Steve Jobs – From Father to Demigod

The premature death of Steve Jobs, one of the most audacious creators of the cyber age, has moved the entire world, and for good reason, since the products marketed by Apple under the direction of its co-founder occupy an exceptional — indeed enormous — place in the daily lives of tens of millions of people.

Since the announcement of his death Wednesday, Jobs has gone from Holy Apple Father to Digital God. However, it wasn’t so long ago that Apple was given up for dead after having lost much of its popularity, even among those fans who still resisted the Microsoft tide.

If Apple has become the darling enterprise of investors, it’s because it has succeeded in establishing itself in the realm of mass-market consumer products in addition to its primary activity of manufacturing computers. Our first thought is the iPod, which has revolutionized the way we store and shop for music, then of the iPhone, which has overtaken the Blackberry by making texting and wireless navigation even easier, and most recently of the iPad, which gives a playful foretaste of the digital possibilities for a wide range of activities that have before now been confined to more cumbersome devices.

Thanks to innovative products of unmatched aesthetic workmanship with complex yet user-friendly navigability, Jobs allowed Apple to build a golden bridge between its traditional mission and the goal of supplying entertainment and communication products for the latest generation. Microsoft and the manufacturers of compatible hardware remain the preferred companies because of their low prices and the range of available software, but even this status could be taken from them one day with the introductions from more imaginative software developers at Apple.

That being said, this phenomenal growth has also had some negative effects, as happens with all businesses that wish to remain leaders of the pack. At the same time that Jobs left the scene, the expectations of consumers and investors are becoming unsupportable. We saw it this week with the launch of the iPhone 4S, which was “disappointing,” despite the fact that it had been introduced barely 16 months after the previous model.

Recognizing that he could not revolutionize the industry every year for the next 20 years, Jobs had already strived to maximize the residual benefits of his products by tying the customer to shops and other household gadgets. Recently, he also launched a vicious offensive in order to, at the very least, force media content providers to cede a large portion of subscription revenues to him, in addition to demanding information about their customers.

Some would say that by tapping into the mass market, Apple sold its soul. Others say that it is finally reaping the benefits of 30 years of creativity that have been marginalized by these same market forces.

One thing is certain, if Apple isn’t the same in the future, it will be less because its founder is dead than because the company must now follow the rules, which stipulate that capital growth always takes precedence in the eyes of investors, including over creativity and utility. Isn’t that precisely what made Microsoft, IBM, Toyota, Ford and GM what they are? In other words — companies just like the others?