What Would Steve Jobs Do?

You can say whatever you want about Steve Jobs. He possibly wasn't a pleasant person to be around, and he definitely wasn't a pleasant boss. You can even say that he was an idiot many times. I have no doubt that, in his situation, I wouldn't have died from something easily treatable by common medicine because I opted for "alternative methods.". I also wouldn't have had a diet so bad that possibly caused the issue in the first place.

But one thing is almost an irrefutable truth about Steve, which is that he cared, a LOT, about making a product that he found enjoyable to use. Maybe out of ego, maybe to try to maximize profit, but invariably, the last word to launch something was "Steve approved."

Since around 2015, my perception of technology has been increasingly shifting from "how cool and amazing, I'm looking forward to 10 years from now when it gets even better" to "how do I minimize my contact with devices that have screens as much as possible, and not lose total contact with society."

I think everyone will agree that the internet is exhausting. That everything is battling for our attention and money all the time, and that it wasn't like this before, or at least it was much more poorly optimized. Which in this case is better. Old books are terribly optimized to battle for my attention compared to TikTok, and that in part makes them a better experience. Looking at a wall freshly painted with paint and watching the paint dry has been a more pleasant experience than using my cell phone.

And this conjuncture makes me wonder, perhaps naively, "what would Steve Jobs think about this?". You can imagine Steve as a heartless billionaire who seeks profit maximization, and that's probably correct. But you can also imagine Steve Jobs as a hippie who used LSD, believed in alternative medicine, and who would probably hate being a technology user in 2025. And I'm sure that's correct.

Would he at some point receive a push notification from a news app that says "URGENT: KIM KARDASHIAN…", realize that there is something deeply wrong, and decree "enough of this nonsense, we're going to put an end to it". Or would the profit margins on the app store speak louder? Ultimately, even if he wanted to, would he have the power to do this without being fired from his own company again? Is there any single person with enough power to influence one of the largest industries in the world?

This question is a black swan question. I don't believe there is a single person who would be able to get us out of this situation. In our analogy, I don't believe the black swan exists. But, if tomorrow Tim Cook decides to launch the iPhone Retro 2008 edition and try to swallow the smartphone market by providing something more pleasant, less brainrot, and more human, then the black swan would come to exist.

The interesting thing about the question "what would Steve do" is that the exercise of putting yourself in the mind of someone who could unilaterally alter our relationship with our cell phone has the power to reveal "what would I do to make this device and my relationship with it more pleasant."