Some top #SteveJobs jokes

Update, Oct. 5, 2011: Steve Jobs is dead. Of course, this post, written on the day and day after he resigned as Apple CEO, is hashtagged and getting plenty of hits. Jobs was a marketing genius, if nothing else, even if his creativity level took a back seat during his second Apple stint. That said, is his death like that of John Lennon's? Well, maybe in that both were overmourned.

One obit, reaching for historic gravitas, compared Jobs to Thomas Edison. On the side of myth, I'd say that's about right. Edison's myth was different: Many of "his" inventions were created by assistants in Edison's labs.

Is it the degree of authoritarianism, even by modern CEO standards? Is it the personal marketing intermingled with the product marketing? I personally don't "get" what has driven the Steve Jobs hagiography. That said, going beyond Adbusters types, I can be non-commercial without trying to commercialize myself by the back door, including thinking that Apple is somehow anti-capitalist.

So, in doing an irreverent take on the cultic reverence for Jobs and his self-marketed image, I offer a mix of one-liners and zingers, at least some of them with serious thought behind the zing.

OH, and  do NOT forget your WWJobsD bracelets! Since we're already being told that Jobs would support "Occupy Wall Street" (I kind of doubt it), we will surely be bombarded with his alleged wisdom in the future.

The iCoffin! Stylish Apple coloring.

Speaking of marketing, branding and cultic angles, I have no doubt people are already Photoshopping the silver Apple logo onto the lids of black walnut Mac AirBook caskets, Photoshopping Apple aficionados crying silver Apple logo tears and more. And, to beat them to the punch ... on the left, I introduce the iCoffin! No word if you can jailbreak this baby, or if it's one size fits all. And, that's the Classic version. The iCoffin Touch? You touch the Apple logo to scroll through all the different iTunes-recorded eulogies. Press the center of the logo, and a holographic Jobs "shuffles"! The Nano iCoffin? It cryogenically preserves Steve Jobs for re-integration as an Apple iBorg!

And, speaking of iBorgs and hagiography, get a load of a worshiper's art, at left. That MacBook is probably worth more disassembled than it was put together.

Speaking of the funeral, will we have a funeral as hagiographic as that of Ayatollah Khomenei? It wouldn't surprise me, the way I see people talking in semi-salvific terms about Jobs. Speaking of that, will we have Sevener and Twelver Appleholics battling over the location of The Hidden Imam Jobs? People fighting to touch the casket? The hem of Jobs' black burial turtleneck? Hoping for magical healing powers?

I guess we won't,  if it's going to be private .. but ... I bet somebody arranges at least one "surrogate funeral," or wake, or something.

Will we get a Steve Jobs funeral iPhone/iPad app? Maybe there's one called iMourn. When you launch the app, a Chinese worker at Foxconn gets Tasered into crying. That would be followed by iMourn2, where Chinese workers at fake Apple stores go into fake mourning, which may be happening. Or worse, they actually are mourning as much as Appleholics here in America.

And, it's nice to see the cultists doing most my Photoshopping work for me. I still haven't gotten around to Photoshopping Apples being crapped in the punchbowl.

Anyway, if not the iMourn, we could have the iDie, an app that connects you to the Hemlock Society.

And, will Apple release a "Steve Jobs' favorites" music list available for iTunes download? Will we get his Illinois commencement speech and other words of Jobs' wisdom also available for download? Since others compare him to John Lennon, that music list would include "While My iPod Gently Weeps," right? Snark aside, ti would not surprise me one whit if they actually happened.

Will Jobs dial all Apple product users with a final message, "Sent from my iCoffin - Steve Jobs"?

Was the iPhone 4S ... 4 Steve? (More serious "hagiography" - was it rushed out because his demise was known to be imminent, even though it wasn't an iPhone 5? So ... how do you kill the iPhone 5? You kill Steve Jobs!)

Will we see the lakes turn Apple rainbow colors? The skies rain silver Apples? Is the iApocalypse here?

No, but "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" is! Seriously, I've put this unauthorized bio in my Amazon cart. Deutschman accurately compares Jobs, one reviewer says, to a televangelist.

If he's not a televangelist, did you know Jobs is an iCon? Well, he's an icon to worshipers, but an iCon, pun obviously intended, to an even harder hitting biographer. (That said, this book sounds a bit more iffy.)

Did you know Jobs had no big brother? That's because he WAS Big Brother!

Meanwhile, on with the jokes!

