I’ve read a few reviews of the new Jobs movie this week, and I have to say now that I’ve seen it, I agree with most of the points made. But I think there’s a bigger problem here that goes beyond the shortcomings of this particular film. I think the whole endeavor of making a two-hour popular movie about Jobs’ life is folly. At least for the time being.

Jobs, directed by Joshua Michael Stern and starring Ashton Kutcher in the title role, isn’t a terrible film. Parts are certainly entertaining, and it must be said that Kutcher does a remarkable “impression” of the man, if not a great portrayal, as wisely pointed out by Philip Michaels. (He even looks like Jobs, though the bearded scenes are more convincing than the clean-shaven.) But the film attempts to paint the life of Steve Jobs in three acts. The early life and founding of Apple, the Macintosh and getting ousted by the board, and finally the triumphant return. And the problem is that Jobs’ actual life story is more of a classical 5-act drama, like a Shakespeare play.

Act I: Early years, including Reed College, LSD, Phone Phreaking, the Palo Alto garage, and the Apple I. Ends with the runaway success of the Apple II and the IPO, which transforms Apple into a much larger company that is spinning out of control.

Act II: Apple becomes a “real” company, with all the management and structure issues that go along with it. Jobs is revealed to have brilliant vision but no political skills and poor personal judgment. Includes the Lisa, the Mac, the hiring of Sculley, and the ousting of Steve by the board. Steve’s arrogance and tendency to trust the wrong people leads to his betrayal and fall.

Act III: The NeXT / Pixar years. Includes an initial period of Jobs not knowing what he wants to do. Then the remarkable story of NeXT, which is essentially a repeat of his failure at Apple (brilliant at product and vision, terrible at keeping a company going). Steve initially continues to believe he had done everything right and the “bozos” had killed everything great about Apple. But this repeat failure at NeXT proves to Steve that it wasn’t just a matter of betrayal that led to the Apple failure. It forces Jobs to look at himself and actually learn something. Pixar is essential here as well, as it’s where Steve learns a great deal about how to work with artists and how to negotiate with media bosses, which is a key component of his later success. Pixar also struggles for several years before taking off with Toy Story. And that almost didn’t happen. Plus, during this time period, Jobs meets Laurene, starts a family, and reconciles with his first daughter. This is the climax of Jobs’ life, and probably the most interesting part of his story, as far as drama goes.

Act IV: The return to Apple, including the selling of NeXT, ousting Amelio, the simplification of the company, and the turnaround to profitability. Key products, iMac, iPod, and the iTunes Music Store. And the beginnings of the Retail strategy, which is another incredible key to understanding Jobs. This is where characters like Jony Ive and Tim Cook start to shine as examples of people Jobs puts into place who are not only A players, but also loyal to his vision. Perfect foils to Sculley and Markkula. With them, he begins to structure the company into something much more powerful than a typical corporation. Jobs uses this part of Steve’s life as an ending, but it’s really just the build up to the real triumph. This is where Steve starts to test his theory that a functional organization with passion for great products can succeed with the right people and structure. But he’s still a long way from proving his vision is correct in the long term. The Mac is still a niche product, and the iPod is a fraction of what happens later with the iPhone.

Act V: The Jobs vision becomes fully triumphant. Having learned to combine his passion and vision with strong management, Jobs leads Apple into becoming one of the most powerful companies in the world. Not only does Apple crush all other computer companies, it also becomes a legitimate pop culture phenomenon. Key events, iPhone, iPad, App Store. We get to see Eric Schmidt betray Jobs with Android, which is a nice call back to the earlier issues he had with Sculley and with Bill Gates during his first tenure at Apple. And that leads to an ill-advised obsession with “killing” Google, which shows that Jobs never got over those early betrayals, and thus remains flawed, like any human. Also, unfortunately, this act would include Jobs’ battle with cancer and eventual death, which while tragic, makes for a perfect, bittersweet ending. Just at his moment of highest triumph, he is taken from us.

Taking a look at Jobs again, the movie spends a bit of time in Act I, the bulk of the time in Act II, inexplicably skips Act III, and ends by giving Act IV short shrift and skipping Act V entirely. It covers the same period of Jobs’ life as the decades-earlier Pirates of Silicon Valley, albeit with more production value, but without nearly as much fun.

Why is Jobs so heavy on the early years and so weak on the later life? One major reason for this is probably the lack of good source material for Acts III, IV, and V. The Isaacson biography makes exactly the same mistake, and that’s the only officially endorsed source we have on the man. Isaacson spends so much time on the early history that he runs out of steam before he gets to the best part of the story. And thus we miss what’s truly important about Steve in both the book and this film. Any filmmaker wanting to tackle this problem is going to be limited by the information currently available, and there is precious little to go on at the moment.

