Lord Jobs Won’t Fix My iPhone
Cringely has a fantastic column up on the story behind the recent executive shakeup at Apple: Tony Fadell — head of the iPod division, and probably the Father of the iPod itself — is out, and Mark Papermaster, erstwhile IBMer, is in.
But the column is really about Steve Jobs, of course, his mind and his methods, as all such columns must be:
Steve Jobs believes the key to his success is in finding, hiring, retaining, then firing the best talent in the world. He would maintain in the very moment he’s firing Fadell that Tony is better at his job than anyone else on Earth. Yet still Fadell must go and that’s because – ego issues aside – Jobs had to make room in his inner circle for Papermaster.
Everyone close to Jobs is under continual analysis: is this person really (or still) the best in the world? If they aren’t, or if someone else is just as good but more important for some additional reason, then the incumbent has to go. Steve Jobs ultimately betrays all of his direct reports in this manner. It’s just the way he is. And if it costs Apple a few million to remove one extra head from the room, well that’s okay with a board that KNOWS (as we all do, to put it fairly) that Jobs really is the secret of Apple’s success. His system may be brutal, but it works.
There’s a reason why I call Lord Jobs Lord Jobs. It’s not just my helpless, quasi-spiritual devotion to the stuff he makes, and to the aesthetic that informs it; it’s also because, in many ways, he’s as temperamental, maddening, inspiring, contradictory, bullheaded, and ultimately indomitable as any god you’re likely to encounter.
Mostly when people go to temples to worship their gods, they focus — to their great credit — on the positive: all the reanimated corpses and entreaties for the poor and wine/water transmogrifications and drowned centurions. But, really, the holy books they’re reading from are mostly about power, and the horrible things that will happen to you if you fuck with that power. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, and — if you’ve really pissed Him off — He planteth a foot in your ass and sends you tumbling down to your eternal punishment.
I’m sure Lord Jobs is a very nice person when he’s not plotting world domination from his seat in Cupertino. And I’m equally sure he’d balk at actually sending people to hell. But he will crush you utterly if you get in his way, and not really think twice about it. There is Lord Jobs, there is the goal of Lord Jobs, and there is the straight line of scorched earth between the two. Nothing else.
I mailed my iPhone out to a company in Kansas for repair yesterday, because it won’t sync with my computer anymore. What I should have done is take it to the Apple Store and get a free replacement, but I can’t do that because my phone is unlocked. My phone is unlocked for very good reasons. Nevertheless: Lord Jobs has decreed that filth like me, who stray from the Divine Path, will not share in any of its blessings. Even if I paid full price for those blessings. Even if those blessings aren’t blessings at all, actually, but contractual obligations. No matter. I am a heretic, and as a heretic my presence in an Apple Store is frowned upon, and my entreaties mocked and reviled.
And so I’ve been shaking my tiny fist in the general direction of Cupertino ever since my lovely phone gave up the ghost. But it’s a lackluster, good-natured fist shaking — and when, Jobs-willing, I exchange many hard-earned dollars for a working iPhone, I will go back to using it — and loving it — slavishly. And worshiping dyspeptically, reluctantly, tiny-fist-shakingly, at the feet of its creator.
Such is the power of the Lord.
All hail Lord Jobs. Damn it.
Update: Gruber corroborates Cringley’s basic point, but cast aspersions on most of his interpretations.
No Comments Yet