The secret of Steve Jobs’ magical presentation style speculated to be 1 part Aleister Crowley in this interesting cameo as an archetype inspiring energized enthusiasm verging on religious fanaticism about products at “The apostles of corporate manipulation are everywhere“.

“An increasing number of us now agree that the universe was not brought into existence by some Judeo-Christian super-being. Sincere apologies are offered to those readers — many wiser than your correspondent — who still believe in claptrap (that’s the official scientific term) such as poltergeists, transubstantiation, divine grace, astrology, homeopathy and the Monasterevin Panther. But we do seem to be slowly, painfully drifting away from superstition to embrace a more rational view of the cosmos.

This does not mean we have stopped worshipping stuff. Just look at the hysteria that greeted Apple’s announcement of the new iPad last week. The late Steve Jobs’s presentations of his firm’s latest iThing became notorious for blending political rally with revivalist meeting. The addition of a second USB port or a minor alteration in keyboard layout was greeted with the sort of euphoria you’d expect to encounter at the unveiling of a sequel to the Decalogue.

The businesslike Tim Cook, current CEO of Apple, can’t quite master that uneasy amalgam of Deepak Chopra and Aleister Crowley. But the crowds still clapped manically when news came that the latest iPad would, indeed, boast the much-vaunted Retina display. Hallelujah! All praise the significantly increased image resolution!” [via]

“The analogy with religious devotion is not such a stretch. Our chosen product may be superior to the one on the neighbouring shelf. But it is iconography, implications of superiority and belief in superior beings that drive fanatical product loyalty. Consider the great crisis of faith that hit Apple users in the 1990s. Jobs had been exiled from Heaven. Unlovely pizza-box Macintoshes shipped with a gimmicky new push-button operating system. (Does anybody else remember the awful At Ease software?) Only blind devotion to the creed kept us loyal to an apparently dying brand. Then the saviour returned from the wilderness.” [via]

The secret of Steve Jobs’ magical presentation style speculated to be 1 part Aleister Crowley in this interesting cameo as an archetype inspiring energized enthusiasm verging on religious fanaticism about products at “The apostles of corporate manipulation are everywhere“.

“An increasing number of us now agree that the universe was not brought into existence by some Judeo-Christian super-being. Sincere apologies are offered to those readers — many wiser than your correspondent — who still believe in claptrap (that’s the official scientific term) such as poltergeists, transubstantiation, divine grace, astrology, homeopathy and the Monasterevin Panther. But we do seem to be slowly, painfully drifting away from superstition to embrace a more rational view of the cosmos.

This does not mean we have stopped worshipping stuff. Just look at the hysteria that greeted Apple’s announcement of the new iPad last week. The late Steve Jobs’s presentations of his firm’s latest iThing became notorious for blending political rally with revivalist meeting. The addition of a second USB port or a minor alteration in keyboard layout was greeted with the sort of euphoria you’d expect to encounter at the unveiling of a sequel to the Decalogue.

The businesslike Tim Cook, current CEO of Apple, can’t quite master that uneasy amalgam of Deepak Chopra and Aleister Crowley. But the crowds still clapped manically when news came that the latest iPad would, indeed, boast the much-vaunted Retina display. Hallelujah! All praise the significantly increased image resolution!” [via]

“The analogy with religious devotion is not such a stretch. Our chosen product may be superior to the one on the neighbouring shelf. But it is iconography, implications of superiority and belief in superior beings that drive fanatical product loyalty. Consider the great crisis of faith that hit Apple users in the 1990s. Jobs had been exiled from Heaven. Unlovely pizza-box Macintoshes shipped with a gimmicky new push-button operating system. (Does anybody else remember the awful At Ease software?) Only blind devotion to the creed kept us loyal to an apparently dying brand. Then the saviour returned from the wilderness.” [via]