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September 27, 2005
Suck on Steveeez nuuuts.*
The only person who has bigger balls than George W. Bush is Steve Jobs.
Bush has an enormous sack, he's established that countless times during his administration. Doing preposterous shit that no other president in the history of the United States would do. The thing is, while it seems like he has huge nuts, he really doesn't. Reason being the moves that he makes have been calculated by others. He's got a cabinet of people, countless advisors, the demonic Karl Rove, and any number of other people coming up with crazy shit for him to do. Or, well, in many cases not do. "Hey, thousands of African Americans are dead in New Orleans, let's fuck around in Texas for a while just to really stick it to them," being one of the more recent examples.
Which brings me to the only man with larger balls than Bush: Steve Jobs.
The thing about Steve Jobs is that unlike Bush, Jobsy Jobs is his own focus group. He thinks something, he says it. He doesn't have other people decide shit, he just comes up with it on his own. Yeah, Apple has research and development teams and whatnot, but I bet he ignores them more often than he listens to them. The bond that that both men share though is that they each say some pretty insane shit. (Steve's shit usually doesn't get anybody killed, though.)
Steve's latest bit of insanity:
Fact: The iPod mini is the best selling MP3 player in the world.
Steve Jobs' reply: "Fuck the iPod mini."
It's kind of like that Onion article about the five-bladed Gillette razor. It's not even about fixing something that's not broken, it's fixing something that's doing spectacularly well. Something that's doing "insanely great" as it were.
So what happens? The iPod mini gets axed and Apple comes up with with the iPod nano. Yeah, it only comes in black or white and it's 2GB less in capacity across the line... what, what of it? Yeah, there's no FireWire and breaks compatibility with a ton of accessories, so what? Yeah, it's almost comically small, like 65% smaller than the already tiny mini, thus making it more fragile and easier to lose. Who cares, you're all going to buy them by the truckload, and you know it.
Most CEOs would get lynched if they pulled the companies best-selling product off the market. I'd like to see Sony's CEO pull the PS2 off the market on a whim and see what happens. Just for kicks. He won't, though. You know why? No balls.
The cojones were in full effect during the Special Apple Event earlier this month. I finally watched it. And as good of a show Nintendo put on with the Revolution unveiling, Nintendo ain't got nothing on Apple. (In the media event department or in the big balls department.) You didn't see Nintendo announcing a new product with two new corporate partners and then stabbing both of those partners in the back about five minutes later. (Thus the "screw the nano." remark from Motorola.) Nor did you see Nintendo singling out each of their competitors by name and talking about how they crushed them. (Probably because they haven't.)
Babak Nivi's blog (who?) has a a great article outlining what exactly was going on during the presentation. It's all about the subtext. Maybe Nivi is reading too far into things, but I believe him. His theory was this time around the usual "ra-ra iTunes is so cool, the iPod is great" portion of the keynote presentation was Steve's very public way of telling content owners to shit or get off the pot. Or, more precisely, team up with Apple or be destroyed. Probably pretty good advice, considering that before Steve showed up the only viable way to get music online was to steal it. Which doesn't stop the music industry from wanting to shoot themselves in the foot all over again by hiking prices on the iTMS. Idiots.
So will the MPAA follow the RIAA's lead? Piracy is still the best way to get movies and videos online... they should probably get on that. I'm sure it's in the works. I suspect everyone is trying to strike a deal with the studios right now... Apple, Microsoft, Napster, Real, the whole kitten-caboodle. Maybe Apple is getting nervous, thus Steve's not-so-subtle message. Who knows, though. Maybe the studios are trying to keep more profits for themselves and are each scheming their own online store.
The only reason the iTunes Music Store got off the ground in the first place is because it was Macintosh-only to start with. All the labels got on board because they figured it was a good way to test the online download waters without going in head first, and without having to invest any of their own R&D. As much as it pains the studios (and the record labels) to give someone else a cut of the profits, a third party like Apple or Microsoft is the only viable option. If a label opened up a store (and called it something like... oh, say "Sony Connect") no one would care, because people aren't gonna go to half a dozen different stores shopping for movies and music by their corporate owner. "Hmmm, I really am in the mood for Old School right now... guess I should go to the Dreamworks Movie Store." It's just not going to happen. Everything has to be in one place, and the only way for that to happen is to have a company not involved in the biz bring everyone together. And the only company that's proved it'd be able to pull that off is Apple.
Anyway, enough of this. Steve Jobs has huge nuts. I don't see how he can even walk around with those things. Two final comments. 1) Rhymes With Ditty is gold. 2) iTunes 5 didn't change the note color in the application icon. I do not approve.
(*That being a take off of "Deeez Nuuts" track 6 on Dr. Dre's 1992 masterpiece "The Chronic."**)
(**I'm white.)
Posted by pat at September 27, 2005 12:03 PM
Comments
One might even say he's a "loose cannon".
Posted by: megan at September 27, 2005 11:54 PM
Fucking-A brilliant, Pat.
Posted by: Hancock at October 5, 2005 03:11 PM