Is Fake Steve more interesting than Apple's real thing?

I suspect more people read what Fake Steve has to say purely because the real Steve has so little to say outside tightly scripted keynotes.

The exception to that might be when Steve has to step in to make sure that the Directors know their proper role in a stockholders' meeting.

I think the Steve Jobs' thong is  a hoot especially after the iPod sex toy brouhaha.

Still, the Fake Steve phenomenon is not exactly hard to explain.  Steve, as brilliant as he is, rarely shares any personal thoughts with mere peons like us.

Of course Apple's "enlightened" blogging policy reminds me more of the fenced chickens than it does anything else.  That being the case we are not going to hear any back door snippets of Steve either.

If Steve is the spokesperson for almost all things Apple, perhaps he no longer has time for any personal thoughts?

As the Apple world is ramping up for WWDC, most of the rest of the world is getting ready for summer and exceedingly high gas prices.  If you ask one hundred people what WWDC stands for, I'm pretty sure you'll only find one or two that know the answer even if Apple's market share is rising from oblivion.

That reminds of the odd paradox that WWDC often brought to internal Apple people, especially those of us on the east coast.  It was the only time that I thought perhaps Steve Jobs was actually a little insecure.

Each year we would go through a charade of trying to prepare customers for the possibly-maybe opportunity of being invited to our facility to see whatever Steve had decided to let the developers of the world and a selected few see.

Since federal government CIOs (and in fact every CIO that I know) are busy folks, they often do not want to take the time to see something which has nothing to do with their mission. Having an event where you don't know the content of the main speaker is challenging to sell to anyone but the already faithful.

But every year we sold precisely that idea of listening to Steve successfully. We always had some very important people who wanted to see the keynote but could not justify a trip to see an undefined something or other.

Thus we would try to get approval to have customers join us in Apple's soon to be abandoned 1892 Preston White Drive facility.

Each time we wanted to do this, it had to be approved by Steve Jobs himself. I distinctly remember (note to Apple legal, I have a good memory and don't have the email) that with one of the approvals came a copy of correspondence between Steve Jobs and Katie Cotton.

Steve was asking Katie if it was okay to let customers into the Reston facility for the  WWDC Keynote.

That almost floored me.  I had seen Avie Tevanian himself sweat bullets over potentially missing a meeting with Steve.  I was around to witness Apple vice presidents almost collapse in relief when they had escaped a meeting without being a Steve target. Finally I watched typically haughty Apple marketing folks almost abandon great projects just because Steve might not like it, or that it might not have perfect results.

Then here was Steve asking Katie for permission.  What was that all about?

It almost made be wonder who the real Steve Jobs is, the one who makes tough executive briefing participants melt or the one who could never come up with an answer for one of the federal labs when they tried to convince him to speak at their fiftieth anniversary celebration which they offered to have at Steve's convenience anytime during the year?

Maybe I'll ask Fake Steve Jobs.

Perhaps it's just fun pretending you are the all powerful Steve, even if he isn't quite as powerful as we think.  I had fun with the one post that I have done so far at I once was a Mac now I a PC.

Then again it could be related to the AP report today that this generation's salary is lower than the previous generation's income except of course if you are a CEO.  The only way we can feel the power is through a fake blog.

Of course, the men who run U.S. companies don't have too much to complain about.

Between 1978 and 2005, chief executives' pay increased 35-fold to nearly 262 times the average worker's pay, according to the report's analysis of Congressional Budget Office statistics.

And who is the biggest CEO of them all when it comes to almost any measure?

It's Steve, himself, even if he has to ask Katie's permission once in a while.

For any techies who have decided that reading Fake Steve for your news is a sign that you need to get a life, I can recommend two things.

First there are a lot of technology jobs about to happen in far southwest Virginia.  Think beautiful scenery, close to mother nature, low cost of living, and far from traffic and shopping malls.  You can find out more by going to the Return to Your Roots site which is designed to bring home all those college graduates who went off to get educated and never came back.

The second thing and even better decision is come to Coastal Carolina to forget Steve completely, the water and the beach are pretty inviting these days.  Fake Steve and his thongs and real Steve and his unlicensed black Mercedes are no where to be seen on our beaches.

I even have a nice coastal cottage just waiting for you.  :)  It is  cheaper than what you can find in Silicon Valley (or Silicon Valley east) and the neighborhood is better.

You can take a walk on the beach with the dogs, visit historic Beaufort, NC with its tall pirate ship replicas or just enjoy the sunrise and sunset.  You can even leave the laptop at home, hike a coastal trail if the waters aren't inviting enough.

If all this doesn't get the reality distortion zone out of your head, visit the huge coastal marshes of North Carolina Down East for some meditation.

It that doesn't work, you are a lost soul on this beautiful first weekend of summer.

Comments

[John Muir]

We've had $5+/gallon gas in Britain for donkeys years. Despite being an exporter! Indeed the guy who slapped the monstrous tax on it in the first place is being promoted to take Tony Blair's job next month. Such is politics.

If real Steve had a blog, what do you think he or his trusted PA would write? I can't think of anything because that's just not what Apple these days is all about. Fake Steve can make us chuckle … but the real one remains more folklore than blogroll. Somehow I suspect he quite likes it that way.