Dartblog

“In what would be quite a departure for Apple, AppleInsider is rumoring that the company’s iPod division is working up a foray into consumer electronics land next year, including products such as an iPod boombox,” went the lead sentence in a report from the usually spot-on Engadget.com. Turns out that Apple Computer may have an iPod-style boombox in the offing. Does Engadget writer Paul Miller really consider this a departure?

The small slip is the result of a major gravitational pull. It is known as the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, and it has less to do with the denim-bound activity of Apple’s with-it chief executive and more to do with the major media and the court of public opinion over which, at least in the consumer electronics market, it reigns. The relationship between domestic news bureau editors and Apple is closely approximated by the relationship between Bambi and the butterfly that flaps his tail with gentle kisses.



Wide eyed, we are told that soon Apple will release a product that is “quite a departure” from its regular line of business. Man, they really do think different over there! What innovators! But it’s a boombox. Apple already makes a portable music player. It isn’t a leap to a larger version powered by batteries. It is, rather, an entirely expected move. It sidles in on a lucrative accessory market, where currently Companies That Are Not Apple have been making dirty money selling white acryllic things with large woofers glued in. Of course Cupertino was going to start producing an iPod boombox. That it is seen as a surprise is a fat whiff of the ever-present Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field: everything Apple does, from changing the toilet paper to releasing an iPod accessory, is an event. Like Bambi, it’s because Apple is just so damn cute. Its logo is an apple, after all. And its leader is a man who represents the people. In other words, he isn’t Bill Gates. Steve Jobs is merely the 158th richest man in America.

He is also a monopolist. Why is it no surprise that Apple might produce an iPod Boombox? Because they already make the music storage devices. They already write the client software required to make said devices work. They already supply a good portion of the content accessible by said software. They already own the only operating system on which said software works properly. And said operating system can only be used on their decidedly overpriced hardware. (Have I mentioned the internet browser integrated into the operating system’s basic functionality? I seem to remember a minor contretemps about that.) Only a true reality distortion field could mask Apple’s massive vertical ownership. Only a true reality distortion field, doublespeak-enabled, will allow Apple to advertise that its forthcoming Intel-powered machines actually run OSX better than the Gx chips, despite their having been touted as offering the world’s fastest desktop computer. The illusion is simply incredible.

Very little of what Apple does is good for consumer choice. There are a handful of good products (though many are engineered elsewhere) but Apple assesses a hefty fee for usage of their white plastic devices: full buy-in to the camp. Most of the computing world left that era behind in 1990. But Steve Jobs is a rebel in blue jeans and the iPod has been on HBO Original Programming. With that kind of love, you don’t have to think different. You’ve got a reality distortion field.

Next company with a distortion field ripe for the slashing: Bose Audio.