The Steve Jobs Curse: How Apple’s revolutionary phone became its own worst enemy.
In March 2011, Steve jobs announced the iPad 2 at a special keynote event. He did something really unusual, something that he wasn’t known for doing publicly. At the end of his presentation he said the following:
“I’d like to ask all the people that worked on iPad 2; from engineering to ops, to marketing, to finance, if you guys could stand up, so that we can give you a round of applause…I’d also like to thank all of our families, because they support us and allow us to do what we do.” — Steve Jobs
From the start of the keynote to his honourable mention at the end, Steve went from his public self to someone who looked vulnerable. He was a lot slimmer compared to his previous keynote, very slim. The moment when Steve quoted the above, I messaged my friend Ryan saying “I think Steve is dying, he’s never done something like that before”, 7 months later, Steve passed on.
“It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.” — Steve Jobs
Five years on, Apple’s appointed CEO, Tim Cook (Jobs’ recommended choice) has struggled to bring something new to the table, his latest contribution being a smart watch. The Apple watch may be the best smart watch on the market, but it’s not exactly a piece of innovating tech— there’s that word again “innovating”, the word has lost all meaning to me. Whenever I see an Apple Keynote, like millions of people, my expectations are sky high, I expect something groundbreaking, but it only leads to disappointment.
Since the iPhone 7 announcement, I couldn’t help but think how far Apple had come since the late 90’s, when Steve came back and helped save the company from bankruptcy, to his final moments as Apple’s CEO. It led me to think “Maybe Steve died at the right time to keep his legacy intact?”, It sounds really harsh, but it makes a little more sense when you put things into perspective. Let me explain…
Let’s rewind back to January 2007. I’m sat at my desk talking to a couple of friends over MSN (remember msn?), one of them, Ryan, messaged me with excitement saying something along the lines of “Apple have just announced the iPhone!”. I didn’t believe it at first, moments later the news was reporting the keynote. On January 9th 2007, Apple changed the world as we knew it. Forever.
At Macworld, Jobs announced the iPhone. It blew the world away because the world had never seen anything like it. A few months before this event, the world was still gawking at the iPod, and amazed that it was able to play video! The iPhone changed the course of the future…in 200 years time, Humans will look back in history and label the unveiling of the iPhone as the point when Humanity progressed in tech. Technology like the iPhone was going to happen in our history, it was only a matter of “when?”. Today, I asked Ryan if he could rate on a scale of 1–10 how likely it was for Apple to announce the iPhone at that 2007 Keynote.
“3. I would say that it wasn’t expected. I remember being blown away by it” — Ryan
What Steve Jobs did on that morning was show the world that you can bridge science fiction and reality. Since 2007, the world has had a new generation of thinkers who are creating innovative technologies that are being used for pretty much anything across the world; renewable energy, safety, travel, home environment and so forth.
The things your grandparents, or even your parents read in science fiction books are now becoming a reality. Ask the average Joe in 2005 if they think they’ll ever see an electric car that can travel 350 miles on a single charge within 10 years…chances are you would’ve been laughed at. Fast forward to 2016, and tell the average Joe that a Tesla car can travel 350 miles on a single charge and they’ll shrug and ask “How much is it? How do you charge it when you’re not at home?”.
[By watching the full keynote below, you can hear the audience’s reaction when the new piece of technology is unveiled through Steve’s classic presentation skills.]
My point is that over the past decade, Apple have gone from groundbreaking to not so groundbreaking. The technology is debatably good and at times a bit of a game changer, but we’re just not reacting the same as we did when the first few iPhones were released, and I feel that Steve may have known that this moment was going to happen. I think he knew that at some point, the market was going to decline.
I think he also knew that the technology that his company created that once changed the world, would also became its own enemy…it became easier for people to take pictures of unreleased products as they were being made in Foxconn’s factories and have them leaked online, a leading contribution to people being underwhelmed during unveiling of a new product. You didn’t have that kind of leak with the 1st iPhone.
A classic example; when Apple’s iPhone 4 prototype was left in a bar and was sold to Gizmodo.
Steve Jobs’ legacy is really remarkable. The tools that were created under his command helped to inspire other companies to innovate and push technological boundaries. But right now, we’re a little stuck. The smartphone market is saturated, we’ve seen it all before, and if Steve was still with us, I don’t think he would’ve had much luck to create something that would dazzle. Our expectation threshold has been set so high, that the only thing that could come anywhere close to blowing our minds would need to be out of this world. It’ll be extraterrestrial life making contact with Earth for the first time. Because just like the first iPhone, it’s the case of “when?”. Ask the average Joe today if he thinks E.T will make contact with us within the next 10 years.
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