Steve Jobs, Unicorn

Apple products are magical doo-doo.

People piled plenty of iPhone 5 parodies on the internet. For good reason; their products are inferior in all ways but one.

Apple has a long history of selling B-team technology.

Before they switched to Unix and called it "X", Apple's Mac OS was a miserable, crashy joke.

The iPhone wasn't the first, nor the best, smartphone of any generation. Before the iPhone, Danger's Hiptop was the hippest gadget on the planet. That's because it had really cool technology and it was usable. Hackers, celebrities and deaf people loved them, and leapt to acquire each new revision (until Microsoft bought Danger and turned their labor of love into the Kin.)

Apple makes a great deal out of elegance and presentation.

People appreciate Apple much the way they appreciate abstract art. Most film geeks I know do not enjoy watching Citizen Kane, but they appreciate the fuck out of it.

Likewise with Apple products. Artists and designers appreciate the commitment to minimalism.

But Apple takes simplicity and elegance too far. I never once ever seen an unadorned Jobsian Apple product in the wild. Every iMac replaced its mouse with a 2-button variety, every iPhone has an aftermarket case, and every iPad has an aftermarket kickstand and/or keyboard. Yet people laud Apple's design sensibilities.

Why? How does Apple succeed?

Some have argued that Microsoft succeeded not by virtue of the quality of their products but by virtue of unfair business practices such as bundling and other monopolistic practices that violate the tenets of fair competition.

If Apple has a trick up its sleeve, what is it? How have they succeeded so wildly, despite a near universal acknowledgement that their technology lags behind. What does Apple market so well?

Artificial dissatisfaction.

Steve Jobs had intense passion for specific aesthetics. His passion ran so deep, he exuded that and it permeated those who would listen.

You know what makes computers so uninviting to people? Their complexity. Case in point: mice with multiple buttons. Let's simplify that. One button.

Tablet computers and their darned styluses. (Styli?) Use your finger! The bane of writing since Egyptian times.

Solved by Apple!

Steve Jobs sold the idea that, instead of humans conforming to the requirements of computers, computers should accommodate the demands of humans. That idea sticks.

But unbalanced simplification is not a defensible pursuit.

Most kids protest learning arithmetic because, after all, a calculator can do the job better and easier than humans can. But as a adults we understand that learning such skills and arcane languages such as algebraic formalism help us.

We know that, right?

...?

In retrospect, perhaps not. I suspect most adults never did comprehend why it's important to acquire tools like abstract languages and complex workflows like long division, algebra and calculus.

Therein lies a catch-22. To those who learned such tools, they paid dividends. To those who have not, they seem like extraneous nonsense. Dark magicks. Nerdy.

Technology, to the hoi polloi, is either immediately intuitive or inextricably alien.

Says Apple.

So, Steve Jobs consumed all the really cool tech (Unix, smart phones, tablet computers), digested it and *cough* refined it.

Unicorn he is, people mistook that horseshit for magical rainbow nuggets.

And thus did Apple become the largest technology corporation on earth.

PS: I loved my Sidekick Color; it was ahead of its time. I like Windows Phone 8, because it interoperates with my ecosystem of choice. I like my Surface because of its built-in kickstand and cover-keyboard. I plan to get the Pro when it comes out, so that I can use its stylus.

And, yes, I guess you could say I'm a sore loser. Congratulations, you guys.