazingly successful by any measure, the guy who made it all run is gone. Absent their guru - and setting aside the questionable points of the iReligion - is there someone ready and able to step up and convince the iHipsters that they need to keep paying the Apple markup?