I just finished reading John Heileman’s rather critical profile of Steve Jobs, and I have to say I didn’t think it was too bad. It’s definitely written for an audience that has barely even heard of Steve Jobs, so the rehashing of young Steve’s mean temper and early folly seem a bit over-done to the average Apple observer.
Still, I think a lot of the skepticism in the article is fair, even if I do think Heileman misunderstands what drives Steve to continually enter new businesses. Steve loves to make things that he wants to use — it just so happens that Steve’s tastes are often quite compatible with our tastes. And I guarantee that years ago, he started complaining that there wasn’t a single cell phone he could stand to use. Now we have the iPhone. This isn’t really about legacy — Steve has done everything he ever wanted to and more. Now it’s just the continual drive to make cool stuff that he wants.
But a lot of other people have a problem with the piece, particularly Fake Steve, who publishes the funniest critique I have ever read:
Sorry, John Heilemann, but when you set us up with a big cover calling me iGod and making me look like shit, and when you get half the magazine for your story, we expect you to deliver something new, something interesting, something jarring, something smart. In short, something we didn’t know before. We’d also expect you to maybe find out something bad, or to at least have the balls to say you think the iPhone is going to flop, instead of saying “maybe it will, maybe it won’t.” For that matter you might do your readers the courtesy of admitting that you hate me for arousing such feelings of man-lust in your tiny heart, and that your obsession with El Jobso is a way of masking (and, paradoxically, indulging) the hard-on you have for me. You might also just admit that New York magazine is just trying to cash in on the hype around the iPhone and looking for any excuse to put my face on your cover so you can sell more copies; but you think you can look cool if you dress it up as some kind of cynical, pseudo-psychological deep-think business piece.
Instead, John, you just come off looking like some guy who wishes he still worked at the New Yorker.
Right. As if. Friend, you’re getting an Azzie award.
Ow. I mean, OW.
Technorati Tags: fake steve, Steve Jobs
4 responses to “Fake Steve Nails New York “iGod” Profile to the Wall”
I think the piece could have used some more research and a few caveats (most of the sourced and unsourced people were competitors). It felt like the author just read iCon, made a couple calls and wrote the article without any due diligence. The whole “Google might buy Apple” thing conveniently neglected the fact that Apple’s current market valuation is about 70% of Google (with some analysts seeing Apple going to a greater valuation by the end of this year) and Google doesn’t want to deal with the potential anti-trust headache and ill-will it would create with its partners.
The part about the iPod having reached its “high-water” is blatantly ignorant of the fact that Apple’s profitably has increases by half a billion from iPod sales during that time period a year ago – with a greater net profit margin.
That New Yorker comment may not be in the pantheon of great barbs (#1: Churchill, “If you were my wife, Madam…”), but it still cuts to the quick. Nice job (or is that Fake Job?), Fake Steve.