Hoping Jobs’ exit spurs flexibility, innovation at Apple

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Updated: November 4, 2011 10:02AM

I feel almost the same about Steve Jobs retiring from Apple as I felt when Mayor Richard M. Daley announced he’d had enough. I truly appreciate his many years of service, but I’m happy to see him leave.

I’ve been an “Apple guy” for a long time. I was attracted by its elegant designs and its renegade status as a solidly reliable alternative to the big, bad, clunky, reboot-every-hour Microsoft machines.

My wife and I now own an iMac, two iPods, two iPhones, two iPads (both with Apple wireless keyboards), an Airport Extreme Base Station and two Macbook Air laptops. We have spent serious dollars with Apple over the years.

To say that I have reveled in my all-Mac status would be an understatement. I’ve taken pride in belonging to an “elite” club. We weren’t part of that gigantic herd of sheep trapped in their cheapo, unreliable Bill Gates worlds. And we have style, man. I’ve always enjoyed the gasps of amazement when I pulled my paper-thin, stainless steel laptop out of my briefcase at the Statehouse or a political event.

And I absolutely love looking for new ways to use my iPhone to augment my political coverage for my blog and political newsletter, Capitol Fax.

For instance, I bought a tiny directional microphone that plugs into my iPhone’s headset jack, hugely improving the audio quality of news videos I post at my website.

I even bought an iPhone case that doubles as a sort of camera tripod. I found an Internet program (ScribbleLive) which allows me to easily live-blog with my iPhone when I’m away from my office. And I stumbled across a program, which I haven’t used yet, to allow my iPhone to post live videos on my website.

That little device has allowed me to become a one-man multimedia news network for Illinois politics. I’m doing things now with my iPhone that I could only dream about just a few short years ago.

But lately I’ve felt trapped, and I’ve thought about leaving.

There are still far too many files and programs that I can’t open or run on my iMac. And some of the Apple versions of Microsoft programs aren’t yet up to snuff.

The iPad isn’t really useful to me except as an overpriced news and book reader. I have the MLB Network, so I can watch baseball games for hours on end, but the iPad viewing options are way too limited. Neither the iPad nor the iPhone has nearly enough memory, and Jobs’ longtime hatred of all things Adobe means that flash programs don’t work on the devices. The Safari browsers on both devices leave a lot to be desired, and don’t get me started about AT&T.

Jobs also has the maddening habit of treating what can be accessed on his portable products almost like Thomas Edison once did with his newfangled phonograph. Edison had a monopoly on both his player and the cylinders that contained the music. He personally chose which artists to record. If your musical tastes differed from Tom’s, well, you were out of luck.

Jobs isn’t that bizarre, but he has certainly been a control freak when it comes to the apps that can be sold in his online store.

I hope Tim Cook, who has taken the helm at Apple, won’t bring the same baggage to the company that Jobs did and will open it up to even more innovation. If he doesn’t, I probably will be leaving. I’m just tired of having my choices limited by a benevolent dictator.

Thanks for everything, Steve. Really, I mean it. And I hope you live a long, healthy life. But thanks for retiring, too.