Pop Cultured: Steve Jobs

Preface: I know I haven't blogged in some time, I'm just too busy.  I know that's not a good excuse, just as it wasn't the other hundred times I've said it.  Between school work and my work at my university's newspaper The Contraband, I literally have no time, nor the urge to write anything else.  To hold you over until a time when I might be more willing to write something again, here are some pieces that originally appeared in The Contraband.  I write a weekly pop culture piece, sometimes they are funny, sometimes they're not trying to be.  Although I think if you look hard enough you'll see some of me in there.  I hope you enjoy them, as I'm posting them one right after the other.

  
Do you remember a time when the word apple wasn’t ubiquitous with candy-colored, sleek technology?  I’m pretty sure that the word used to refer to something that grew on trees, and supposedly kept doctors away.  In fact the word has become so overtaken by the technology powerhouse of Apple Inc., that I’ve heard that in California (where the company’s headquarters in Cupertino are located) people are calling apple pie, just pie now.  Although as far as things go for the word apple’s public image, it can’t hurt for the red-skinned fruit to be confused with the most valuable company in the world, and the purveyor of all things that make life easier, and more stylish. 

   

This week has been filled with news of Apple Inc., both the good and the bad.  First speculation ran rampant on the details of the rumored to be upcoming iPhone 5, only for those guesses to be completely invalidated as the new iPhone 4S was announced.  Though, the most shocking announcement had had very little to do with upcoming products, and instead focused on the death of Steve Jobs, the visionary who founded the company and in whose garage the first personal computer was built. 

  

For Jobs it never seemed to be just about what technology could do, but how it looked, and how people reacted to it.  After building the first boxy looking Macs of the eighties and early nineties, Jobs went back to the drawing board and created sleek and beautiful electronics, which worked in thoughtful ways that most other manufactures hadn’t even thought of.  He pioneered the candy-colored iMacs, and changed the way we listen to music with iPods.  He made people yearn for the latest incarnation of the iPhone, and made us consider selling our body’s plasma so that we can afford an iPad.  More than just producing products he has built an army of loyal consumers; who will press their noses to the glass walls of every Apple store they pass. 

It is sort of odd to be speaking of Steve Jobs in this column that is regularly about celebrity culture, but he has sort of become a celebrity in his own right.  I’m just personally hoping that the drawer-full of lovingly used until they were broken iPods I have procured over the years, have gained some resale value in his passing.  I cannot for sure say that any of them were personally touched by Mr. Jobs, but I also cannot prove that they were not.  I’m hoping to make at least a couple thousand dollars on Ebay, because as I said earlier I really don’t want to have to sell my plasma to buy an iPad.  Trust me when I say that Mac nerds will buy almost anything with that famed half-eaten apple on the back.  I know because thanks to Steve Jobs, I am one of those nerds.