The Cult and His Mission

The Cult and His Mission

Steve will be missed to people like me, that never meet him in person but that were fortunate enough to use the products he envisioned. My condolences to his family and friends.


Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted shortly after his birth and reared near Mountain View, California by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. His adoptive father — a term that Jobs openly objected to — was a machinist for a laser company and his mother worked as an accountant.


The lead mind behind the most successful company on the planet never graduated from college, in fact, he didn't even get close. After graduating from high school in Cupertino, California — a town now synonymous with 1 Infinite Loop, Apple's headquarters — Jobs enrolled in Reed College in 1972. Jobs stayed at Reed (a liberal arts university in Portland, Oregon) for only one semester, dropping out quickly due to the financial burden the private school's steep tuition placed on his parents.


In his famous dialogue in 2005 to Stanford University, Jobs said of his time at Reed: "It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple."

In the days after Steve Jobs' death, friends and colleagues have, in customary fashion, been sharing their fondest memories of the Apple co-founder. He's been hailed as "a genius" and "the greatest CEO of his generation" by pundits and tech journalists. But a great man's reputation can withstand a full accounting. And, truth be told, Jobs could be terrible to people, and his impact on the world was not uniformly positive.


His accomplishments were far-reaching and impossible to easily summarize. But here's one way of looking at the scope of his achievement: It's the dream of any entrepreneur to effect change in one industry. Jobs transformed half a dozen of them forever, from personal computers to phones to animation to music to publishing to video games. He was a polymath, a skilled motivator, a decisive judge, a farsighted tastemaker, an excellent showman, and a gifted strategist.
One thing he wasn't, though, was perfect. Indeed there were things Jobs did while at Apple that was deeply disturbing. Rude, dismissive, hostile, spiteful: Apple employees—the ones not bound by confidentiality agreements—have had a different story to tell over the years about Jobs and the bullying, manipulation and fear that followed him around Apple. Jobs contributed to global problems, too. Apple's success has been built literally on the backs of Chinese workers, many of them children and all of them enduring long shifts and the specter of brutal penalties for mistakes. And, for all his talk of enabling individual expression, Jobs imposed paranoid rules that centralized control of who could say what on his devices and in his company.



It's particularly important to take stock of Jobs' flaws right now. His successor, Tim Cook, has the opportunity to set a new course for the company, and to establish his own style of leadership. And, thanks to Apple's success, students of Jobs' approach to leadership have never been so numerous in Silicon Valley. He was worshipped and emulated plenty when he was alive; in death, Jobs will be even more of an icon.


The internet allowed people around the world to express themselves more freely and more easily. With the App Store, Apple reversed that progress. The iPhone and iPad constitute the most popular platform for handheld computerizing in America, key venues for media and software. But to put anything on the devices, you need Apple's permission. And the company wields its power aggressively.


Reported the “ Daily Mail” at China With the complex at peak production, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet the global demand for Apple phones and computers, a typical day begins with the Chinese national anthem being played over loudspeakers, with the words: 'Arise, arise, arise, millions of hearts with one mind.'
As part of this Orwellian control, the public address system constantly relays propaganda, such as how many products have been made; how a new basketball court has been built for the workers; and why workers should 'value efficiency every minute, every second'.


With other company slogans painted on workshop walls - including exhortations to 'achieve goals unless the sun no longer rises' and to 'gather all of the elite and Foxconn will get stronger and stronger' - the employees work up to 15-hour shifts.
Down narrow, prison-like corridors, they sleep in cramped rooms in triple-decked bunk beds to save space, with simple bamboo mats for mattresses.


Despite summer temperatures hitting 35 degrees, with 90 per cent humidity, there is no air-conditioning. Workers say some dormitories house more than 40 people and are infested with ants and cockroaches, with the noise and stench making it difficult to sleep.


A company can be judged by how it treats its lowliest workers. It sets an example for the rest of the company or in Apple's case, the world.


Jobs did not lead a balanced life. He was professionally relentless. He worked long hours, and remained CEO of Apple through his illness until six weeks before he died. The result was amazing products the world appreciates. But that doesn't mean Jobs' workaholic regimen is one to emulate.


The way I see it, Steve Jobs will be remembered for having created the world’s biggest corporate cult, a cult so blinding in its hold that its devotees no longer cared if others were making more technologically advanced products at a lower price. As far as they were concerned, if it was not an Apple, it would never be perfect.


This is not to say that Apple devotees were mindless zombies. Okay maybe they are but you could not blame them, just like you could not blame a moth for flying into the flame. Jobs was that awesome.


Like those who claimed to speak to Gods, Jobs delivered Zennish koans and inspirational commandments. Like cult leaders, Jobs abhorred technological and organizational glasnost, used a fearsome legal team to pursue anyone who was perceived as a threat, even a nineteen year old blogger and was intolerant of criticism to the point of being petulant—he removed all books of John Wiley and Sons from Apple’s retail store because they had published a book about him that he did not approve of.



But unlike other prophets who merely promised great joys in the great beyond , Steve Jobs actually delivered in this life. Year after year, Apple came out with stunning technological products that shook up the industry with unfailing predictability.



How did the man do it? It’s impossible deconstructing the methods of a genius (if it was possible, I would be one) but one thing is obvious—for Jobs, technology was never really a list of technical specifications or about making a set of “See I do better than yours” benchmarks. It was about getting into the very head of the customer, to understand what exactly makes us “love” something.


Humans are drawn viscerally to good-looking people, who are also simple to understand and interact with us in a pleasant manner. Jobs was successful in engineering each of these things into Apple products—-they were always invariably drop-dead gorgeous, had very simple, intuitive”Why didn’t I think of that before” interfaces and provided an user experience like nothing else in the market. And once he had done so, competitors would bang their heads against the door as much as they wanted and scream in impotent rage “But our products have better tech specifications and cost less”—but to no avail.


Better luck convincing the Pope to become an atheist.


Creating this kind of a global religious reverence to something that is sold in the marketplace is unprecedented in the history of the world. It’s all the more remarkable when you realized that the basic idea of all this from the mind of one man, who blazed through the twilight zone of technology, art, design and marketing, in a way none has before.


Steve Jobs created many beautiful objects. He made digital devices more elegant and easier to use. He made a lot of money for Apple Inc. after people wrote it off for dead. He will undoubtedly serve as a role model for generations of entrepreneurs and business leaders. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on how honestly his life is appraised.


And perhaps, no one ever will.


SIDDHARTHA SHANKAR MISHRA,
NEAR PROFESSORS’ COLONY,
AT/PO - BUDHARAJA
BHIMA BHOI ROAD
ODISHA, SAMBALPUR