Ode to Steve Jobs

Last night when word came that Steve Jobs had died – it arrived via AP alert. On my iPhone 4. In a restaurant.

When I went to the Twitter universe to get more information – that Twitter app was on the same iPhone.

When I got home I tweeted several late articles on Jobs – which I found on the 12 news apps I have on my iPad 2. (Most of them are on my iPhone too).

This morning, at the gym, I started writing this blog piece on my iPhone – on Word 2007. Courtesy of the Documents to Go app.

There's an app for everything now thanks to Steve Jobs. But maybe not one that says simply “thank you”-- for changing the boring, the mundane -- to fun, to elegance- to – well - iLife.

I got my first iPhone in 2007-- 6 months after it arrived. It changed everything. OK -- the iPod had been around for years by then, not to mention the Mac laptops and desktops. I had never wanted one of those. Nor do I now. They were always for people who wanted computing made easy. I started using a computer in the days of DOS. And I’m proud to have learned – and (thankfully) forgotten it. In the Mac versus PC match-up – I’m the PC.

But then came the iPhone. And suddenly I lusted in my heart for it.

Tomorrow I will pre-order my fourth iPhone. Although there is absolutely nothing wrong with my one year old iPhone 4. That’s the genius of Steve Jobs. I don’t NEED the iPhone 4S. Most of us who buy one won’t need it. We just WANT it. Desperately. The way a starving person wants bacon and eggs.

Take this a little further --- to the iPad. I would venture to guess there is almost no one who really NEEDS an iPad. Certainly I don’t. With an iPhone, a powerful year old Vaio ultra-light laptop, and several desktop PCs at home – you could fairly say I’m more than covered.

But again – that's Steve Jobs' magic. I could only talk myself out of getting the iPad for a year. Then I just HAD to have it. And I DO have it now, courtesy of my incredulous husband.

Wants versus needs.

Marketing genius.

In the run-up to the iPhone 4S announcement Tuesday, more than one analyst talked about the bond between a piece of glass and its owner. A bond many of them called “love”. Well – maybe not the undying, ‘til-death-do-us-part love. But certainly a kind of love. How often do I tell someone how much I “love” my iPhone? Or for that matter, my iPad?

And don’t be offended, iPad 2. But I love your smaller sibling more.

I carry my iPhone everywhere. Walking, running, hiking. Into the radio studio at work (appropriately set to vibrate of course). It waits in line with me at Starbucks – bar code app at the ready. It’s always willing to Skype my friend or business contact in Europe or video the bridge collapse near my home and post it to YouTube. It finds me a restaurant, buys me a movie ticket, tells me when the next N train leaves the Times Square station. I can read books on it. It alerts me to all kinds of news events instantly and gives me instant access to all kinds of media and information. It’s like a little friend who knows all, sees all -- and tells only what I want it to tell.

OK maybe I’m a little over the top. But remember when I grew up we were tethered to the phone line, the living room TV, the desktop computer. Each in its specific place.

The iPhone set me free. To wander the world as I wish. Virtually. Or for real.

So thank you Steve Jobs. Like most of your devoted followers, I never met you. Never learned first hand what kind of a person you really were. But I knew you were a person who grabbed at opportunities the rest of us either didn’t see, or were afraid to see.

You changed my world, Steve Jobs.

You changed everyone’s world.

And tomorrow I will do just what you would have wanted me to do – along with millions of others just as over the top as I am.

I will buy Apple’s new iPhone 4s.

I totally don’t NEED it. But I totally do WANT it.

The Record Industry Deserves to Die

The recording industry deserves to die a long and miserable death. Not because of its long-standing talent policies. I don’t have a garage band. Not because of copyright issues. I don’t share my music indiscriminately over the internet. Not even because recordings cost too much. I am probably one of iTunes’ best customers and also have an active Amazon.com account.

No – the recording industry deserves to die because it is so paranoid about someone “stealing” a track or an album that when someone does buy a CD ---it simply can’t be opened! Or to put it another way --- “It’s the packaging, stupid!”

Now as I already said – I can download with the best of them; my iPhone’s iPod is expanding exponentially. But when I’m driving long distances – I still like to slip a CD into the player. My Mini Cooper has a fantastic sound system.

Except – I can’t.

A new CD arrived in the mail a few days ago – and without thinking I wrestled it out of its seemingly steel-clad Amazon cardboard mailer (another column perhaps?) and put it in the car. Without removing the cellophane from the CD album cover itself.

What was I thinking? Or NOT thinking?

Of course I couldn’t open the CD. Couldn't play it when I wanted to. Had to bring it back to the house and spend 10 minutes with a knife trying to get the cellophane off first – and then the really impossible seal that covers one side of the plastic cover-- keeping the CD intact from the prying fingers of the person who legitimately bought the damn thing and legitimately expects to play it.

Why, I asked myself for the 100th time, would anyone want to buy a packaged CD when you can download one in a couple of minutes for less money – and enjoy it immediately???

As far as I’m concerned the record companies killed themselves with impenetrable packaging. They took all the joy out of buying a recording you can actually hold in your hands. Their way of doing business is as dead as the Dodo. And despite my collection of 78’s, 45’s, LP’s, tapes and CD’s (don’t bother Merv Block; I know but they just don’t look right without the apostrophe) I’m ready to give up on the hard stuff.

As I said earlier – the record industry deserves to die and I hope the merchandising wizards are interred wrapped in their own preposterous packaging.