Custom-made shoes to fill

From time's deep abyss

It has been more than a quarter-century since I screwed my courage to the sticking point and resigned my sweet and secure civil-service position for a temporary academic appointment. Several people commented at the time that it was a “gutsy move,” and I admit that it certainly felt like one at the time. Fortunately for me, the temporary appointment eventually turned into a tenure-track position, leaving me to live happily ever after (mostly) as a full-time math professor.

My memories of this event were tickled recently while delving into the stacks of detritus that decorate my college office. The semester is over, grades have been filed, and no summer school assignment looms over me. Nevertheless, I have been on campus several days in a row because of a writers' colloquium being conducted by colleagues in the English department. During free intervals I have repaired to my office and sifted through the piles of papers and books, slowly sorting them into stacks destined to be filed, recycled, or shelved. This morning I stumbled across the job announcement that was issued when my state agency was seeking my replacement. It gave me a good chuckle.

The job announcement was drafted by the agency's executive secretary, the semi-competent and ill-tempered appointee who was extremely helpful in increasing the diligence of my job search. Until her advent, I had had a lot of job satisfaction in my position. She injected enough poison into the atmosphere to help me on my way toward the teaching position that I desired. The job announcement was a perfect illustration of the boss's myopia. She created it by simply listing every function I had accumulated in my years at the agency. In effect, she was advertising for someone who was my clone (although preferably without my subversive attitudes and tendencies toward insubordination).

Here are excerpts from that job announcement, shorn of the standard civil service boilerplate and thus reduced to the essentials of the position's duties. It brings a smile to my face when I peruse it:

Description: The Commission has a small, highly specialized staff whose basic missions are (1) to monitor the status of California's General Fund revenues, expenditures, and reserves; (2) to track the collection of federal taxes and receipt of federal expenditures by California and its counties; and (3) to issue regular reports concerning the State's short- and long-term fiscal situation and the impact of federal taxation and spending on the State for use by the Legislature, the Administration, and other interested parties.
The duties of this position are as follows: (1) providing technical advice and support to enhance the Commission's use of its computer systems; (2) being the lead editor of the Commission's publications and being principally responsible for preparing those publications for photo-reproduction; and (3) heading the Commission's legislative tracking system (including the preparation of articles for inclusion in Commission publications on the status of significant pending financial legislation).

Desirable Qualifications:This position provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate, expand, and apply expertise in the use of computer hardware and software. The position also showcases adroit writing skills, as well as providing the opportunity to identify, research, and describe key issues under consideration by the Legislature. Accordingly, the individual who fills it should:

• have a thorough working knowledge of the IBM AT and the Burroughs B-20/B-25 system used by the Commission. [Knowledge of Basic and Fortran programming languages is preferred, as is familiarity with the Microsoft Word, Lotus 1-2-3, Multiplan, and Ventura software packages.]
• write and edit well
• know how to track legislation, analyze its contents, and evaluate its financial implications.

Therefore, the ideal candidate would be a computer tech support person for multiple platforms who would also be the in-house editor and compositor of  publications (one job or two?), a prolific writer (a third job, or doesn't it count because there'd be much less editing on the employee's own documents?), and a legislative analyst (surely we're up to three by now).

I remember taking the job announcement to a state user group where I knew several members had the necessary computer expertise. Many of my fellow civil servants were unfazed by the necessity of supporting two incompatible computer systems, since many state offices had been infiltrated by personal computers in addition to proprietary networked systems. They nodded their heads when I read the first desideratum. They were less sanguine, however, when I tossed in the part about programming languages and desktop publishing. The writing component made several of them nervous because they knew of my background and did not relish comparisons. However, when I added legislative analysis to the package, groans were heard and questions were asked: “Is this supposed to be one job?” “Who is your boss kidding?” “Is she trying to ensure that the position stays vacant so that she has some salary savings to play around with?”

Of course, in a small state agency where the staff members wear several hats, multiple responsibilities are standard operating procedure. However, these job configurations develop with time and evolve to fit the capabilities of the people who occupy the positions. I certainly had not started mine with the same portfolio with which I ended it. My initial assignment was legislative tracking and analysis, mainly because I had just come over from the legislative staff. While serving in that capacity I acquired a home computer and developed skills that came in handy when PCs began to invade our office. Furthermore, it was during this period that I began to publish magazine articles in computer publications and math journals. This skill set of mine grew as I worked at the state agency and my job description grew with it. No one should expect many other people to stroll in with the exact same experiences and the exact same skill set. That, however, is what my boss was looking for.

The job opening was announced while I was serving out my final weeks on staff. My position remained vacant for a few months after my departure, until someone took a sharp pencil to the job description and made it a little more generic. At one point I met my successor, who was manifestly not doing the same job I had been doing. And neither was the boss, who had been sacked as the head of the agency.

Happy memories!

Steven Jobs loves you

That's why he hits you

Let us all give thanks that Apple introduced its Macintosh personal computer in 1984. Despite its tiny memory (128K) and sealed case (don't you dare mess with the innards of your own computer!), it was a breakthrough. The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center had invented the future of computing, but the company neglected to market it. Someone had to do it, and that someone was Steve Jobs (along with a gang of people with the talent to do the actual programming and design, once they had seen Xerox PARC's prototype of a bit-mapped graphical user interface controlled by a mouse). Bill Gates at Microsoft knew a good thing when he saw it and quickly tagged along (although not as quickly as he might have liked).

