Steve Jobs / Apple Cult

Jobs memorial; photo courtesy NY Times
I've always found the seductive nature of Apple products creepy, the way people fetishize their iPhones and laptops, petting them like a vain movie villain petting a cat.

It doesn't bother me as much that, say, custom car owners fetishize their shiny objects -- at least they built the object themselves.  And I love computers as much as the next geek, but it's not the same magical/mystical relationship Apple encourages with its sealed, candy-coated architecture.

UWS Temple

And I don't think the world Mr. Jobs has helped create is much better than the one he found, because his cultists come to believe that wi-fi is a necessity -- a human right! -- so they can stay in immediate touch with their petty concerns no matter where they are or how much it intrudes on others, so they can commandeer any and every place on earth, and help degrade our relationship to the physical world and others in it.  Now people consult their smartphone to see what's popular nearby instead of letting the unexpected happen; now people flee through museums taking pictures to flip through later, rather than look at the real thing.

At least devotees lighting candles for musicians (like at John Lennon's Strawberry Fields memorial) are in love with something intangible -- the music and/or the personality -- and not a shiny consumer object.

I think there's an important difference between the way an object makes you feel and the way a song or story makes you feel, and I think there's a huge price to pay when the world is given over to the immediate, narcissistic convenience embodied in Mr. Jobs' shiny "magical" objects.