Apple, Jobs: Why I Never Cared

It's making the headlines all over the world, Steve Jobs, founder and longtime CEO of Apple has died. Every newsprint and online publication is coming up with its own, stately obituary, praising him as an innovator, sometimes calling him a genius, never afraid to say he changed the world. And truly, the man was important for our modern preoccupations, a great business and technology leader. His tragic passing at age 56, from a virulent cancer that could never be eradicated, even after undergoing a difficult transplant, makes the news all the more poignant.

From a personal viewpoint however, Steve Jobs and Apple mean little to nothing to me. I merely witness the reactions (and overreations) to his death from other people, from the Mac and iAnything users. I do not own a single Apple product, never have and probably never will, and this for a very specific reason that I will explain in a moment.

I had three opportunities in my life so far to use Apple products. The very first one was at a friend's home, when I was a young teenager. His dad had what I believe was the original Macintosh, with a boxy, rectangular design and a narrow integrated monochromatic screen, on which my friend used to let me play games like Shanghai and some golf simulation. It was interesting but not exactly mind-blowing, even back then. Then, years later, at my second university, the computer lab had a separate, all glass-paned room that was the Mac room. As far as I remember these were classic desktop computers, which most importantly, had color monitors. Because the PCs in the larger room had not and were running old, clunky versions of Windows, I ended up learning HTML and designing my first websites on Macs. Later on, when they upgraded their systems and it became more and more difficult to do proper versatile work on the Mac, who also had an increasing habit of crashing, I moved to the PCs and enjoyed the transition. My last, and much shorter Mac experience, was when trying out the newest models in some luxury shops downtown.

And that is all. I've never had an iBook, a PowerBook, a MacBook or any Book that wasn't a book, I've never even tried an iPod, an iPad or an iPhone. The reason why is quite simple, Macs and Apple products, from the biggest to the smallest, have always been, and still are, luxury products. There's the keyword: luxury.

When I was young, we didn't have a computer in my household. A computer, in itself, was considered a semiluxury item. The most affordable models were 8-bit computers like the Amstrad CPC line and 16-bit computers produced by Atari and Amiga (eventually I would get an Atari STe, when their end-of-life came close and prices fell). PCs, which were all well into the 4-figure price range, were in the league above, the "dream zone". I dreamt of the IBM PCs but knew I could never get one. As for the Macs, they were not even part of the dream; it was a tool for the rich, for such an elite that they would not even sell them in any department stores or shops. I remember thinking at the time: where can you buy a Macintosh if they don't sell them anywhere?

I never got over this association of Mac and luxury, mostly because their pricing proved it still held true. "You will find a Mac where money is", almost became a personal saying. I knew my friend's family was affluent because his dad owned a Mac, I knew this crappy university wasn't doing as bad as it looked because it could afford Macs, I knew I was in a luxury store because they sold Macs. If you don't have much money, you most likely won't be spending it on a Mac product, unless you have luxury cravings (which, mind you, a lot of people have). You will buy the Creative MP3 Player instead of the iPod, the cheap and sturdy Nokia phone instead of the iPhone, you will go on living without an iPad, you will buy PCs and laptops that costs much less than a thousand dollars or euros, instead of anything with an Apple logo that won't perform significantly better but will cost you easily two to three times more. People buy Apple products for the same reasons they buy fashion items.

To me, Apple is luxury before innovation. It's true that in recent years Apple's innovation has been leading the way, but as always, only to those who could afford it. Even the tiniest Apple gadget on Amazon, the iPod Nano or the track pad, costs about $50 or 50£. The way Apple affected me most after all wasn't by using their products, it's by affecting other people, who would then in turn affect me. The best example of this is Nintendo, whose hardware has often been inspired by Apple's own. The passing of Steve Jobs is a sad event, but what I will remember most is not the company he represented, that has never spoken to me, it's the human tragedy behind, that all the money, all the support he had, could not save him from death.