A Fool for Cool, Apple Simply Froze Itself Out

Die-hard fans of Apple’s Macintosh operating system--like me--have been on a wild, disorienting roller-coaster ride lately. And even with the recent announcements of major changes at the company, such as a new board of directors and a partnership with Microsoft, it’s hard to tell if the ride is headed up or down.

Much of the tidal wave of punditry that followed Steve Jobs’ dramatic keynote address at MacWorld Expo in Boston has focused on whether Apple has been rescued from near death by Microsoft, and Jobs’ return to control.

But Apple’s problems are far deeper than its lack of a clear business strategy. Its problems reveal a weird kind of cultural confusion in the high-tech industry, a form of schizophrenia about how we feel about technology in general.

Jobs, as impressive a salesman and innovator as he is, is a major part of the problem. More than any other person, he has imposed on the high-tech industry a romantic mystique, a yearning for “coolness” and an affinity for rebellion that are increasingly at odds with the cold facts of global capitalism.

Even now, after the beating Apple has taken at the hands of Microsoft and PC manufacturers, Jobs insists that this mystique is what makes Apple important. It must be the reason that Apple gets so much press, otherwise inexplicable for a company with only 4% of its market.

“Apple is about people who think ‘outside the box,’ people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done,” Jobs said in last week’s Time magazine profile of the prodigal son.

Unfortunately, this appears to be a niche market, and a small one at that. Nevertheless, this idealism has had a powerful influence on the way people in the high-tech and new-media industries think of themselves and their roles in the world.

But the unwelcome fact is that these industries are headed in another direction--toward standardization, routine work, industry concentration and the workplaces portrayed in “Dilbert” cartoons. Jobs still appears to believe that Apple should be a rebel base surviving on guts and esprit de corps. The Apple faithful still believe this too, many of them. But most of the rest of the world is deaf to this message.

Stefanie Syman, writing in FEED magazine, noted, “The fairy-tale world of saviors and swords, Death Stars and battle plans . . . ports well into the brain pans of reporters and geeks who cut their teeth on Zork” (an early fantasy computer game). But, she added, “such high-pitched stories conveniently obscure the less medieval, mundane things that make or break a business--savvy management, understanding your core product, keeping your staff motivated and your head down.”

Jobs and many of his fellow travelers from the early days of Silicon Valley regarded themselves as rebel warriors bent on knocking down the boring, buttoned-down, gray edifice of corporate computing. Thus came the slogans from Apple: “The computer for the rest of us,” “insanely great” machines and, of course, the infamous “1984” ad on TV, which was then aimed at IBM.

It was a tour de force of marketing and chutzpah--who would have ever thought that using a computer could be “cool”? It influenced an entire generation that eventually filled all the nooks and crannies of the industry, to the point that a majority of high-tech workers probably think of themselves as doing something profoundly different, and much more interesting, than workers in other industries. They’re revolutionaries of the “digital revolution,” pioneers on the “electronic frontier”--name your myth.

Steve Jobs is still fueled by this vision. His attention now goes mostly to his computer graphics company, Pixar. In the Time profile, John Lasseter, a Pixar principal who directed the award-winning film “Toy Story,” said: “It’s way cool working here.” The Pixar offices are filled with toys, smart people, ideas and fun. Who wouldn’t want that as a way to make a living?

People in high tech and new media thus have a romantic self-delusion about what they’re doing, while their industries follow the conventional patterns of other sectors of the economy.

Computer manufacturing, for example, is now a commodity business. Dell Computer has skyrocketed its stock price (500% in one year) by scouring the world for cheap, standardized components that are routinely assembled into workable, albeit dull, Windows machines.

Microsoft occasionally plays with the idea of trying to be “cool” (hiring the Rolling Stones to hawk Windows ‘95) but its status depends on remaining the Wonder bread or Acme Inc. of software. The new-media industry of electronic information is rapidly being transformed into a digitized version of the old media, dominated by the same corporate giants and purveying the same middle-of-the-road mush. The contradictions between the romantic, hip style of high tech and the way the industry is actually evolving is the principal reason for the panic among the faithful--the rebel forces really are being crushed. If high-tech and Internet industries really do turn into the dull monoliths they seem to be becoming, there appears to be no escape, no refuge, from a Dilbert-like life. That’s enough to scare anyone.

But who should we blame for this conundrum? The “evil empires” of boring computing and media or our own gullibility? Isn’t it time to wake up from the adolescent reverie of being cool?

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Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at [email protected]