The Apple IIe was my first computer. As with so many Apple products, the look and feel is what I remember most: the beige, rounded box; the rainbow Apple logo; the feel and sound of the keyboard. It didn’t do much, but I liked to fool around with it. I played a few games. I wrote a few school papers on it. Eventually, I started to play around with some BASIC programming. Later, I discovered bulletin boards. It was exciting; it was cool. The Apple IIe would be followed by various Macintoshes and a PowerBook.
But Apple was losing its luster for me. After college, I switched over to a PC. It’s what I used at work and Apple no longer differentiated themselves from the PCs enough to justify the price. But with the introduction of the iPod, I returned as an Apple customer. I remember holding the iPhone for the first time. It was so beautiful and cool. I didn’t need one, but boy, did I want one.
Apple started as something different than other tech companies. My family didn’t need an Apple IIe, but it was too attractive to pass up. The Macintosh was more expensive and less powerful than its typical PC counterparts, but it was beautiful and friendly. But, as the 1980s became the 1990s, Apple had become just another computer company. Computers all looked about the same; they were uninteresting. PCs were as easy to use as Apples. There really was no reason for Apple anymore (and the stock price showed that).
But then came the colorful, egg-shaped iMac. It didn’t look like the grey boxes everyone else had. It didn’t have a bunch of ugly wires coming out of it. It was beautiful and it was cool. Apple was back. And so was Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs is one of the most iconic figures of the last fifty years. He revolutionized several of the most important contemporary industries: computers, cell phones, music, movies, and publishing. He represents the prototypical entrepreneur. He came from modest means and education. He was bold and brash. He had an inspiring vision of technology and what we all could do with it. He became fantastically wealthy beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
At the same time, he was known to be petulant, insensitive, and sometimes cruel. He came out of the counterculture of the Sixties and had a long-standing interest in Eastern spirituality. He dabbled in recreational drug use. In these ways, Jobs stands in for a whole range of values and ideas in pluralistic American culture. He was a barefoot billionaire hippy capitalist who changed the world.
Jobs set out to “make a ding in the universe” (The Apple Revolution, p. 43). Given how he has done more to change our everyday lives than almost anyone else in the last century, Jobs seems to have succeeded in this goal. Not all the contributors to this book are Apple fans or customers, but we all share an admiration and appreciation of what Steve Jobs accomplished.
Jobs was an outstanding achiever and a complex man with serious faults. This book is neither demonization nor hagiography. It is not intended as indictment or apology. The chapters are thoughtful, mostly philosophical, examinations, from different points of view, of Steve Jobs’s life and work, and their impact on our culture and the way we live. Together, they help us to see Steve Jobs in the context of the great adventure of human experience and reflection.