CEO Gadget

Steve Jobs doesn't go for market share. He'd have to be a player to do that. By Tony 'Tokyo' Rhoades.

Get It Try It

I sense an obsession. And I'm not the only one. It's about the iPhone.

The obsession I sense isn't the obsession iPhone owners and those dreaming of owning an iPhone feel. The obsession I'm talking about is Steve Jobs' own.

All his life Steve Jobs has been looking for shiny gadgets like the proverbial kleptomaniac. But instead of stealing the shiny gadgets he manufactures and sells them. Kleptomania still the same. Most often founded on unrequited love of some sort. Such as sensing and then being told one's own parents abandoned one a long time ago.

Steve Jobs looks harried. He always has. Bill Gates might be the ultimate son of a bitch but he always looks relaxed and cool. Not Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs has always looked the haunted man. An individual swimming in his own demons.

First it was a blue box. Then it was a beige box. Then it was black box. Then it was a white box.

Now it's a box with a coat of many colours. It's always a gadget, it's always as hermetically sealed as Steve can get away with, it's always closed off from the rest of the world as much as possible. Steve Jobs doesn't go for market share. He'd have to be a player to do that. He goes for gadgets. He instills his own obsession into his marketing. These are my gadgets and they're great gadgets and just look how shiny they are!

Your karma check for today: There once was was a user that whined his existing OS was so blind, he'd do better to pirate an OS that ran great but found his hardware declined. Please don't steal Mac OS! Really, that's way uncool. (C) Apple Computer, Inc.

His marketing is contagious. It's inspired entire industries. Unfortunately it's also crippling them.

Apple are currently being hit with a ferocious backlash for what in essence is Steve Jobs' own obsession. Apple could have worked with Google. They could have collaborated on the coming Chrome OS. They could have provided their incomparable NeXTSTEP (Cocoa) frameworks and their unmatchable savvy for good taste and good design (as personified by Jonathan Ive and his team). Together Apple and Google could have ruled not only the web as Google do today but the entire world of the desktop as well.

But that would have gone against Steve Jobs' grain. He never shares with anyone. Those are his toys, his bananas, his technologies. And you'd better not try to use them when he's not looking.

Tony Rhoades is a marketing consultant working out of offices in the Cotswolds. In between assignments he sits at his computer and watches the world turn. You can contact him here.