Make the world a better place
The people smile, the piano plays its hopeful tune, and the soothing voice-over starts to speak: This is the greatest thing we’ve ever done.
We’re all used to Silicon Valley producing slick promotional video’s. Apple took the genre to a whole new level on Monday at it’s developers’ conference WWDC.
A hundred billion App Store downloads is a lot, as is 30 billion dollars paid out to developers. Third-party apps on computing platforms aren’t new, of course, but the way Apple put its App Store together and even managed to get people to pay for apps is impressive.
Befitting Apple’s keynote style, such good news calls for a video. One in which Apple executives and celebrities praise the company for its brilliant products.
So far, so routine. Those who aren’t adherents of the Apple Faith may have grown weary of the shtick by now, but it’s mostly harmless.
So when Neil deGrasse Tyson started to speak during Monday’s App Store video, I was right there in that keynote video state of mind, just surfing the waves of soft-focus photography for a few minutes in anticipation of the next big announcement.
Until deGrasse Tyson called mobile apps “a watershed moment in civilization”, that is. That took me right out of the zone. “I put it up there with the invention of the microscope and the telescope”, he continued.
Hang on there, Neil. You’re a respected, objective science communicator. Your tv-programs are fantastic because you describe the undeniable laws of nature and its many remaining mysteries in compelling detail, without yielding to outside pressure on issues like climate change and evolution. Presumably you’re not being paid by a bunch of billionaires to pretend their latest business model is a world-changing idea.
I love apps. How else would I be able to Snap dickpicks semi-privately or release my opinions in rapid emoji-filled bursts? How else would I be able to read a newspaper on the subway? (Oh, right.)
Seconds later, deGrasse Tyson turned out to be the least of the problem. Apple also trots out McKinsey’s James Manyika in the video, who starts off his quote with a phrase that should never be heard at tech conferences: “If you think the industrial revolution was transformational…”
I wasn’t in San Francisco for WWDC, but I can only imagine the crowd at the keynote either fell silent or started howling uncontrollably as he finished that sentence: “…the App Store is way bigger.”
It requires a special kind of chutzpah to compare any innovation to the industrial revolution. But to actually suggest that a collection of apps — a million or so fart soundboards, greedy casual games, and programs that help you get through you email a fraction faster — is anywhere close to the industrial revolution is beyond delusional.
Manyika tries to qualify his claim by saying that uptake of the App Store — to an impressive 50 million users in 17 months — is a lot faster than that of television or electricity. Never mind that both those technologies required the build-up of a whole new infrastructure while the App Store could use the existing internet. Never mind that when electricity was first invented, that infrastructure had to be created in a world without electricity, making the process a tad more arduous. Never mind that the internet itself is presumably a greater invention than the App Store, since it enables not only our apps but also everything else we’ve done on the internet, ever.
Oh, and have I mentioned that it’s kind of hard to imagine owning an iPhone if the industrial revolution hadn’t happened?
The fact that anyone should have to take to Medium to point this out is insane. Yes, there were a few chuckles on Twitter when the video was shown on Monday, but then everyone seems to have just moved on to speculating about the fate of Apple’s Music service and its high-tech timepiece (presumably the greatest invention since the sundial).
The rhetoric employed by tech companies doesn’t have to be ridiculous. After the Manyika quote, the App Store video continues in the usual mellow style, with Instagram’s Kevin Systrom praising Apple for making photography accessible to everyone and Citi’s Heather Cox emphasizing that apps are a necessity in every industry. That’s fine, and at least somewhere approaching the truth.
Apple has a lot to be proud of. They sold 75 million phones in just the last three months of 2014. People are throwing money at them so fast that Bermuda must be growing in land mass from all the stacks of bills Apple is sending there. And by all accounts, people who buy Apple products are generally very happy with them.
So let’s focus the video’s on that. We all want to make the world a better place, but keep your hands off the industrial revolution.
