Steve Jobs was a great entrepreneur.

Clearly he was.

Jobs turned a dismal maker of a massive range of gadgets into a powerful and highly-focussed technology fashion and PR business.

The stylistic touches in Apple products carry the elegant and crispy palate of bourgeois minimalism, a fragrant bouquet of exclusivity and a delightful after-taste of subdued superiority.

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Jon Ives has created digital products that are very appealing to a big client base and also to a burgeoning demographic of affluent future owners.

The products are sexy; in an antiseptic and clinical way.

Which is what some people are looking for.

And which is all grand and good.

Because when it comes to oiling the wheels of the market economy, every little helps.

Actually the only thing I dislike about Apple products is an aspect that they have little or no control over.

Even if they wanted it.

It’s the cults and the sects.

The cults and sects that worship their products, their organisation and their ‘gods’.

I have a dislike of weird cults; probably all cults.

Because of what they are, what they believe in, and the attendant and unpredictable nature of unquestioning fanatics.

Cults and sects?

No, sorry.

Not today, thank you.

And technology fetish cults are just the weirdest of cults.

Apple’s products are fine, dandy and look good.

They are not visual pollution.

However, the sycophantic, fawning and unquestioning faith of the true believers is quite disconcerting.

In the same way that extreme political factions are.

It creeps me out.

Just like the reaction to a slide used at an Apple event quite recently.

Especially, from its “surprised … fanboys and non-fanboys”.

You would think they were anticipating the second coming.

The technical rapture, where everyone would be taken to Infinite Loop heaven.

That Bauhaus had just been invented.

In Cupertino?

I didn’t much like it.

So I “moved the problem up stream”.

And tipped the image on its side.

Then I had a laugh…

But it wasn’t much better.

But it was different.

Because it had now become tragicomedy.

Was it Nietzsche’s Superman goose steeping down the mall?

Or was it my Dad disco dancing to the music of Marvin Gaye?

So apropos to nothing in particular.

I was reminded of the lyrics that come near the end of Laurie Anderson’s song Oh, Superman.

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.

Stark, gloomy and futuristic.

I have nothing much more to share here on the subject.

Just that this hyper product fetishism might actually be showing that we are now living in ‘interesting times’.

And a timeless Chinese curse has become a reality.

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File under: Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Richard Jones, Martyn Jones, Cambriano Energy, Iniciativa Consulting, Iniciativa para Data Warehouse, Tiki Taka Pro