I think Steve Jobs would like to have been thought of as a designer. Although the way designers behave has changed recently and they tend to be far more open to the client, designers are necessarily control freaks, specially designers cast in an older mould. This is because they are managing great ambiguity and complexity and they try to reduce the world to be more manageable. There is also a sort of purism, and an artist's pride in the perfection of what has been produced. As an example, remember how Jobs (clearly never a typist!) refused to allow keyboard shortcuts in the mac: everything was to be done through the (one button) mouse. This made the decisions conceptually clear and very simple (perhaps Apple's greatest contribution is to make the complex simple). Jobs was a designer, and thus he was a controller. Apart from Woz, who left active involvement very early, Apple has always been interested in control. Everything they do and have done is about control. In a sense, it's the imposition of the Apple (Jobs) vision on the whole world.
We should not be surprised at this: it's in the bones. The idea of allowing us mortals to fiddle, or even to have an opinion, is alien to them. What makes them nice machines is exactly what makes them unfiddlable with. It's a mind set. Ranulph -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB.
