In the last decade Steve Jobs has transformed technology the way Elvis transformed music.
Everyone now dances to Jobs' tune. Where products were once announced at trade shows like Comdex, and sometimes delivered months later, now they're announced and delivered at Worldwide Developer Conferences, set pieces where CEOs strut the stage and, thanks to webcasting, reporters in the room and everywhere else are on equal footing.
The nature of technology has changed too. The PC era is over. We are now well into the gadget era. Client devices survive for the length of a phone contract, maybe less. They come to you complete, with no hardware upgrades, Floppies are gone, CD drives are gone, keyboards are gone. It's all done online, wirelessly. Even the browser is dead, replaced by “apps” that define a single site's interaction.
It's been a heck of a ride. But just as those who saw Elvis' last concerts could see the paunch, taste the sweat and feel the angel of death hanging just off stage, so it is with recent Apple Worldwide Developer Conferences. Especially the one early this week, where Jobs appeared to the sound of James Brown's “I Feel Good.”
Well, here are some cold, hard facts. James Brown is dead. Elvis is dead. Steve Jobs is dieing.
Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer back in 2004. It's a miracle he's alive today, a miracle made possible by a liver replacement two years ago that he hid from the public and hid from shareholders.
Wise observers say he seems to be in even more of a hurry these days, and there's reason for that. The bell tolls. It tolls for all of us, but pancreatic cancer is still incurable, and only 4% live five years.
Jobs has lived seven.
There are people who say Jobs' health is “baked into” the stock price. Tim Cook is a wonderful fellow. But you're replacing Elvis with Jackson Browne.
No entrepreneurial transition of this magnitude goes smoothly. Microsoft has floundered since Gates left, IBM was in the tech wilderness for two decades after Tom Watson Jr. retired. Most tech companies don't even survive their founders. Ken Olsen of Digital Equipment, An Wang of Wang, and Gene Amdahl of Amdahl all outlived their creations.
Apple has momentum. The moves announced yesterday were all accretive, like a late Elvis record. The iCloud? Clouds have been done. Putting iOS features into OS X Lion? Been done. Twitter and WiFi sync? Yawn. It's like the guy's doing covers.
Please don't get me wrong. I have an eternal fondness for Steve Jobs. We are exactly the same age, I have watched him closely at every stage in his life, the thought of his death saddens me no end.
But none of us get out of this world alive. I won't. Steve won't. Apple won't. Don't put your money on pretending otherwise.
