Look, the long-desired iPhone. How does Steve Jobs choose to showcase the new phone's music technology?
By playing The Beatles' "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid."
That's so .
Why? This staged moment is Steve's announcement/flaunting of the fact that the long war between Apple Computers and The Beatles is effectively over.
Steve won. And now the world's greatest rock band is Steve Jobs' prop.
Apple Computer and The Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. have been at legal odds since Apple Computer's inception.
The computer company had to promise to not go into music or else face the wrath of The Fab Four's legal squad. Steve's team knew when to kowtow. (This is where we get the gleefully impudent mythology behind Apple's Sosumi sound file.)
Then came progress. Apple rolled out iTunes. IPods. The Beatles, like the Bay Area's own Metallica, were undone by technology's march. As the legal wrangling went back-and-forth, the iPod became inextricable from American culture.
The Apple Corps were outflanked. Now, rather than being the aggressor, The Beatles may have to kowtow to Steve.
As of press time, a deal is rumored to be in the works for The Beatles' catalog to be buyable via iTunes.
Who is kowtowing to whom now?
Steve, you so gangsta!
Even with the current stock options backdating scandal hovering overhead Apple, the 2007 Macworld conference is a particulary piquant moment of triumph for Jobs. IPhone. Apple TV. Carefully-hewn beachheads for Apple's further success on new platforms.
Even before the announcement of these new products, Apple Computer is positioned in a uniquely decisive role within Western commerce and culture.
Yet can the government implicate Steve in the stock scandal? Apple employees are getting fired/resigned over this, but will investigators be able to stick charges to the mock-turtlenecked man at the top? This administration hasn't shown itself to be adept regarding Jobs. [/pun][apologies][/apologies]
One might imagine Steve's thoughts regarding the law's efforts:
"Seriously? Who are you to try and touch me? You want a piece of me, little men? Fools. I beat The Beatles. I beat Disney. I beat cancer, mother----ers, what make you think you'd be anything but a smear on my windshield? What? What?!"
