Hey, Apple fans. Do you like incessant references to Apple as a religion and its customers as mindless zealots? Well, too bad. One of them got killed.
Yes, sanity has prevailed and Steve Jobs’ official biography has been renamed from the execrable iSteve: The Book of Jobs to simply Steve Jobs. What a relief.
When the first title was revealed the Macalope didn’t even want to talk about it. It was extremely disappointing after trying to shrug off this stupid stereotype to have it be apparently sanctioned by Jobs himself. “Oh, iLord!” the Macalope cried, “Why hast thou iForesaken us whoops there the Macalope goes again.”
Thankfully, not only had Jobs apparently not signed off on it, the author hadn’t even signed off on it.
The old one, iSteve: The Book of Jobs, was chosen by Simon & Schuster’s publicity department. The author, Walter Isaacson, was never quite sure about it. His wife and daughter, however, were. They thought it was too cutesy. And now Isaacson has persuaded his publisher to go with something simpler and more elegant:
Steve Jobs By Walter Isaacson.
Too cutesy and too steeped in gag-inducing, overused technology industry tropes meant to be derisive to the very people who would be most interested in reading the book. Way to go, geniuses at Simon & Schuster!
The horny one’s spent a fair amount of his time trying to disabuse people—mostly lazy journalists with a penchant for tired clichés—of the notion that Apple enthusiasts are crazy religious cultists who worship Steve Jobs as their iGod.
Really, only a handful of us are. You know that guy. The Macalope’s not going to name any names and risk a Beetlejuice-like summoning because his mother always told him two things: never play mumblety-peg with a ninja, and never argue with crazy people.
Any-way, the point is, we like Apple and Jobs not because we’re iSheep and Steve is our iGod and we iWorship at the iChurch and, oh, holy iHell (which is Windows, hahaha!), just stab the Macalope now. No, we just like them because we find them to be better than the alternative. In most cases a lot better. They’re not perfect, just better.
You don’t see people writing pieces accusing Apple of forcing users to beta test their products.
Well, MobileMe notwithstanding.
The Macalope would love to applaud this move but it’s really just an embarrassment that the first title was ever even considered.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]