The Beatles, Steve Jobs and the iPhone

by Oana Pelineagra  |  March 20, 2009

I do trust that no one can be an iPhone addict without being the fan of Steve Jobs and without loving the songs of The Beatles. In his iPhone presentation, Steve Jobs made the entire world fell in love with Apple's new product and at the same time reminded us why we love The Beatles, by making a demonstration and playing a song fragment to the enthusiastic crowd.

Even if almost 2 years have passed from that specific presentation I can't help but wonder if whether or not the iPhone is a practical miniature image of Steve Job's main features - entertaining and revolutionary? I can't believe that the iPhone was created just to be a very useful, easy to use device. It's more than that - it's an entertainment tool wrapped in a very fashionable package.

From all Apple's devices, the one to better embody the 2 main features is for certain, the iPhone. It was the first to have a 3.5 inch touch screen based on multi-touch technology and even now continues to amaze and to modify people's perception of a mobile phone, Internet tool and iPod.

Now we carry in our back pocket a shinny, slim device that has the above three features and that can ease our daily life by helping us send e-mails, SMSs, receive and give calls; moreover, the iPhone is helping us in our cars by being a GPS, it's filling our empty moments with music, by being an iPod, and is immortalizing our special moments by being a camera. All these are possible by the touch of a finger. It may be that Steve Jobs exaggerated a little when he said that having an iPhone means “having your life in your pocket”, but not too much. All those activities enumerated above are a big and significant part of our lives, nowadays.

For some years Apple has got us used to new, revolutionary products that create a high standard on a certain market, and for some years we got used to expect and wait for something never seen before. The person most suitable to present such an item, is for certain Steve Jobs. If it looks easy to present the iPhone to the world, it's just because Steve Jobs rehearses and reviews his speeches over and over again in a personal keynote (called now “Stevenotes”). Even the exclamation “alrighty” must have been carefully planned and positioned in the speech at the right time.

All these carefully chosen elements make his speech to be a fusion of visual, auditive and cognitive, a real “one man show”, behind which stands a team, similar to The Beatles. No wonder that he is a Beatles fan and that he sees in them a business model. His capacity to gather a crowd is similar to iPhone's capacity to attract and arouse interest, to be admired, to be criticized and even to entertain. Entertainment is a powerful tool, and certainly a part of iPhone's success is due to that.

In his presentation Jobs doesn't sell only a pricey product (the initial cost was 499$), he sells the image of a perfect product and also creates in our minds the need for it. It remains to be seen what other “ultimate product” will Steve Jobs introduce into our lives, but in the mean time we should start our iPhone, select our favorite Beatles song, hit play and simply enjoy.

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