...let it be this one. Go to iTunes and track down "Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at D5."

The old rivalry is now a shadow of its old self.

After you watch this, please try and tell me I was wrong about the Macintosh selling its soul, I'll laugh in your face.

Molotov and von Ribbentrop and were all smiles at one point too. Haven't seen the video yet, but I think I know your point. It almost makes me pine for the days when Steve Jobs was an overbearing S.O.B. who was a bit of a rebel, but one with refined tastes. Now you just sorta have the S.O.B. part.

I've barely looked at the iTunes music store and that's my first time looking at Podcasts. But anyway, I got to the "movies" section of iTunes (listed in the left pane) and in the right pane among 9 other movies is "Jessica Darlin - Blowjob & Tit Fuck" So I watched that instead of the nearly gibabyte download of Jobs and Gates at D5. And another one of those featured nine in the "movies" section was "tit fuck, hand job, blow job". Or I could have watched Abba's "Fernando" video. But considering how Jobs and Gates are often jerking off the crowd, it made some sense to me to go right to the porno videos for the unadulterated thing. And after a little more biking, I want to look like that guy in the "TF, HJ, BJ" video.

But then I went ahead and watched a little of the "Fernando" video because I really like that song and I really like that group. Abba. They are the antidote to rap. Their music is hopeful, loving, positive, beautiful. It is the dagger in the heart to those who think "real" and "serious" must always mean gritty, dour, cynical, even hateful. Sing it, Abba.

Oh, okay. I finally figured out that those are a list of some of the videos I have scattered randomly among gigabytes of music. I don't remember downloading half of these. I've got a Bugs Bunny cartoon that also shows up in my "movies" tab, but don't know where that came from either. Hey, porno from the gods, I guess.

Do you hear the guns Bradnandoooooo...

Yes, Jobs and Gates is a large download, but you can delete it after you watch it. Trust me.

What sucks is when I put porno movies on iTunes, I can play them there, but not on my iPod! Who's fucking genius idea was to make videos unplayable on VIDEO iPods? Ree-friggin'-diculous.

BN, if you don't want to download anything from podcrapstore, you can also watch the episodes here:
http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070531/video-steve-jobs-and-...ates-highlight-reel/

not that elegant, but works.

But what's even better, watch this. http://www.pomcast.com/
The Woz! He was also invited to D5 but somehow didn't make it... Woz is soo nice and cool. Jobs and Gates are IMHO lousy compared to Woz.

Thanks, smithz. I opened iTunes to do some other stuff and noticed that that Jobs/Gates Podcast had nearly downloaded all by itself in the background. I had paused it yesterday, but not cancelled it. It unpaused itself. So I've nearly got that whole thing now.

Yeah, Woz is definitely built differently than either Jobs or Gates. That's for sure.

Okay, I'm about 34 minutes through this video. Is there some kind of prize for making it to the end?

Okay, I'm 56 minutes into the video (about 2/3 of the way) and I'm going to have to call it quits. The do touch on a few interesting things here and there, but it's a bit of a bore overall.



You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.

Yeah, did I mention you can fast-forward through most of the bullshit? But there were priceless douche-chill moments I can watch over and over, like "what would you say is the greatest misconception about your relationship?...is it the catfighting, etc.?" And Jobs tries to crack wise with something like: "we've kept our marriage secret for years." (whistle.... ka-boom! <bomb sound>

Let's go back to your original observation:

After you watch this, please try and tell me I was wrong about the Macintosh selling its soul, I'll laugh in your face.

What is a soul? At one point Jobs tells how he, after he took over again at Apple, sold (or donated) their internal Apple Museum collection to Standford (or someone). He said he thought it important to keep the focus forward. And I can't disagree with that. Criminy, in the electronics industry, you have to constantly watch trends and hope to hell you aren't buried by them by being on the wrong side of them. If I made easels, crescent wrenches, or posthole diggers for a living, I wouldn't be quite that concerned with forward-looking trends and trying to maintain this focus by becoming myopic about the past. But all this is just BS rationalizing for doing things his way. And as long as his way makes money, he can rationalize anything he wants. And adoring, rather unskeptical crowds will eat it up.

