Could and should Apple change the world?

Ever since the big news of Steve Jobs' resignation as CEO of Apple due to ill health last week, some of the team at Octopus has been discussing the tone of some of the hyperbole. To be fair it's mainly been me whinging with the occasional disagreement from other quarters.

Steve Jobs was an amazing CEO. After founding Apple he (despite an interlude away from the company) guided it to become the most valuable company in the world - something announced just a week before he stepped down as CEO. I have never argued against that record, but one headline in particular has got my goat.

The Daily Telegraph headlined:

 Steve Jobs resigns: 'Apple has changed the world'
A quote from the good man himself, proving he isn't one for modesty.  But has Apple changed the world?  Should we expect it to have?

My argument (interested to hear your thoughts in the comments) is this:

-          Apple's success of the last 10 years has come largely from products that can only be bought by people who have the luxury of not just considerable disposable income but also time for media consumption.  A massive market and an incredible revenue opportunity that Apple mastered better and faster than anyone else; but a market containing a very small percentage of the world's population

-          Apple changed the way techies approach tech design - making it more appealing and useable for the rest of the world. It changed the way techies marketed their products - again, more appealing for Joe Public.  However it didn't drive down prices, or make the media that its products delivered/presented any more affordable or accessible by "the world"

-          (The radio did though - well done Fessenden, the first man to broadcast music - now *he* changed the world).


I strongly feel that, considering I "change the world" every time I plant a new lettuce seed in my garden, and my chickens "change the world" as they poop their nitrogen-y goodness into the soil, we need to have a few qualifiers behind who can make such monumental claims.

And in my book (pretty as their products are, and despite the huge rocket they put up everyone else in the tech industry's economic bottoms), Apple has not changed the world, or the lives of the vast majority of the population of the planet.

I'll let you have: Steve Jobs was an absolute genius. Because he clearly was.  As was Picasso. And in his tenure at Apple he and his team created some beautiful and ingenious products.

But I don't believe that through those products Apple changed the world.  Perhaps I'll let you have: Apple changed the technology industry, and the lives of folks with disposable income the world over.  

And as for the future - time will only tell what we will learn from the journey that Jobs and Apple took together. Perhaps within those products and approaches is a seed that will yet change the world…

Emily

chicken


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2 comments for “Could and should Apple change the world?”

  1. Gravatar of TonyTony
    Posted 01 September 2011 at 10:28:04

    OK he may not have changed the world - he certainly hasn't cured cancer. BUT he changed Apple and Apple put a cat amongst the pigeons (or chickens if you prefer) in the IT, Telecoms and Entertainment worlds. Sony had owned the personal music space but had let it stagnate, Microsoft would not have moved Windows and the PC forward half as quickly and as Nokia's recent fortunes have proved - it wasn't exactly at the leading edge in its R&D.

    So all of these technologies affect a huge number of our lives - not just the wealthy, and by driving these markets forward a lot has been done for the health of the world economies - at a time, lets face it, when highly paid and highly respected banking and finance industries was doing an incredible job of creating future poverty. When economies suffer its the poorest that suffer most, so lets not get too parsimonious about the price of an iPad - it's not made anyone homeless - and may be it has created a lot of employment in the manufacturing and retail industry around the world.

    Yes I'm biased, but I've worked in the IT industry for 30 years and seen more change driven by Apple in the last few years than ever before.

  2. Gravatar of JonJon
    Posted 06 September 2011 at 08:55:09

    I'm a massive Jobs fan - but i think that the fact that he is a brilliant showman, marketer and communicator is why some of the hyperbole sometimes can get a bit much. He's created and sold technology that is beautiful and has changed the way we think about a lot of things. But he has done it in such a cool, relaxed, Calafornian way that we all get a bit misty-eyed.

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