October 7, 2011

steve jobsI have no strong feelings about Steve Jobs. He was just some guy, you know? I am typing this on a Mac, which I like a lot, but basically everything about the whole Apple cult thing, with Jobs as the charismatic god-man who comes out once or twice a year with his whole reality distortion field, weirds me the hell out of me. There’s a ton of horror stories out there about what a tyrant he was, how he’d fire people in the hallway, how he’d repeatedly park in the handicapped spaces without a placard, etc. Also, the whole liver thing.

And yet… I admit I like this picture of him. And I also really like Anil Dash’s description of him:

He’s the anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the U.S. on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock. He’s a non-Christian, arugula-eating, drug-using follower of unabashedly old-fashioned liberal teachings from the hippies and folk music stars of the 60s. […]Every single person who’d attack Steve Jobs on any of these grounds is, demonstrably, worse at business than Jobs. They’re unqualified to assert that liberal values are bad for business, when the demonstrable, factual, obvious evidence contradicts those assertions.

People are putting flowers and candles at Apple stores which seems just a wee bit excessive, bordering on crazy. OK, granted, he was an American icon and all. And OK, maybe it’s not so weird that people like the products that they buy. I am reminded of what Drew Carey said to Jay Leno when Johnny Carson died: “You know, when you die, they’re not going to do all this for you.” What other CEO could engender this level of admiration?


I couldn’t get to sleep the other night so I finally got around to watching Pirates of Silicon Valley on YouTube, and it was pretty entertaining. You should check it out, if you haven’t. I didn’t realize how humble the beginnings of Microsoft and Apple were. I sorta kinda wish I’d been alive for that era, just to see the world changing. Trip alert: John DiMaggio, the voice of Bender, plays Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Crazy!


By the way: did you know there are about a million ways to misspell “Steve Jobs?” A few of my Twitter pals were retweeting a bunch of them and it was CRACKING ME UP. I posted some screencaps here, so check ’em out. My favorite is “steav jop.”


Also, uh, apparently the fate of The Simpsons will be determined today. My Simpsons fansite’s news blog will be all over that. More frequent updates and commentary can be found on its Twitter account. So keep your eye on those, I guess. And here I thought it would be a slow news week.