Apple's products are important and influential, but for some reason the company has never gotten the hang of mass marketing. Its share of the U.S. personal computer market is only about 5%. While 5% of so large a market is nothing to sneeze at, it pales in comparison with the market shares of Dell (28%), Hewlett-Packard (26%), Gateway (7.7%), and Toshiba (5.4%). Nevertheless, Apple has considerably more “mind share” than market share. That's probably because the other vendors are all under the umbrella of the Microsoft Windows operating system, setting up a perfect David versus Goliath image that Apple likes to exploit. The only two competitors are thus Microsoft Windows and the Macintosh OS. As we all know, Windows is corporate and clunky (as well as uptight and button-down) while the Mac OS is cool and sleek (as well as laid back and perhaps a bit stoned). Apple works that angle in its advertising and deftly defends its marketing niche. Everyone is happy.

That includes Apple's loyal and much-abused customer base. Apple has a long history of beating up on its clients, but the Apple aficionados keep coming back for more. The sacrifice is worth it—or so it seems—and the customers know it's their own fault. If only they hadn't upset Steve Jobs, he wouldn't have been forced to beat them up. It's the battered spouse syndrome as marketing campaign. And it works! To a degree, anyway.

Frankly, Apple ought to control the personal computing universe while Microsoft subsists on crumbs from the banquet table, but the greatness of Apple products is severely offset by the corporation's casual cruelty to its customer base. Is Microsoft dull and corporate, its enormous success driven by mastery of market-share tactics? Yes. Is Apple clever and innovative, its commercial success held back by its callous and insensitive leadership? Oh, yes!

These claims are based on both ancient and current history. Microsoft got its hooks into personal computing operating systems early and never let go, managing the transition from MS-DOS to Windows deftly (for all that Windows itself was not particularly deft, especially the early releases) and building a monopolistic presence in the corporate world. Microsoft's success with the corporate world was driven by its early alliance with IBM. Microsoft's success in the home market was drive by its willingness to sell lots of units inexpensively. You could get MS-DOS for any cheap PC clone. A million flowers bloomed. Today Windows is readily available on dozens (hundreds?) of different platforms.

Apple, by contrast, jealously guarded its family jewels and did not license its superior operating system for the clone market (except for that brief experimental period when Jobs decamped for a dalliance with NeXT computers). The first Macs were more proof-of-concept machines than usable workstations. Memory resources were so low that only short documents (up to 10 pages, if you're lucky, assuming minimal use of graphics) could be composed on a Mac. It has no hard drive and Apple did not offer one (or even the interface for one). Computer magazines quickly began to publish articles on ways to pop open the Mac chassis and stuff it with additional RAM chips. The modifications voided your Apple warranty, of course, and were sanctioned by the company only after it released the 512K Fat Mac (as most people called it at the time) and then only if you had it done by an authorized (and high-priced) Apple dealer. Apple has always preferred the small-market/high-margin approach to selling its products. It has fostered that approach with proprietary solutions and single-source marketing (Apple being the single source, naturally).

Can you hear me now?

Today Apple is enjoying the success of its new iPhone venture, which looks to be similar to that of the market-dominating iPod. (The success of iPod has even had the effect of buoying the sales of the Macintosh, bringing more customers into the Apple ranks.) Two of my colleagues are early adopters of the iPhone. I often see them playing with (excuse me, I mean “using”) their iPhones. During this month's faculty senate meeting, one of them was browsing his e-mail, his course enrollment rosters, and (for no reason that I could see) viewing his list of contacts. At least he wasn't playing any games. He had also spent a few bucks on an iPhone condom (you know, one of those rubberized sleeves; “for protection,” he said).

Both of my colleagues had bought their machines at the initial price, before Apple startlingly announced a $200 price cut. Apple also discontinued the lower-priced iPhone model less than two months after its release. That's taking planned obsolescence to a new level! Only the act of driving a brand-new car off the dealer's lot can be compared for the abruptness of depreciation. My faculty senate buddy was somewhat miffed about so big a price drop right after his purchase, but he was slightly mollified by Apple's sudden afterthought (in the face of consumer complaints) in offering a $100 credit (for Apple products only, naturally) to early adopters. The grudging rebate is also hedged about with limitations.

Why didn't Apple anticipate the reaction of its customers to the kick-in-the-shins price move? It's probably because Apple has always been remarkably callous about gouging its base and the base has traditionally been quite docile. The company knows its products are really good and that people will generally put up with the abuse. They have in the past, you know. It would have taken only a little foresight for Steve Jobs to have scored a marketing coup with the announcement of the new iPhone pricing. Had he extended the $100 rebate offer to first adopters at the same time that he revealed the $200 price cut, he could have graciously thanked the early adopters for launching the product so successfully, commented that they had no doubt reaped great benefits from having the product before other purchasers, but then noted that Apple was sharing its success with the early adopters by retroactively wiping out half the difference between the original price and the new one. Thanks and thanks again! The loyal customers would have swooned.

But Steve Jobs and Apple never even thought of it.