I read this article written by Mr Roger Key, and I think he makes some clever assumptions, but there are two things that puzzle me:
The use of the words ”passionate” and ”emotional”:
There are questions about whether Jobs was alone in his passionate Google-hate and whether Tim Cook is prepared to carry on the battle in Jobs’s name. Some people think that Cook is less emotional and might seek an accommodation, but so far there’s no evidence of that. It’s likely that Jobs wasn’t the only one who felt the way he did and that some of his team still want the heart of Google’s city burnt to the ground.
I agree that Steve Jobs probably was very engaged in this matter, and I would probably also be able to use the words passionate and emotional to describe it, but in this context, it’s used as if the opinions about Google were ”just a passionate and emotional thing”, which therefore should not be counted on as a real matter. Real as in ”real business”. I think that’s a misunderstanding about business. Business is not cool and rational; business is about passion, emotions, and getting the right feeling. That doesn’t mean you can’t still have knowledge and experience. Quite the opposite, actually.
The more you know about a subject, the bigger the engagement, the more emotions.
The next thing that puzzles me is:
Apple can’t claim to have invented “roundness” or “black.”
No, they can’t, and even if that’s what it might look like in the juridical texts, I’m sure it’s about how you combine all these design elements and technical features to create a wholeness. It’s not about ”round corners generally on everything in the world”. It’s about how it’s used on the icons on the iPhone’s screen. Design and layout are about how you combine elements, and they’re also about how you use empty space in a layout. These things matter when you create a graphic or digital ”personality”.