But it's interesting to see some of those crowds (at least early in the video when they were doing a bit of a retrospective) react with reserve to Bill Gates. What has the man done but to help make computers inexpensive so that anyone -- rich kids or poor kids -- can afford them? And yet Apple, long the makers of proprietary high-priced computers, are seen as the humanitarians. When I see Jobs spouting his bullshit, at least I know now his only goals are 1) Ego gratification, 2) innovation, 3) making money. I think the idea of "changing the world" has been cast aside. And maybe it's just as well. You can also change the world by innovating. High ideals are fine, but what are they worth realy if Bill Gates is portrayed as the bad guy and Apple as the good guys? It's just another example of misguided religion. Perhaps Jobs has sold out, or perhaps he has matured. Probably a little of both. But what he ought to do is put to use some of that new-found maturity and carve the frivolous out of the Macintosh, and he could start by looking back some. And apparently by what some of you guys have said about the coming upgrade, maybe this has happened to some extent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKbb1qY5ON8

I was impressed that bill gates is actually funny. Did i post that here already?
Anyway, it's still great.

quote:

I think the idea of "changing the world" has been cast aside.

And yet that's the best thing about the personal computer.

In this video Steve seems not only a SLAVE to trends, but almost genetically incapable of seeing that the better stuff WORKS, the more money it will make. The only problem being, it's not EASY money. All through this I heard the subtext of how important it is to figure out what IMPRESSES people and then you've got them. That's how you measure success in Jobs' world.

It's not about really giving people capability, as it was in the legacy days... it's about APPEARING to. It's more important to sell "build a web site in five minutes!"... and having that mean "we build it mostly for you"... instead of providing the creative tools for innovation.

Apple always rides on very facile gee-whiz crap. Take "cover flow"... this was a little piece of sexy development for the iTunes store. Some intellectual everest for a spinning-gears guy. Now? It's going to be a standard routine for browsing files. It's an eye candy trend that is completely backwards in interface design. Going from the "wow" factor then trying to hammer it into usefulness.

Instead of creating usefulness and usability first, THEN worrying about window dressing.

The priorities are completely backwards. Which is why we are left with crap that doesn't really FUNCTION anymore. Not deeply. Sure, cover-flow functions as a snippet of animation, but I guarantee you it's gonna fall apart when people start needing to RELY on it. Will it stay fast and snappy in directories of THOUSANDS of photoshop files? Holy crap I hope so. But does it really save screen real estate or make browsing through our work more efficient? Faster? That remains to be seen.

All through this I heard the subtext of how important it is to figure out what IMPRESSES people and then you've got them. That's how you measure success in Jobs' world.

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. Ain't Job's world sort of the whole friggin' world? Isn't that how things normally work? Hey, don't get me wrong. I'm all for leading instead of following, for blazing trails rather than herding cattle. But maybe it's just a truth that the anti-establishment vibe that most people have when they are young fades over time. Then money and other signs of success become more important than ideas. I ain't necessarily saying one is better than the other. Just that they both seem to have their place at different times.

But in terms of giving people what they want, I do think someone ought to really make the personal computer a lot easier to use than it is. They do not yet pass the "mother" test. And I thought that was an interesting discussion they had about general-purpose computers. People have been predicting their death for some time now, supposedly to be replaced by a bunch of special-purpose devices. Well, maybe someday. But I think Jobs truly did a good job of outlining this issue, but I forget the specifics of what he said.

Giving people what they want is what business is about. And sometimes, of course, we don't know what we want until somebody has created something new that looks far beyond our present wants. That's what Apple used to be about. And they still do that to some extent, I think. But I agree with you if you were to say that these days they are much more about pretty-fying people's current wants instead of really pioneering. Me, I guess I would find pioneering a lot more exciting than putting together gadgety phones. And I especially like what you said when you said:

quote:

It's more important to sell "build a web site in five minutes!"... and having that mean "we build it mostly for you"... instead of providing the creative tools for innovation.

I was thinking just this morning about some of the Big Questions. Coming up with a definitive Meaning of Life that is applicable to all people and that can be deduced from what we know about reality is probably not possible. For some people it is their family. For some their job. For others it's the money, success, and/or recognition. For still others it's their art. And the only common denominator I can see in all this is the creative part. Hardly anything could be more literally creative than pumping out children, especially in this Darwinian world in which we live. And people are hard-wired to desire success, recognition, and ego satisfaction. In fact, very few people are very good at turning that desire down or off and thus satisfaction tends to elude them even while bagfuls of money sit in their living rooms.

This whole god damn world is always poised and ready to shape us into the thing that *it* wants us to be. There are so many forces at play, many which we remain unaware of. It's too easy in this life to be flying past the riverbank at 30 mph and thinking that you have provided all the motion, not recognizing that you're being carried along in a strong current. For those who don't just want more out of life but who want real life, that is when those creative tools come in handy. Tapping your own creativity is the best way to peal off the layers of outer culture and to tap into your own being. Apple, I agree with you, no longer specializes in this to the extent they once did. They give you the swim-wear for your ride in the cultural river. They used to provide paddles so that you could help steer your own direction. And I think the latter is a very very important thing in life, perhaps even a legitimate Meaning of Life.