Steve Jobs reality distortion
Steve Jobs’s reality distortion field is in full effect, and he himself seems to be severely affected by it. Hopefully, people will start seeing through his lies and distortions:
“I guess its just human nature that if someone or some organization gets really successful there’s just a group of people who want to tear it down. I see it happening with Google.”
Well, yes, that’s right, and you are at the forefront of that, Steve, with your attacks on Google like “Google’s ‘Don’t be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit’” and your false claims that Google Android copied iPhone.
“I see some of these people jumping on us now. It’s like I am not sure what you are after here. Would you rather we were a Korean company instead of an American company? You do not like the fact that we are innovating right here in America and leading the world in what we do?”
Apple has outsourced most of its manufacturing and much of its engineering to China and other Asian countries; in what sense is Apple a US company? And why should anybody outside the US care whether they buy from an American company? What are your Korean customers supposed to make of your statement? Are you so parochial that you think of Apple as a US company and the rest of the world as irrelevant?
And how does the US benefit from Apple anyway? Apple has comparatively few employees in the US and Apple also doesn’t fund research much anymore: you closed your research labs, you don’t hire Ph.D.’s in research positions, you don’t publish, and you don’t fund academic research. All you do is cherry-pick the best graduates and startup companies, patent ideas that were usually incubated elsewhere, and then pretend like your company did the innovation; that is, you do that when you don’t just outright clone your competitors and pretend you invented it all. Or, in your own words, Steve Jobs: “We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” Yes, indeed, you have been.
“I look at this whole ‘Antennagate’ thing and say ‘wow.’ Apple’s been around for 34 years, haven’t we earned the credibiity and trust from some of the press to give us a little bit of the benefit of the doubt?”
As someone who has been an Apple customer on and off during that time, there is indeed no doubt and your record speaks for itself. Although you often release nicely designed products, you also screw up in big ways by releasing products with fundamental design flaws: the Apple III, the Apple Lisa, and the Titanium Powerbook are examples. Of course, some of your design flaws are deliberate, such as when you save engineering effort by basing your products on open standards, but then introducing deliberate incompatibilities. And your PR department has a record of lying. Now, with the App Store, we can add censorship and restrictions on programming freedom to your list of offenses.
