Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
– Bob Dylan, 1964
Steve Jobs, Disney Director and famous iCrapper, is a baby boomer. Bram Cohen, who wrote BitTorrent, Shawn Fanning, who developed Napster, Sergei Brin and Larry Page who founded Google, and Linus Torvalds famous Linux dude are all much younger than Jobs. Steve Jobs represents entrenched interests. The aforementioned Millennials famously promote open systems and free exchange of ideas. Jobs is a “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) kind of guy, the sort who believes the Disney copyrights on that mouse should be extended to the corporation in perpetuity.
Jobs leads a cult of dedicated customers, people who will buy his products regardless of performance because they’re marketed so well. In upscale malls across the US you can get Apple products the day they are released simply by standing in queue at the Apple outlet and reinforcing the belief of those around you that the iPod, iPhone, iMac, iPad or iWhatever is the NEXT BIG (retail) THING. Sadly, the Church of Apple’s profits are tied to a strict program of Digital Rights Management and it’s getting harder and harder to come up with the NEXT BIG (retail) THING, patent it, and control its release in the marketplace.
Okay, the iPods, those stored music thingies, were pretty cool. Initiates and communicants could identify each other by the little white carbuncles blossoming from their ears, growths that presumably excluded the echoing chant and drumbeat of the marketing weenies who tweet and IM and Facebook, and blog the news that the NEXT BIG (retail) THING that you bought last month will soon be passé, because the NEXT BIG (retail) THING is about to be introduced by Jobs at the next big iHoopla and Marketing Festival (BTOBS).
For the last month or two, under pressure by the need for big numbers on the iPad launch, Jobs has been on a tear spreading fear uncertainty and doubt (FUD) about competitive products. Now he’s added injury to insult with a patent infringement suit against HTC, his leading competitor. Well, it looks a little like an iPhone, but wait! It’s so much better!
Some of Jobs’ success is based on his creative adoption of Xerox’s mouse and graphical user interface. Will he prevail against HTC which seems to be taking a page from his own book?