Steve Jobs, beloved tech genius for the ages, is dead. his legacy will include some of the most useful gadgets known to mankind — including the iPhone, king of them all.
Yet brilliant as he was, and rich as he made the people around him, we may one day look back and rue this man’s economic legacy. The devices Steve Jobs created perform such an insanely wide mix of different functions, do them so well, and render so many other manufactured products obsolete, that his net long-run effect on high-tech economies could prove negative.
Each Apple loyalist has his or her own story of how he first came to use and love Steve Jobs’ products. I will tell the one I know best — my own — not because I think its particularly interesting, but because I think it’s representative.
In the middle of the last decade, I was a PC user looking to organize my digital music collection. I began using Apple’s iTunes software, and loved it so much that I wanted to duplicate its audio management system on my portable device — something that was possible only if I bought an iPod. Enchanted, I then bought a MacBook Pro computer to replace my PC — then a Time Capsule to provide my wifi and backup my computer. I loved the way everything synced with everything else — and so naturally I also got Apple TV, and then an iPad. this year, I even traded in my beloved BlackBerry for an iPhone.
In other words, Steve Jobs’ vision of consumer technology literally transformed my life. Tens of millions of other people out there had the same experience.
All in all, I’ve probably spent about $10,000 on Apple products in the last five years. That’s a lot of money — but most of it went to just one company, its employees and shareholders, as well as the various offshore manufacturers that make the actual gizmos. Some of the cash goes to the store here in Toronto where I buy my Apple products (Riverdale Mac) and a few third party devices such as chargers and holders. but other than that, Steve Jobs designed a pretty closed shop.
That’s the furthest thing from a crime, of course: People like me gave Steve Jobs our money because he built a better product that was stylish and easy to use. we were willing to give up the freedom and cheapness and flexibility that comes with the endlessly reconfigurable tech free-for-all you got with a desktop PC. (Back in the 1990s, I spent hours every week swapping out various graphics cards, modems and memory chips from all sorts of different manufacturers — so much so that I would leave the cover off my desktop PC for convenience. By contrast: not once have I ever felt the need to open up any of my Mac computers, except to install a bigger hard drive every few years).
But back in my PC days, I also spent lots of money buying all sorts of other gadgets — because I needed lots of different beeping boxes to accomplish all the picture-taking, video-making, game-playing and what not that a tech-obsessed middle-aged man craves. I don’t buy those things anymore: Apple didn’t just kill my demand for the PC — it killed my demand for just about every other tech product not made by Apple.
A simple stroll through the apps on my iPhone tell the story. The iPhone killed my need for a Blackberry — that much is obvious. but because the iPhone comes equipped with an onboard lens and flash with high-def video capability, it also killed my need for a digital camera — something I used to buy new every year or two. this month, for instance, Nikon just came out with a gorgeous, tiny new unit called the Nikon 1, while Pentax has come out with something called the Q. In my pre-iPhone days, I almost certainly would have bought one of them. now, forget it. I can take perfectly decent shots with my iPhone, without having to haul around another expensive plastic rectangle than needs charging.
I still haul out my big SLR — a Canon kit that I paid almost $2,000 for — to take shots for National Post publication or big family events. but I find myself doing that less and less, out of a sheer lazy preference to not have any other tech to haul around aside from my phone. and so the iPhone is one more reason to delay buying my next SLR, assuming I ever do.
Nor do I need a digital picture frame (the iPhone and iPad both do a good job with slideshows), an alarm clock, a flashlight, a compass, a level, a calculator, a digital book reader, a personal electronic organizer, or an extra remote control for my wifi-enabled Samsung TV. These are all things I once bought every few years, but which I will never ever buy again.
Internet radio is an especially big ticket item: five years ago, I paid $400 for a big bulky wifi radio unit to put in my bedroom. now that thing sits in a basement, and I just use the Tunein Radio app on my iPhone and a cheap speaker dock. Ditto for the voice recorders I used to cycle through as a journalist. These things used to cost me $100-$200 every time I lost or broke one. now, I just use the free onboard voice memo feature on my iPhone — or better yet, for just a few dollars, the SoundNote app on my iPad.
And then there are the Garmin GPS devices that I used to buy every year or two (usually because they were stolen from my car) for a few hundred dollars. The free map app on my iPhone and iPad is so good that I don’t even bother turning on the standalone Garmin unit in my car anymore — let alone go to best buy to get the new model.
All in all, we’re talking thousands of dollars of forgone purchases — perhaps even more than the 10K I spent on Apple gear in the first place. and that’s just me. Multiply my experience times millions of other people with similar stories, and you’re talking real cash.
Yes, I have spent a few hundred dollars on apps over the years — which helps independent software producers, even if they have to give 30% to Apple. but the total amounts are relatively tiny, especially when you consider the software I’m not buying.
Gaming is the best example. a few years ago, my wife bought me a Sony PS3 game unit as a birthday gift. I bought about 20 games for it, most in the $40-$60 range. That’s about $1,000 worth of software going to big companies with lots of employees, like EA. but since I got my iPad and iPhone, I haven’t even booted up the PS3, let alone bought new games: The combination of portability, a multi-touch screen and full motion detection have turned the Apple devices into a shockingly good game-platform alternative for older, casual gamers who don’t have the many hours required to play real-time strategy games or first-person shooters. Games like Osmos, Monster Island, Cover Orange, Red Ball and, yes, Angry Birds have devoured hundreds of hours of my time — and in total, they cost less than just a single console game.
Steve Jobs, rest in peace, produced an extraordinarily useful and addictive device. In our hands, it feels like progress and technology incarnate. Which it is. but progress and technology don’t always translate to broad prosperity: All new developments render old technologies obsolete. The difference with the iPhone and it’s multi-touch cousins is that their combination of features — a fast processor, movement and orientation detection, location sensing, intelligent and idiot-proof syncability, high-def optics and image processing — are destroying, or at least crippling, about a thousand different consumer technologies simultaneously. That’s great if you are inside the corporate house that Steve Jobs built. It’s also great if you are a consumer, who can now fit a whole best buy into the palm of his hand, and pay just a buck or two a day for the privilege. For everyone else in the tech industry, it could mean trouble.
In other words, Jobs wasn’t just an icon of technological brilliance and visionary corporate leadership. he was also an icon of a winner-take-all era in which gotta-have-it technology actually kills more jobs than it creates.