It's official; see Apple's homepage. And, Wikipedia wasted no time either.
And, while this isn't a joke, any eulogy, if you will, must give an houest ranking of Jobs as a businessman.
As a newspaper editor, until my current gig, I've always used Macs. So, the graphic user interface and other things during Jobs' first run? He deserves definite credit as an innovator/creator. He continued to show that at NeXT and in the Pixar work. No doubt about that.
After his return?
I'll be honest that the man is a marketing genius. He was already some degree of that during his first stint. The products? Good but not earth-shattering. I will give Jobs credit for the whole idea of "apps," which is software creativity as well as marketing.
Ahh, there's that word.
For me, the bottom line with Jobs is "marketing genius." Already with XP, Windows narrowed many of the PC differences/shortcomings. And, Windows 7, I think, narrowed them further.
Phones? Android, overall, stacks up decently against iPhone. IPods? There's other MP3 players.
But, it's about marketing. The Mac vs. PC commercials. The iPod silhouette commercials. Marketing genius running circles around Windows in particular. And, that marketing genius carried over to the iPhone, even though, in terms of price, functionality, and .... openness, Android phones are better.
That, then, leads to the "cult of Steve Jobs" critique. Look at Facebook and Google+. It's like a virus. And, why? If Steve Jobs' death is the worst day of your life, that probably says more about your life and about Steve Jobs' cult-like marketing skills than it does anything else.
No comments:
Post a Comment