The original techbro, that sold you a fake dream

 

From Steve Wozniak's amazing creation to a perfect brain rot machine.

Preface: this entry doesn't try to suggest there's a "better" or "worse", it aims to illustrate corrosive marketing tactics that eroded our basic daily technology and cult-like, lifestyle defining following for what is in fact a device manufacturer. I'm a big proponent of using all technology that is accessible for you and fulfills it's purpose. All devices and software are only a means to an end - a tool. Never forget that you, the user of this tool, are the most important part.

Before "think different" Apple we know today, there were faceless computer corporations like IBM or Compaq with their gray, ubiquitous boxes with no characteristics. Everything was mainly focused on utilitarian aspect as computers and personal devices were mainly business oriented tools and not a lifestyle accessory. IT industry best known early "genius" is certainly Steve Jobs. With his "vision" and marketing he transformed the Apple brand into a vendor of objects of desire. I put quotes for both, because I see it in the worst sense imaginable. He wasn't a genius in a good sense and his vision was an early marketing dark pattern strategy to exploit people's vanity and how they wanted to be perceived.

Marketing genius

Jobs really was just a cutthroat capitalist, marketing genius (and an awful and abusive person). He would sell you premium iSand for $999 on a desert because he could market it so well. I think his first major success was lobbying to get Apple II into schools with initiative "Kids Can’t Wait". "Teach em' while they're young" is a great strategy to indoctrinate someone for life. Huge and mostly text-based and some rudimentary graphics Apple II with it's poor software has basically nothing in common even with the iconic early Macintosh. People like to associate themselves with a brand, they seek familiarity, so once you teach kids about Apple computers, you already baked in their preferences for adulthood.

Second big leap was the iPod. It was marketed well and you can already see glimpses of Apple "ecosystem" (or rather Apple jail) with it's limiting use of iTunes. With it's huge 5 or 10 GB spinning platter (in a mobile device!?) hard drive you somehow couldn't use it to transfer files. I was baffled by this. I often ripped CDs borrowed from friends into MP3 and, as a teen, couldn't be bothered to put ID3 tags on them, but iPod required all of that. It released in November 2001, but lets put it in a context of the time. 3 moths earlier Siemens released SL45i. Phone and MP3 player that could run Java apps out of the box - all that from solid state Multimedia Card (exactly of SD card size). Somewhere in late 2002, so year later after iPod released, I bought it used and had two MMC cards - 32MB and 128MB - extremely small capacity compared to iPods, but I could use it for any data. When I did research for school or was just browsing for fun at internet cafe, I could just copy the data to the card and take it home. It showed ID3 tags when you wanted and could use playlist, but you could as well just play any folder, manage files and do whatever you need. I've used it even to share files at school to another friend using infrared it had. Believe it or not, I even used it as an early eBook reader with it's volume buttons to turn pages and played a J2ME action RPG. It had a simple web browser (WAP 1.1) that I only tried several times because of prohibitive GPRS prices. It was fully hackable and I learned to patch it's firmware to get even more functionality and eventually multitasking. With a side record button, now being a task switch button, you could start listening to music, go and start a Java application or a game and the switch tasks to respond to a SMS. I saw the big appeal of the "think different" marketing campaign, but I couldn't grasp why would someone pick something so limited. Consider that iPod 5GB was priced at $400 on release, while the SL45i was less than $200 if I'm not mistaken (I remember, I bought mine used year or so later for around $80 considering conversion to USD at the time).

Dumbing down the smartphone 

Frame from first iPhone presentation conference

 

Absolute cake takes the introduction of iPhone - he killed tactility of a smartphone and sold his glass tapping black squares to millions.

I'm almost sure he was obsessing on the smartphones of the time, when "envisioning" the iPhone with these images. The original iPhone couldn't do even half as much as Nokia E62 pictured here (I had E61i). Truth was that the smartphone market was healthy and it was evolving quickly with a very useful devices that had a great battery life. Did I mentioned E61i's trans-reflective screen that was perfectly readable in full sunlight and had a notification LED? Because he knew he couldn't outcompete good devices, it was time for what we call a "industry disruption" today. He shipped a device so different, but extremely visually appealing. It's really hard to sell a smartphone on it's features, but Jobs with iPod's experience could sell device based on how you look with it in hand. Sleek, black square with huge screen gave you this "Apple look", just like with the unique iPod. In my view Apple never sold on it's technology, but on it's appeal and marketed lifestyle. It was the market-tested premium look and the only genius in this was it's marketing oriented design.

When Apple release iPad in 2010 I asked someone about the pen. "You don't need a pen" Yeah, I know, but when I used my 2008's HP tx2000 2-in-1 Tablet PC I could use both touch and amazingly precise and pressure-sensitive Wacom pen to draw. If I wasn't there I would be impressed, but truth is that there is loads of better tech and Steve Jobs was good, not as a designer, but sales guy taking unique technology, tasking engineers to limit it to fit a basic design (dumb it down, so it won't malfunction) and marketing it extremely well. Sounds familiar? I'm not aware of famed tech "visionaries" and "geniuses" that didn't actually just re-marketed existing tech under their brand and sold it off. Apple recently peaked in their contempt towards it's users by forcing the M series MacBooks to be restored only using another M MacBook. It's not a walled garden, it's a docility jail.

...but consumers are happy, because they bought it?

Now tell me - are you happy with whatever modern device you currently use? Or are you just getting upset with each release dropping bunch of features or forcing you, the most important part of whole process - a user, to use it completely differently? Instead of making technology accessible and serving you, now the expectation is to make you adapt to it. "Just avoid holding it in that way." Apple got rid of removable batteries - other manufacturers followed because people kept buying. Apple got rid of headphone jack - other follow, people bought devices, but also Bluetooth headphones they didn't need before. Even in laptops Apple soldered RAM to the boards and other followed as well. Now Google decided they can do the same thing as Apple and prevent people from installing their own software if it's not from "Google approved" source.

First was the keyboard, so the phone lost tactile input. For me it became more like a TV - you can try and say that you can still input via touchscreen, but for that I'd say you can input stuff to the TV via remote as well. Yes, you can - not as convenient, so you won't do it as often anymore. Just look at the raise of recording voice messages in messaging apps. I really don't see much of a difference between a boomer flipping channels on a TV with 1000+ to pick from and a teen swiping to next TikTok every 3 seconds. Both contents are externally controlled and both result from the same intermediate reinforcement addictive behavior. What touchscreen allows is mainly selecting and not fully inputting (if keyboard wasn't needed, we wouldn't had laptops anymore). Selecting innately means that there is a finite, therefore limited choice - that in turn doesn't foster creativity. Jobs marketed so well, that he molded smartphone into a modern TV - a brain rot machine.

It's been 18 years since the iPhone. Did we improved tech at least half a much as between 18 years prior to that or did we barely made any progress? Tech industry knows that people will buy in to whatever they sell with a sleek, attractive design and nice lifestyle marketing, but are you actually happy?

If industry boiled down devices to insignificant differences and told you that you should pick either Android or iOS - maybe if they both mean now the same and they're both proven extremely unhealthy (and they all knew it long ago), maybe the best choice is not to get either?

Was this the "vision" of Jobs? I'd say so, because tech addiction and much bigger friction to actually do anything useful with it as a tool, is just a collateral damage of amazing corporate profits stemming not only for devices but also ads, subscription and whatever else they will happily sell you, that you "can't live without".