Steve Jobs: so long but not goodbye

Apple will, of course, survive and in the short to medium term keep producing interesting, innovative products but the passion from the top will be gone.  Steve lived and breathed Apple.  He sweated the small stuff.  I don't care how fanatical an Apple fan you are, if you have an Apple logo tattooed on your ass and you named your kid Newton, no one loves Apple more than Steve.

As cult figures go he was a pretty unassuming one but there was never any doubt about who was at the controls.  He was brilliant, yes, but brilliance in Silicon Valley is fairly common.  Where Steve was at his best was finding people who were also True Believers who could bring to fruition his vision of simple, elegant, utilitarian design melded with graceful functionality.

In the Church of Apple there were, of course, heretics, myself among them.  We bemoaned the lack of proper integration with Active Directory, the poor Exchange support, the general lack of any kind true enterprise vision.

At the end of the day Apple doesn't need enterprise because they own the hearts and minds of employees who are already using Apple products at home.  Any company with a "Windows only" mentality is finding it increasingly difficult to keep Apple products out.  Apple has entered the enterprise environment from the bottom up.  Employees are demanding that the products at work are as easy to use and fully integrated as the ones they use in there personal life.  Locking employees down to a Windows World that with every passing day seems more anachronistic is not a good idea if you want competitive, creative people working for you.

Not saying that you can't be creative on a PC but people are used to the full integration of the Apple ecosystem.  Companies that are not able to provide the same functionality within their infrastructures look like lumbering relics of a pre-broadband world.

Apple has long been criticized for being a religion not a computer company.  However, I think the analogy is closer to that of a home-town sports team:  you celebrate their triumphs, agonize over their screw-ups , complain about their management decisions and the price of hot-dogs at the games but when all is said and done, you still wear their jerseys and call them "my team".

Now the manager is retiring after a long and successful run and of course things will never be the same- nothing ever is.  The past 20 years will probably be remembered as "the good old days" and all of us geeks of a certain age will bore the next generation with our stories of the mighty Jobs who hit for six each time he stood at the crease.

What we must not lose sight of here is that Steve Jobs is a very ill man.  One can assume that nothing less than impending doom would cause him to leave Apple.  Pancreatic cancer is a death sentence for almost anyone and the fact that Steve has been struggling along since at least 2004 with the disease is a testament to his fortitude and determination to remain at the helm.  Surely this must have been a crushing decision for him because apart from stepping away from the company he loves it also acknowledges his own mortality. 

I cling to the sanguine expectation that the predictions of his demise are not true, that Steve finds a way to rally and produce a turn around like he did all those years ago with Apple.  This time however he is up against tougher competition than Microsoft, HP and Google combined.  This is the fight of his life, for his life and he will probably need a miracle to pull it off.  I hope his hat is not out of rabbits.

To all the gun nuts criticizing the UK for having an "unarmed population unable defend itself"

Did you every stop to consider that for every shopkeeper with a shotgun there would be fifty street punks with pistols?  A right to bear arms cuts both ways.

As bad as it has been in London, running gun battles would have been far, far worse.

If London is calling, you better hang up (then bolt the doors, hide the children and board up the windows)

The US is paralyzed by vitriolic party politics, the world economy is circling the drain and gangs of thugs have set London aflame.  The fourth horseman should be on his way any day now.

As is often the case I was out of town when shit started getting real.  My dingy hotel room in Copenhagen had no Internet so I was forced to glean what little information I could from the microscopic screen on my Blackberry.  Even at such a reduced size it was readily apparent from the outset that the mob was ruling.  Cops in riot gear were being routed by hoddies hurling rocks, terrified shoppers were barricading themselves into toilets and black smoke rose high above burning shops, homes and police cars.

At first I was somewhat amused and even sympathetic.  After all, like big cities everywhere London has a large number of disenfranchised residents living on the margins and one of their own was blown away by a bunch of armed cops.  Maybe it’s payback time.  However it quickly became clear that this unrest wasn’t politically motivated.  Yes, the spark that set it off came from a small demonstration against the killing but what has followed has lacked any clear rational except avarice and blind greed.

One must only look at the types of shops being targeted and the clear organization behind the looting to see that what we are experiencing is a systematic smash and grab operation perpetrated by opportunistic thugs.  London gangs, the same ones that hold entire boroughs hostage with their omnipresent turf wars, set aside their differences for a free-for-all of ultra-violence organized, ironically, using the preferred tool of white-collar criminals, the Blackberry. 

Take for example one participant interviewed by The International Herald Tribune.  19 years old, lives on a council estate, only learned to read three years ago, never had a job, doesn’t go to school, lives on Job-Seeker’s allowance, and spends each and every day at home watching telly.  He saw what was happening and thought he best go and  “...get my penny's worth!” and joined the mob.  He feels somewhat morally superior to his compatriots because he “only” stole a £120 jumper.  He says he wants a job and then whines that, “No one will give me a chance.”  Yeah, funny that.

Did society fail this kid?  Probably, but he has equally failed society.  

A friend of mine equated the rioters with Palestinians being brutalized by Israel and felt that what is happening in London is just the beginning of a larger upheaval.  She spoke of the frustrations of being trapped in poverty while surrounded by wealth and urged me to revisit Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  While I love my friend dearly and hold her opinions in high regard I am disinclined to agree with her assessment.

Firstly, there is an ocean of difference between a nation of people being deliberately deprived of liberty by an oppressive regime and London street gangs.  Last time I checked the UK is still nominally a liberal democracy, albeit one with low social mobility and there is still a huge social safety net of programs available to move people out of poverty and protect the most vulnerable.  Sure the systems are far from perfect but income disparity in and of itself is no justification for burning the local news agent's shop.

I would like to know exactly where on Maslow's ladder you would have to be in order for your desires for mobile phones and televisions to outweigh your needs for food and shelter. Those fuckers weren't stealing to feed their families, they were stealing because they are greedy yobs with feelings of entitlement.  

Nor were they taking to the streets to overthrow an evil dictatorship or stop a war or save public access to higher education.  There are causes so dear that the only Right and Good option is to man the barricades.  If I saw even a hint of that, or sensed that there was something deeper at work here other than mindless wanton carnage, then I would grab my arm-band and gas mask and be out there too.

Lacking any evidence to the contrary, I am compelled to agree with the assessment of this shop owner that these savages are nothing more than feral rats- an appropriate and wonderfully evocative phrase that I am already over using. 

I may be turning into a misanthrope but at least I am a selective one.

Sad

Against a backdrop of London burning, the global economy about to tank again, wars in more places than I can name, this story about a gay couple being forcibly broken apart and one partner deported makes me unbelievably sad. 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/09/BAO71KKPEC.DTL

The little things make the big things look all that much worse.