The Jobs Effect
October 6, 2011 in Features, Highlights
Nobody can deny the huge effect Steve Jobs had on the field of technology. Not only did he invent the iPod (the first decent portable music player), the iPhone (the first decent smartphone) and the iPad (the first decent tablet); but with Steve Wozniak he also invented the first successful desktop computer with a GUI. Not only that, he founded what is the largest company in the world (by market capitalisation), ran Pixar, and is the largest shareholder of Disney.
For me, his biggest achievement is the hysteria surrounding luxury product after luxury product, version after version, all the way through this financial crisis. Every year, millions of people that can’t afford to fill up their cars or go on holiday spend thousands of pounds on getting their latest technology fix. Originally with the iPod, it was the only decent music player available, and no other portable device (such as a phone, radio or CD player) could duplicate what you do with it. But now, everyone has a smartphone, and most features can be replicated on any number of other devices, yet they keep buying iPhones, and they keep updating them for every release. That creation of universally-desirable products is genius, and not even the supercar industry has that level of appeal, never mind being within the financial reach of millions of people.
The new iPhone 4S was a let down for many Apple fans. A few behind-the-scenes technical upgrades (which are actually pretty good), an improved camera and a new voice-command system are all well and good, but with no aesthetic changes there was no desirability over the previous iPhone 4 (from June 2010). To use a technical industry term: there was nothing shiny about it. Whilst a tech-spec upgrade and OS update are good things, they should have been released quickly and quietly with little fanfare to allow users to discover its improvements themselves. Let’s face it, news like that isn’t going to go unnoticed by gadget fans. But making a big Jobs-esque presentation over a dull product update, showing graphs of improved performance, is the sort of thing I would have expected Microsoft to do. The big news really was the re-release of the old iPhone 3GS for free on contracts, making iPhones accessible to many more consumers – that is a big wise move for Apple. Read the rest of this entry →







