Anyone who has had the misfortune of speaking to me in the last year and a half will know I am nearly obsessed with my beloved AR-3a loudspeakers. As I wrote at the conclusion of my project to restore them last year, these speakers are amazing. I could not love a non-living thing any more. I learned last Monday that the man behind these wonderful loudspeakers has died.
Edgar Villchur, who was ninety-four years old, gave the world the acoustic suspension loudspeaker. The AR-1, made by his company, Acoustic Research, changed the way speakers were produced. Unlike many of the existing speakers at the time, his speakers were fully enclosed, and virtually airtight. The vacuum inside would cause the drivers to “spring” back to their proper position automatically, whereas other speakers at the time used actual mechanical springs, and the cabinets that enclosed them were enormous. With Villchur’s technology, people could finally have loudspeakers that were unobtrusive in the home. My AR-3as are actually quite handsome, with walnut cabinets and grill cloths of Irish linen. Stereophile and The Absolute Sound will tell you that the 3a is at or near the top of the most important loudspeakers ever created.
For me, though, it isn’t the innovative technology or the appearance of my AR loudspeakers that makes me love them. It’s the sound. These speakers have changed the way I hear music. My enjoyment has been increased in ways I cannot fully articulate. Considering how important music is to me, I can, without hyperbole, tell you that they have made my life better. For that I am extremely grateful to Edgar Villchur.
I receive hundreds of email messages each day. Approximately five of them are legitimate. The rest are what is commonly called spam. I get messages about pills, investing, internet auctions, vacation deals, and countless other things, but none are authentic communications from parties with whom I have any relationship whatever. On the contrary, many of these messages claim to have business with me, but manifestly do not.
Some of these spam messages attempt to deceive me with realistic looking subject titles, like “Student Loan Information”, or coincidentally come bearing the name of someone with whom I regularly engage in correspondence. In this way I sometimes click on a message believing it to be from my friend Anthony, only to find it is not. Sometimes, however, the spammers don’t even seem to be trying. “Follow-up to our talk about refinancing your house” is one I have received. Really? How absent minded would I have to be? One I got today was “Shocking Tim Russert Sex Tape”. Even if this was a real thing, why on earth would I want to see that? I mean, if I got one that said, “Shocking video of you eating cookies in your yard”, yeah, maybe I’d think that was real, and I’d be concerned enough to click a link. But the other thing? No way.
I hesitate to say anything about this here for risk of attracting more attention from spammers, but I assume many of them are robots anyway and don’t know the difference.
Something must be done. I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird for a month or so, and I have it set to filter junk mail, but I still have to regularly sift through the junk to see if any genuine correspondence has been misidentified. Every day something is. Is there a better way to handle this?
Since Wednesday, people have been tripping over themselves to hail Steve Jobs the best person in the history of the world. That is hyperbole, obviously, but if you have watched the news, held a newspaper, or read a blog this week, you know what I am talking about. Jobs had legions of admirers, and I don’t begrudge him that. But I think people are getting carried away.
I know many people who use an Apple product of some sort or another. Mrs. Hill uses an iPhone, and many of my friends and classmates have iPods and iMacs. Some of these people, like Miriam, find their Apple product useful, and appreciate whatever convenience it offers, but have not succumbed to the Cult of Apple. Others, however, are obsessed. Sadly, many journalists are in the latter group. I get why. They have iPads and iPhones and apps and all that, and since it’s cool to them they suppose it’s cool to everybody. And I admit, I have seen some iPhone apps that I have thought interesting and even amazing. But the coverage Jobs’ death has received seems somewhat out-of-proportion, as do the accolades some have gone out of their way to heap upon him.
Is the iPhone cool? Sure. But it wasn’t a radically new idea. The iPad is just a bigger iPhone, or, more accurately, a smaller, less-capable notebook computer. And the iPod, while ubiquitous (indeed, you cannot cross a college campus or ride any public transit system without seeing legions of them), is just a small Walkman. People have had it for decades. I don’t even think the iPod was the first portable MP3 player. None of these products was really shockingly new or revolutionary. Steve Jobs was no Johannes Gutenberg or Thomas Edison. I don’t mean this as a criticism of Mr. Jobs, and, to the best of my knowledge, he never compared himself to those great inventors. My point is merely that some in the media have treated him that way.