What the iGenius who has everything, including monetarily, should get his iDaughter? Nothing! You deny paternity instead!

What do you call Jobs' business model for Apple? It's iProfit!

Or, there’s the iFlop app. When you launch this, you immediately get a list of the:

1. Apple III (unreliable)

2. Lisa (underpriced by the Mac)

3. NeXT Computer (overpriced)

4. Puck Mouse (stupid, and showing Jobs’ design instinct wasn’t unerring)

5. The Cube (overpriced based only on design)

6. iTunes phone (don’t want to forget this)

7. Apple TV (Jobs would like to forget this)

8. Add to this AP list the decision to kill the Mac clones market.

That said ... continue on to additional jokes below the fold, written on the day Jobs announced his resignation as Apple CEO. (The one about rising three days later might be apropos.) There's also more seriousness about Foxconn and other Apple reality behind the Apple myth. (And welcome, whoever was visitor 10,000  at about 2 a.m. Eastern time Oct. 7.)


There's no "I" in team ... but there is in iPhone, iPad, and iPod ... and in StIve Jobs.

Will Steve Jobs rise from the dead three days from now? He healed John Hodgman of being a PC guy. Rubbed an iPhone over his eyes and took away his blindness. Let you who is without sin throw the first iPad!

Now, if I have both a Mac and PC at home, am I guilty of "mixing kinds," like Leviticus warns against? Maybe I need to stone myself.

In the name of the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, for ever and ever. Amen.

God is dead. No, worse, Steve Jobs resigns.

Hear about the new Pixar movie starring Steve Jobs? It's called "Liver Let Die." Yeah, I'm sinking real low. I'm going to go to secular hell without an iPad.

Maybe if emails off an iPhone didn't say "sent from my iPhone," I wouldn't think that so many Appleholics weren't, if not snooty personally, hung up on the image of a brand. That said, the latest signature? "Sent from my overcharged credit card."

What's the difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates? Bill Gates supposedly sometimes steals software ideas from others and puts out his own crappy imitations. Jobs sometimes puts out his own crappy software, then steals more from your wallet.

Speaking of, somebody in comments mentioned a Bill Gates cancer joke. If Gates got cancer, the chemotherapy would crash and you'd have to reboot it.

Beyond that, Gates tried to lampoon himself in some Windoze commercials; the lampoon became lampoonable. And, at that point, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

And, with that said, back to your Steve Jobs jokes!

How many Apple engineers does it take to test an iPhone 5? One to actually test it, one to ask Jobs if it's OK to test it, and one to test that it looks good in a photo of Jobs holding it.

How many Apple engineers does it take to create an iPhone 5? Seven. Five to create it, one to lose it, and one to call the San Francisco Police Department to do Apple's bidding on a non-criminal case. And, you couldn't track the one you lost by the Apple information tracking software that can't be shut off?

Second version, how many Apple marketers does it take to create an iPhone 5? Just one, to rename an iPhone 4S after Apple stock continues to slip.

Speaking of, here's some great 4Steve Siri-ous humor!

Third version, how many Apple engineers does it take to create an iPhone 5? Five to create it, one to visit Foxconn in China and pretend to be concerned about human rights violations and suicides there, and then, Steve Jobs himself to kill the iPhone app that shows that.

And at this point, we're past snark and into full-bore seriousness.

Jokes aside, there's this Orwellian response:

The developer wrote on its website: “We are currently considering two steps.” Option one is to “produce a new version of Phone Story that depicts the violence and abuse of children involved in the electronic manufacturing supply chain in a non-crude and non-objectionable way.” A more realistic step will be to “release a version for the Android market and jailbroken iOS devices.”

Depict child abuse in a "non-objectionable way"? Is that like depicting priests abusing altar boys in a non-objectionable way? Or, depicting it in a faux-Buddhist way, per the BBC's obit on Jobs?

I had no idea, until I read the Beeb's obit, that Jobs was an adult convert to Buddhism. So, to the "fuck you" commenter, same to you. When I read that, I realized we'd entered a whole new level of Steve Jobs hypocrisy.

Beyond that, Appleholics' messianic views of Jobs are no laughing matter. Apple, as I show here, is part of the dark side of the Internet, and is one of the "big three," with Google and Apple, in coming online infowars. And Apple, as part of Silicon Valley, also bears a strong anti-union history. (One Apple store worker is trying to organize a retail union.)

And, for further about the myth behind the reality, here's my sincere, but non-fawning, obituary for Jobs.