It culminated in our 2011 Car of the Year, the Chevrolet Volt. Its “milk white” interior trim available in some packages its weak design point. I finally replaced my six-year-old milk white iBook last summer with a new, aluminum-case model. Milk white is history at the maddening Apple stores. It took me six years to replace it, because Apple’s design does not come cheap, even if everything is assembled in China. If Apple is like any car company, it’s like BMW, with less-expensive Nanos the equivalent of its Mini line.
After Steve Jobs died at age 56 Wednesday, pundits rushed in to compare the Apple co-founder and CEO to Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. First, let’s dispose with the Edison comparison. That would be Bill Gates, right down to the question of how much Edison invented and how much invention he oversaw.
Ford put America on wheels after he automated Ransom Eli Olds’ simple assembly line, though non-car people often think of him as the “inventor” of the automobile. The wired industry does have a lot in common with the auto industry, including the cliché about success having many fathers.
Like those who believe Henry Ford invented the car, I don’t really know or care about the computer business much beyond the past 40 years. Though I’ve been brand-loyal in my computer purchases for about 12 years, to me it’s much like whether I’d rather have a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic. Computers are, as my friend Randy Patnode would say, typewriters that type glowing letters.
But Steve Jobs as Henry Ford? The model Ford automated for production, the T, was designed to be all the car anyone needed. It wasn’t the easiest to drive, as Ford eschewed updates like self-starters to keep costs down. He shut down his big, automated Highland Park factory for five months in 1927, just so he could finally replace the T with the Model A.
Jobs was more like William Crapo Durant, the General Motors founder who was great at starting companies and building their cultures than actually running them … until Jobs became more like Alfred P. Sloan.
Durant founded GM in September 1908. He was forced out and replaced with bankers during one of the frequent financial panics of this pre-SEC era, in 1910. Then Durant formed the Chevrolet Motor Company in 1911, using it five years later to buy up GM shares and lead that automaker again.
Jobs famously started NeXT and Pixar animation after Apple booted him in 1985, and rejoined Apple in 1997 when Apple purchased NeXT. The Durant-Jobs comparison falls apart quickly from here. Durant regained control of GM in late 1916, then got the boot again in 1920 during another panic, never to return. He later launched another automaker, named Durant, but it didn’t survive the Great Depression. Durant’s last job was running a Flint bowling alley in the ‘40s.
Jobs said his ouster from Apple rejuvenated him. When he returned, Apple had negligible market share compared with PCs, but like Sloan when he hired Harley Earl in 1927 to run GM’s Art & Colour department, Jobs made style, fashion and design the signature for the computer company. Jobs’ 1927 LaSalle was his first translucent iMac from 1998, available in several deep colors when you could have any PC in any color you wanted, so long as it was dull beige.
Since then, Apple has elevated Sloan’s planned obsolescence to new heights. The company updates and replaces iBooks, MacBook Airs, iPhones, iPods and iPads with a frequency that would make Bill Mitchell jealous.
No Apple, no PC, no smartphone ever will give me the kind of thrill I can get from nearly any car on nearly any road. No new design can match the innovation or diversity of style of Model Ts, Chrysler Airflows, Citroen DSes, Porsche 911s, Corvettes, ’49 Cadillacs and ‘50s Buicks, ’65 Mustangs, Honda CRXs, Minis, Bugeye Sprites or Mazda Miatas. But without Steve Jobs, one phone or laptop or MP3 player would be pretty much like the other, and the only reasons for choosing one over another would be price.
No comments:
Post a Comment