Apple Demystified

This article is a brief examination of Apple’s strategies before and after Steve Jobs’s death. Steve had many qualities: he was a talented visionary and as Apple put it: a good Editor in Chief. And I might also add, a distortionist of sorts. – This is an allusion to his famous self professed ‘’reality distortion field.’’ It is this last quality that is the focus of this article.

His reality distortion field or RDF was both a stage craft and an aura which he employed to perfect excess. It made him seem untouchable and unshakable and by implication, his association with anything at all lent it an air of endorsement and validation that few dared to question. In his official biography by Walter Isaacson, he said he had been working on a TV and that he finally ‘cracked’ the interface. If Steve did indeed design a TV and cracked the code, why hasn’t it been released or at least unveiled? This fabled TV is fast becoming the sasquatch of both the tech and consumer electronics industries and has also led other players in the industry to release some new designs some of which are inspiring and some which aren’t. The downside here for Apple is that whatever TV they’ve made, if it exists, would have little chance of besting what the competition has already released. All that talk about Steve ‘cracking the code’ is the exact kind of hype Apple uses to herald the announcement of new products. From the release of the biography till date, Apple has done nothing to officially confirm or deny the existence of the TV. Unofficial comments have been made but these only seem to increase the company’s allure and also to jack up its share price. Could it be that there is no such TV in Apple’s labs?

Shortly after his death and the release of the iPhone 4S in October 2011, several journalists have cited inside sources that claim that due to his failing health and imminent death, Steve didn’t work on the iPhone 4S but chose instead to work on the next major version and as they put it, ‘’he worked closely on it’’ and it was ‘’his last big project’’. If this is true, why was Apple in May 2012 still testing prototypes of different screen sizes for a device that Steve Jobs had intimately worked on from conception to final design? Could it be that in reality, he didn’t work on any such phone? Of course, attaching his name to the iPhone 5 would give it stratospheric levels of authenticity, ingenuity, high volume of sales, and of course, jack up their share price yet again. And from all the leaked prototypes we’ve seen, the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 are neither revolutionary nor jaw-dropping. Where is the legacy that was spoken of? All of this brings me to the iPad.

The iPad is Apple’s latest success story. Now in its third incarnation, it has continued to sell very very well. That’s all well and good except for a bit of RDF based controversy surrounding its form factor and that of the main rival of its first generation, the Samsung Galaxy Tab P1000. The P1000 is a 7 inch tablet compared to Apple’s 9.7 inch iPad. Steve reckoned that the user interface of the iPad could not work on a 7 inch screen as the screen was too small and  is famously quoted as saying that 7 inch tablets should come with sandpaper as users would have to “sand-down their fingers” to be able to user a 7 inch tablet. This to me was and still is utter nonsense and reeks of outright dishonesty. The dishonesty here is right up there with Stephen Elop’s burning platform missive and perhaps represents Steve Job’s reality distortion at its peak. A 7 inch screen is deemed too small to run the interface of the iPad and yet the very same interface was and is still running on 3.5 inch iPhones and iPods! The RDF seems to have continued with the third version of the tablet being deceptively labeled as 4G capable when in actual fact, it isn’t. The company has been fined for this deceptive marketing in Australia. Talk about distorting reality. 

It has also been said that Apple doesn’t do focus groups and consumer surveys because Steve Jobs disliked them and didn’t need to anyway. Today we know different as Apple has admitted in its lawsuit against Samsung that it does in fact conduct focus groups and user surveys. This to me has taken away some of the shine and magic of the company and the allure of Steve Jobs.

Since his death, several reports and rumours have suggested that he left Apple with four years of products and almost a year after his passing, not one of them has materialized. For a man who derided 7 inch tablets, we are now being told that he became receptive to the idea early in 2011. Perhaps the company feels the need to attach his name to everything they do onwards so as ensure continued widespread acceptance among its loyal fan base. It would be academic to debate whether or not he did become receptive to smaller sized tablets. But the evidence so far, or rather, the lack of it leads me to believe the whole story was made up so as to ensure successful sales of a smaller iPad when it is released. With this strategy of attaching his name to everything, I am reminded of a certain character in LOST whose name ensured the utmost compliance, obedience and submission whenever it was mentioned. Jacob wanted it done. Jacob sent us. As I said earlier, Steve Jobs was a talented visionary and it has been a glorious twelve years for Apple. However, fifteen years from now, we might still be hearing it was Steve’s idea’. Right!