Jobs’ legacy will live on
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Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
My high school math teachers lied to me.
“You need to learn how to do these equations without a calculator,” they told me. “When you grow up you’re not going to carry a calculator with you everywhere you go.”
Smash cut to my iPhone sitting next to me on my desk. Calculator, phone, Internet, camera, music player, and more, all in one place. Take that, Mr. Math Teacher.
The iPhone is just one reason I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to comment on the passing of Steve Jobs, who was a sheer genius when it came to mass marketing advances in technology into the mainstream.
In broad strokes, anything that you use on a daily basis that needs charged has Jobs’ fingerprints all over it. If you use a mouse or an operating system, you have him to thank.
He wasn’t the guy who invented the technology, or made it run faster or do more.
Rather, Jobs’ genius was the ability to see beyond the tech we had to the tech we should have.
There were personal computers before the Mac, music players before the iPod, smartphones before the iPhone and tablets before the iPad, but Jobs took them to their “logical, Darwinian end point,” as Slate’s tech writer Farhad Manjoo put it.
“…Jobs wasn’t Apple’s idea man. Rather, his role was to separate other people’s great ideas from their terrible ones — and to refine the best ideas into workable products,” Manjoo writes.
Yes, Apple fanboy-ism goes too far. Yes, open source is something that Jobs never embraced. Yes, it’s a little silly to be caught up in the passing of Jobs. But I’ll admit, I was more than a little touched by the outpouring of memorials — both virtual and IRL (In Real Life, for those non-Internet speakers).
Apple and Microsoft flew flags at half-mast after the news was announced. Tech blogs devoted entire front pages to the iconoclast. Facebook was littered with status updates on Jobs’ passing and impact. Like it or not, we just lost a man who has had a profound impact on this crazy, digital world we live in.
Buying American is un-American
“German beer?” my grandfather asked incredulously in a way only he can. “You should be buying American beer.”
Now, it’s hard to imagine many people seriously considering American brews superior to German ones, but my grandfather believes ardently that, given the chance between American made and anything else, you go with the good ol’ U.S. of A. every time.
With all due respect to my grandfather, I don’t think so.
If given the choice between a Miller or Budweiser and, well, pretty much any other beer, I’m not picking the “king” of beers. After all, I prefer my beer to, you know, taste like beer. (Which, if you drink Bud Light, I hate to break it to you: it does not.)
But I understand my grandfather’s push to “Buy American.” (This particular exchange was prompted during last weekend’s Steelers game, after the umpteenth commercial for Miller Lite.)
For him, the origin of the beer mattered more than whether or not it was the best tasting beer you could find.
And despite what Miller Lite commercials will tell you, these beers do not have “more taste.” Craft brewers notwithstanding, “American beer” (that is, mass-market American beer) is the pits.
But despite its obvious deficiencies to anyone who has ever actually drunk beer, my grandfather would rather drink Miller or Bud, simply because they’re “American.” (The quote marks stem from the fact that Miller is owned by United Kingdom-based SABMiller and Budweiser is owned by Belgium company InBev.)
So beyond the shoddiness of considering the market-dominating Miller and Bud as “American beers,” is not fealty to country of origin over quality, well, completely un-American?
After all, we’ve been told that there is nothing more American than capitalism and that the power of the free market should trump all. So isn’t buying American when the American version is inferior flying directly in the face of that?
If American beer makers (or car makers, or tech companies, etc.) want me and you to buy their products, they should make darn well sure that their products are superior to the competitors. That’s the American way: out-innovate, out-perform and out-do all others.
No one is pushing you to “Buy American” with Apple, Google, Amazon or Walmart. You don’t buy their products because they’re American; you buy them because they’re better (Apple, Google) or because they’ve mastered the market and offered better prices than anyone (Amazon, Walmart).
We live in a global marketplace now. I’ll buy American when it deserves it.
If you’d like to buy him a drink from the country of your choosing, Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandrad.com.