Was Steve Jobs a great businessman? Given the apparent success of Apple, I’d say undoubtedly. But far more than technological innovation, I think Jobs’ success with Apple was due to clever and aggressive marketing. And when I say aggressive I mean extremely aggressive. Apple commercials have been, and continue to be, omnipresent. Television commercials, print ads, and billboards for Apple products are everywhere, and these ads have been perfectly crafted to appeal to a certain type of consumer. In one type of commercial, Apple uses a catchy, sing-along-type song that viewers cannot forget. This is a tactic that many companies have used, but Apple did it with remarkably effective simplicity. In another commercial campaign–and one that I hated–Apple took two guys, one representing a Mac, the other representing a Windows-based PC, and made the actor representing the PC appear foolish or stupid. Again, the hipster-quotient was excessively high in these ads. The last campaign I will mention is one I think truly insidious. The “If you don’t have an iPhone…” commercials, which feature shots of the iPhone, while a narrator tells you that, “if you don’t have an iPhone, you don’t have an iPhone”. Obviously. But what the commercial is trying to say is that if you don’t have an iPhone you are not cool; you are not relevant; you are not a good person. That campaign appeals to the basest acquisitive consumer impulses. It’s the ugliest sort of advertising: buy this or you’re nobody. The folks at Conan did a pretty accurate parody of an Apple commercial last April:
The title of one of the many op-eds that appeared following Steve Jobs’ death this week hit on something that reminded me of this comedy bit. “Steve Jobs, Enemy of Nostalgia“—which appeared in the New York Times, a newspaper published in the heart of Apple-country—is about the Apple CEO’s lack of reverence for any technology. “One of the keys to Apple’s success under his leadership”, writes Mike Daisey, “was his ability to see technology with an unsentimental eye and keen scalpel, ready to cut loose whatever might not be essential”. Apple customers who found their iPhones or iPads suddenly usurped by a newer, more-expensive model, must understand the drawback of such an “unsentimental” business model.
Granted, a key requirement for success in business is making people buy something new when they already have something old. Light bulbs burn out, cars break down, and clothes go out of style. But Apple fanatics seem have had to endure this to an absurd degree. And if, as Mike Daisey argues, Steve Jobs was an “enemy of nostalgia”, all the focus on buy-and-replace makes sense. Apple users, then, are not meant to experience long-lasting relationships with any single technology, because the future success of Apple requires that these users embrace a new technology. That may be a smart business strategy in the short term, but what will it mean in years to come?
Whether or not any aged hipster will one day write a “Long May You Run”-style ballad about his old MacAir is probably not important. But the anti-nostalgic mind is capricious and is always searching for the new thing. Apple may have seemingly-faithful users today, but if they are as unnostalgic as Steve Jobs, they will only stay if Apple appears to be the newest. If their products are not unique, and their marketing style is easily imitable, what will happen when someone comes along and out Apples Apple?
I was just attempting to download a trial version of Adobe Photoshop. Their website requires you to enter your “Adobe ID”, which, of course, I do not have. I decided to make one up, but I didn’t want to give my real email address, so I entered fake@fakey.com. When I pressed [Enter] I was told, “That email address already exists”. I love you, internet!
As I write this, Atlantis is streaking into space, having just lifted off the pad at Cape Canaveral – the final mission of the Space Shuttle program. I can hardly remember a time before the Space Shuttle. And though the program seemed to become routine over the years, with many of the 135 missions taking place only in the background of my consciousness, I do have many vivid and powerful Space Shuttle memories. I remember that the first Shuttles were painted completely white, fuel tank and all. I remember, as though it were yesterday, the freezing cold morning in 1986 when the Challenger launched, and I remember watching news coverage of the disaster in my third-grade classroom. I remember the return to space following Challenger. I remember some amazing night launches, which, even from my vantage point in west-central Florida, appeared as a candle rising above the horizon in the darkness. I remember hearing sonic booms as Shuttles passed over my house on their way to the landing strip at Kennedy Space Center. I remember the Shuttle looking much smaller than I expected while strapped to the back of a 747 on return flights from California. I remember covering the Columbia disaster at work. And I am sure I will remember this final launch, too.
I never saw a Shuttle launch in person, but I am certain it was a spectacular experience. A couple years ago my elderly grandmother attended one, and she was thrilled. Still, I cannot say I am broken-hearted to see the Shuttle retired. Decades after giant Saturn V rockets took men to the moon, low Earth orbit never seemed as impressive. Moreover, given the enormous advances in technology since the Apollo missions, I cannot help but think we could have done more. I hope we will. Though it has no practical benefit that I can see, a manned mission to Mars would be a historic endeavor, and a genuine source of pride for the USA. I would be happy to see that in my lifetime.
