Apple in Wonderland

Steve Jobs

I wrote the following post for another blog, but thought it was such important material that I would re-purpose it here for the Hand-Raiser faithful. LOL.  Enjoy my personal take on the whole Steve Jobs resignation and the subsequent predictable outcry of insanity from the Apple, Inc. and Steve Jobs faithful.

-Therran Oliphant, Hand Raiser C.S.

This isn’t going to be one of those Steve Jobs love-fest homages to the awesomeness that is Apple, Inc., so  if that’s what you’re looking for please click away.

Gone?

Okay, now down to business. When it comes to Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ resignation it seems as though the media has once again latched on to the shiny object like a Walleye to a lure in a Michigan Lake.  While I have all of the respect in the world for Steve Jobs, I’m no slappy so I feel it is my duty to clear up some of the fairytale ridiculousness I’ve been hearing and reading over the past 12 hours.

1. No, Apple did not invent the smartphone, Palm did. We all just dropped Palm like a bad habit when the iPhone came out. Well, really when the Pocket PC came out but that’s another story.
2. iPods did, however, change the music industry forever. The idea of an online store (iTunes) with a device that automatically downloads the purchased (pirated in the early days)  file from a hardrive for portability – genius!
3. The tablet has probably changed mobile computing into a paradigm shift none of us are truly prepared to handle. That was all Steve Jobs and his R&D team at Apple. Meanwhile the Windows squad was still trying to stick us into a smaller laptop. Failed notebooks, much?
4. Doing business with Apple can be horrendous for the developers and advertisers that pay the bills to make all those apps we’re addicted to, available. Someone should do something about Apple owning every piece of revenue associated within their walled neighborhood of Apple-dom.
5. No, Tim Cook is not going to be the new less glitchy CEO model, only to be replaced by a slightly cooler faster CEO in 6 months.

When it’s all said and done, we only care about the money, so continue to invest in, and advertise on, Apple Inc. They have staying power and should rebound after this slight trauma. Heck, Jobs is still on the Board of Directors. I don’t think things will go too far awry. It should be interesting to see if Cook takes the company in a direction toward social media or if they stick to the core revenue tenets of display advertising revenue, selling their own hardware and making software that lives on the Apple system. It’s scary outside of the walled neighborhood.

What direction do you think Apple will go without CEO Jobs? Will Tim Cook start wearing turtle necks, or is it still too soon? Find out next time, when Apple reboots itself three times and finds its way home.

I would finally like to wish Steve Jobs good health; Apple villainy aside, I hope he stays healthy for himself and his family.