It's the tenth anniversary of Jobs' death, and there are many articles to commemorate him, and I think the biggest change he brought to us is that we lost the classical Internet. In this sense, he is the greatest sinner in the history of the Internet.
I certainly agree that Jobs is "the greatest business leader of our time." Even in a place full of super technology superstars like Silicon Valley, Jobs's stars are still the brightest.
But where is his greatness? In a nutshell: He started the PC (here, I am referring to the personal computer in a broad sense, not the IBM PC), and then overturned the PC. In the 1990s, Silicon Valley had little to do with mobile technology. Today, Silicon Valley has become the epicenter of the mobile revolution. All this is due to Apple's development of the iPhone. The iPhone and iPad together ended the PC era.
January 9, 2007, may be the most memorable day of the past two decades of our century. Jobs took out the iPhone on this day, and from then on, Apple's smart phone has integrated the computer and the mobile phone. As a result, many changes are locked in a small mobile phone. At the same time, Jobs made something called the Apple Central App Store in the second year. He himself was surprised by the development of the app store. He said: “I don’t know if Apple’s app store will one day become a billion-dollar market.” By 2019, the number of apps in the Apple App Store has already Over 2 million, over 170 billion downloads, and more than 130 billion U.S. dollars spent by users on it.
As a beneficiary of mobile changing lives, users should thank Jobs. As a successful gold digger in the mobile Internet boom, many entrepreneurs should thank Jobs. No wonder, when Meituan-Dianping went public in Hong Kong in September 2018, Wang Xing "specially thanked" Jobs, "thank him for bringing a new era of smart phones and mobile Internet."
However, this new era has its own B side. Although in the process of migrating to mobile applications, huge end-user benefits were generated, but it also resulted in major disadvantages. In our original vision, the Internet was open and connected, but in the hands of Jobs, it became a "garden" with walls. The Internet with the World Wide Web as its core is open, connected, transparent and accessible; in contrast, the mobile Internet is closed, especially Apple’s strategy in the mobile field is described as aiming to create a “fully integrated Closed system", in which the company "maintains a high degree of control over the entire product ecosystem".
These differences in openness are reflected in the re-emergence of the "walled garden" model in mobile Internet access. The "walled garden" metaphor is derived from the early dial-up Internet access, when Internet service providers tried to limit users to their own proprietary content, rather than positioning the business as a gateway to the entire network. This early "walled garden" gradually came to an end, but in the context of the mobile Internet, the "walled garden" model made a comeback, enhanced by the explosion of mobile applications that bypassed the World Wide Web.
The terminal equipment of the mobile Internet is also fundamentally different in terms of openness. Mobile handheld devices (including tablet computers) are far less open than personal computers. Unlike personal computers, mobile phones are mainly closed and proprietary technologies, and it is difficult for people to adjust and program for different purposes. Users who use more closed and more difficult-to-program devices to access the Internet have no ability to improve network services, nor do they have the ability to obtain corresponding benefits. As a result of the "walled garden" platform, today's Internet is divided into several huge "electronic concentration camps." A huge monster is squatting at the door of each concentration camp. People are locked in the electronic concentration camps, thinking that It is a fragrant garden everywhere.
What you put in our pockets has turned into a grenade, because today you have your money in your phone, your pass, your history of interaction, and all the proofs that you can prove who you are. ……Without your mobile phone, you will be unable to move. Jobs has completely turned the Internet into its opposite. When a tool rules us so thoroughly, do we understand what it means?
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