I think we all need to take a step back and seriously review our habit and capacity for excusing ourselves. We do it in our personal lives, we do it with public figures, and eventually we’re all going to be royally screwed if we don’t get it in check.
Case in point: the health of Steve Jobs and its supposed effect on the health of Apple.
It appears that some people are so aghast at the thought of Apple — the company — screwing something up, that they’re all too happy to just explain it away as an unfortunate side effect of its CEO’s supposedly-precarious physical condition.
Look, I’m not saying that the man isn’t crucial to the operation and success of the company, but to blame problems with firmware 2.0, MobileMe, iPhone 3G supply, and the hard northern winds that have been battering Alabama on Jobs alone might be going a bit too far.
To me, it seems to represent the fanboy’s last resort in explaining away what is simply obvious and true: Apple isn’t perfect. Not its products, its employees, or its ability to pull off a three-way, one day launch. Look, they fucked up, okay? It’s not Steve’s battle with cancer that causes my MobileMe mail account to become randomly inaccessible, and his strange diet isn’t making my iPhone’s keyboard lag and stutter when I’m sending a text message.
Am I to believe that a weak, sickly Steve Jobs just can’t muster up the strength to bellow orders at his minions, or is it actually more likely that his minions are being hit by a demand for their product that they’ve been hitherto unfamiliar with? Let’s be honest: not a single American waited a whole day in line for a Macintosh LC.
So let’s stop with the excuses — and the excusing — before it’s too late. I don’t want to have to explain away every shitty product to my beautiful future children by telling them the president of the company had too bad of a cold to crack the whip.
