Demystifying Steve Jobs
2011/12/01 Leturia Azkarate, Igor - Informatikaria eta ikertzaileaElhuyar Hizkuntza eta Teknologia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
Steve Jobs and Apple cannot refuse their influence on consumer computing and some areas of professional computing. Interfaces with windows, mouse, MP3 players, smartphones, tablets, etc. Apple has popularized all of these devices with Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad computers and has led the competition to this path, changing customs and the world of people. But none of them has been the invention of Jobs or Apple, even though the media has sold us. All these types of devices existed before, just go to the wikipedia to find out.
Apple has never developed any new technology. His performance consists in taking and copying the ideas of others, giving him an attractive design and doing good marketing (and in recent years not even the latter, the media looked at him with admiration as a god who made him free marketing). And success must be recognized. From a business point of view we must certainly recognize merit, but from a technological point of view...
Computing is much more
Probably, the excessive role assigned by the media to Steve Jobs is not due little to the lack of knowledge and computer vision of journalists. And probably also to the massive use of Apple computers in journalism by programs like Quark XP ress. But from a computer's point of view, things look differently.
Many have considered Jobs the most influential person in computer history. Maybe (and maybe only) this can be true if we limit ourselves to consumer computing, but this is much more. There are computers and computer clusters for supercomputing, absolutely necessary for the progress of science, internet servers, operating systems and programs that control machines and devices... And in all of them the presence or influence of Apple is pure, zero.
Liberating character?
For many, Jobs has been the liberator of computing, which has really made technology available to the public. I think it can hardly be considered liberating to a company that only puts technology in the hands of buyers of its hyper-expensive products, especially if we consider that companies that make similar products cheaper are taken to court for copying (it is also ironic that Apple has always taken ideas from others), rather than for releasing, want consumers to depend on their devices...
Isaac Newton said: "If I have further seen it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". It represents the model of progress of science, in which any advance owes much to the work previously developed by others. And this is how the academic and scientific world works, making public the discoveries, so that others can take advantage of them, and that is true freedom. Patent, sell expensive and do not allow use to others, the advance you have given, no. Jobs and Apple are a company model that has nothing liberating.
In the early days of computer science, advances were made in the scientific world and in that way. Then, when there were enough users, big companies entered the world of computing (Microsoft, Apple...) and completely changed the model. In recent years, the free software movement is really looking to get back on that path. The greatest advances in recent years have been made thanks to those who follow this information dissemination model, not companies. Let's think for a moment what would happen if the inventor of the web Berners-Lee had patented his invention, and if Linus Torvalds had not released the Linux operating system and all the software created by Richard Stallman (with which the vast majority of web servers work), Christ's licenses would have to be paid for browsing the web, web servers and web hosting would be much more expensive and accessible. The web would not be as we know it today.
Inflated myth?
Everything in this article to demystify the figure of Apple and Jobs refers to the technological approach, but its dark side also has other aspects: the control they want to implement through their products and the imposition of the social perspective (only you can install the applications they want, only you can buy cultural products in their stores, apply censorship…), Jobs showed their pride in the statements of the competition...
However, it is doubtful to what extent all that has been said about Steve Jobs is about him and to what extent Apple. I find it difficult to think that all the invented products, all the decisions made, whether right or wrong, are a thing of one person, there is a big company behind, where others would also have part. There are voices that claim that Jobs was just a public image, that others designed all the products (especially recent times) and that he was a mere seller, and that, ultimately, Jobs was the biggest marketing operation of a very good company in marketing. If so, Jobs would not be as fortunate as we have drawn it in this article, but neither would the saint represented by the media.
