Kirk Hiner's

"When thinking differently just isn't different enough."

Steve Jobs is Not Your Friend

By Kirk Hiner

I spent Saturday morning, July 8th driving along the Niagara Parkway to Fort Erie. The sky was perfectly clear, and the water of Niagara was the clean blue/green of a jewel set amongst silver in a Kastans jewelry store window. My fiancee Tieraney was in the passenger's seat and Tom Jones was on the CD player. I think he was singing about "The Young New Mexican Puppeteer" when I had one of those moments, the type where I think, "Okay, if the bomb drops or the aliens invade or they make a sequel to Varsity Blues, let it happen now because I don't want to have to come down from this."

But sadly, there was no alien invasion, so Tom Jones quit singing and the Niagara Parkway, along with my vacation, ended. Luckily, Tieraney is still here. Despite her love of Niagara Falls, she reluctantly agreed to return to Ohio with me...just in time for me to ditch her for New York City and the Macworld Conference and Expo, or whatever they requested we call it. To me, it's just Macworld New York, a chance to visit my old stomping grounds. Indeed I stomped there (not in the show Stomp, mind you, as I used to get yelled at for banging trash can lids together so I'd feel guilty charging people to watch me do it) from October of '92 to December of '97, and not once was a Macworld held there. I remember visiting Mac OS Expo at PC Expo at one point, but it was...well...useless. The only joy a Mac user could derive from that event was by pronouncing it "Maco Sexpo," which actually sounds like the name of a guy who would do a Tom Jones tribute show in some back-end Vegas night club.

So now that I'm in Ohio, Macworld is in New York, and each year I return via car, airplane, alpaca or whatever else will carry me to the Jacob Javits Center. But this year I'll be attending the Macworld Expo with a different attitude. Over the past year I've had a revelation which will alter the way I experience the event. This year I know that Steve Jobs is not my friend.

This doesn't upset me. I certainly hold no grudges against Steve as I don't know the man. He has never invited me over for tacos and a game of Taboo. He's never offered to help me move, and her certainly didn't suggest I take his jet to New York for the Expo. Nope, Steve is just a guy with a lot of money and some business savvy and a few really good ideas.

But for some reason, it appears that many Mac users don't feel the same about Steve. They feel that because they buy Steve's products and decry his opponents while defending his vision, that Steve owes them something. A gift certificate to Bed, Bath and Beyond, perhaps. Tickets to a ball game. Or maybe permission to run an Apple related website.

No. Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. Not in the business world, not in the entertainment world, and not in your world. Performing an unsolicited favor for someone, whether it be to hold the door open for a pregnant woman at Wal Mart, to bypass the last steamed dumpling at the local Chinese buffet so that the boy in line behind you can have it, or to create a website of pro-Apple e-mail greeting cards is always a nice thing to do. But who really expects the same gesture in return? Now I don't create greeting card websites, so I can't comment there. Ain't no way I'm passing up a steamed dumpling for even my mother, so I'll bypass that example as well. But the door thing? Half the time people don't even thank me for it.

The same goes for Steve Jobs. All these Apple websites that popped up during the company's dark hours, illuminating the way for those of us who refused to step off the path, Steve never asked for them. As far as I know, he never even thanked anyone for them. And now that Apple is sitting pretty again, they're shutting many of them down. Why? Well, some don't represent the company in exactly the manner they like to be represented. Some spread rumors that can actually damage the company. Some compete with features of Apple's own site. We all want www.apple.com to get a lot of page views, right? The more people who visit, the better Apple looks. So can we really complain when Apple closes down a site that pulls viewers away from Apple's own site? No. We all want Apple to sell a lot of computers. So can we really complain when Apple cuts off relations with companies that sell used or refurbished computers, forcing at least some of their customers to purchase new Apple machines instead? No.

I hate to say it, but it's not about friendship, here. It's about business. Steve doesn't want a shoulder to cry on when he's feeling blue, he wants us to send a lot of money his way so that he can outfit his jet with a hot tub or one of those George Foreman fat free griller things.

I know that this doesn't seem right. I'm right there with most of you. I've spent over ten years now defending Apple and its products, and I sometimes feel I'm getting the cold shoulder - sort of like sending roses and love poems to your crush in junior high only to have her shoot you down in front of your friends at the Friday night dance. You can't help but get upset, even if the roses were fake, the poems were stolen Air Supply lyrics, and you never stood a chance with her in the first place.

So this year at Macworld, I won't be asking Steve to dance...continuing the metaphor there, of course. Instead, I'll listen intently to what he has to say about the direction of the Mac OS, I'll see what new hardware or software he may unveil, and as I'm reporting on all the gaming news I can uncover, hopefully I'll get to witness one of Steve's tantrums du jour over licensed Apple watches or posters or big foam fingers or what have you. As long as he keeps giving me products like my G4 and Quicktime 4, he can freak out over whatever he wants. And if he one day should freak out over Absurd Notion and swat me away with the gauntlet of Apple justice, I won't complain too much. I'll just close my Powerbook, grab a Tom Jones CD, pick up Tieraney and head back to the Niagara Parks.

Hey, I wonder if anyone has ever gone over the Horseshoe Falls while connected to the internet via AirPort. Anyone willing to give it a shot?

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Tuesday, 14-Oct-2008 06:32:34 EDT