Steve Jobs was a marketer par excellence. No one could deny that, but let's move past the cult of St Steve and look at the reality behind the legend. He was no kind of innovator; like his mate, Bill Gates, he took existing technologies, put his own gloss on them and marketed them with unquestioned genius.
He took the concept of the walled garden and turned it into a walled Alcatraz with shiny bits to make it look attractive to the inmates. He took the US's dramatically broken patent system and used it and Apple's deep pockets to relentlessly suppress innovation by competitors. His company profited from employing Asian sweatshops that abused and underpaid workers. He was one of the richest men in the world yet had no recorded donations to charity, and when he returned to Apple he stopped the company's philanthropic program.
Claims that he changed the way we look at music, the internet, computing are simply rubbish - there were, are, and will continue to be devices that perform all those functions as well as and, in many cases, far better, than anything made by Apple. His true and sole genius is amply demonstrated by the fact that, at his unfortunate and untimely death, the world's media and politicians have obediently trotted out the Apple advertising department's hagiography.
Sorry, but thats nothing to be proud of. All you Apple fans buying into the hype might like to take a harder look.
(Thanks to Fred Pilcher from whom I borrowed much of this text).