Also conspicuously missing from the Isaacson biography and even more so from this film is any focus on the personal life of Jobs. If you’re making a movie about a person, not just a series of events, you need to have much more insight into his personal life. And that’s going to be very difficult to come by in the case of Steve Jobs.

So then, focusing on the earlier years may be an unfortunate limitation for the time being. Is that such a bad thing? Well, maybe.

It sounds crazy, but the Mac is practically a footnote in the history of Steve Jobs. It was merely one in a long series of examples of great visions carried out by Steve. If it were the only thing Steve had ever accomplished, it would be ten times more than the average person does. But Apple itself is so much more than any one of its products. It would be like making a movie about Walt Disney and only talking about Snow White. Sure, that might make a great story, but it would barely scratch the surface of understanding what Disney actually accomplished in his lifetime.

Could a movie just about the period of the Macintosh be really great? Sure. But that story has already been told, very well, in Andy Hertzfeld’s book Revolution in the Valley. If you want to make a film of that book, do just that, and forget about focusing on Jobs himself. The Mac was a team effort, and its creation is a great story about a group of people with very distinct personalities. I’d love to see that movie.

Also, as mentioned already, this same period was covered by Pirates of the Silicon Valley, which, to be honest, isn’t a terrible film, even if it was made for TV and has a certain cheesy quality to it. Pirates at least can be forgiven for treating Jobs’ life in three acts, as it was made before acts IV and V actually happened. And at least it was smart enough to make Bill Gates the villain. You can’t make a movie about Jobs and the Mac and not make Bill Gates a key character. Jobs barely mentions him.

So, then, can we make the perfect Jobs film, or at least a better Jobs film? Well, if we really do want to cover his whole life, we have a problem. A movie giving proper attention to all five acts would be ten to fifteen hours long, and even Peter Jackson and Oliver Stone aren’t that crazy. The way I see it, you’re better off forgetting the biography and just focusing on one key aspect of Jobs’ life. Not even one full act. Just make a story around a single product launch, like the buildup to the iMac, or the original iPod. Either one of those would make for an awesome movie on its own. I can’t imagine how much drama went on during the design phase of the iPod. The courting of the music industry. Those meetings were likely epic. Or really challenge yourself and tackle Act III, the middle period of Jobs’ life when he was between Apples. There’s tons of great story there. It would be tough to get firsthand source material for all of this, of course, but not impossible. Most of the key players are still alive, and if they’re still refusing to talk out of respect for Steve right now, they may eventually acquiesce and give you some interviews as they get older.

I really think we’ll have better Jobs books and movies thirty or forty years from now.

Otherwise, if you insist on covering the whole life of Jobs, forget doing a movie and call HBO. Because for that, you need a full miniseries, along the lines of HBO’s excellent John Adams. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that ends up happening in a few decades, when we all have more perspective, and there’s been a lot more written about the later years of Jobs’ life.

Meanwhile, I suppose I’ll look forward to Aaron Sorkin’s Jobs movie and hope for the best. With any luck, Sorkin won’t make the same mistakes we’ve seen here.

Or how about a Steve Jobs Opera? Now there’s an art form that’s worthy of this epic tale.

I have no idea what’s going on with Bob Mansfield, and frankly neither does anyone else, save a few people inside Apple. But it sure looks to me like the man keeps trying to leave the company, and Tim Cook wisely keeps giving him strong incentives to stay.

Stripping a man of his SVP title might sound like a demotion to some, but if the guy has plenty of money, doesn’t necessarily want the spotlight, and wants to spend less time stressing out about work, getting to report directly to the CEO on “special” projects without the overhead of large departmental responsibilities sounds like a strong incentive to stick around to me.

I never had any interest in Gmail.

Back in the mid 2000s, when everyone was jumping on the Gmail bandwagon, I was perfectly fine with my mac.com email address (which I had signed up for within five minutes of Steve Jobs’ announcement at Macworld New York 2000). People always complain that Apple’s Internet services suck, and they are right in many cases. But mac.com email has always been rock solid for me. I can count on one hand the number of times my account has actually been out of service over the last 13 years.

Furthermore, accessing email in the browser seemed like a step backwards, and while I was interested in many of Google’s products at the time (Maps being my favorite), changing my email address didn’t seem like a good idea. Also, in the early days of Gmail, an invite was the only way to get in. (Maybe because I have few friends and hate asking them for favors of any kind, I’ve always found invite systems pretentious.)

Eventually, I did give in and sign up for a Gmail address, not because I wanted Gmail, but because it was required for another Google product I did very much want to use: Reader. RSS reading, unlike mail, seemed like a good fit for a browser app, since all the articles I’d be reading would be in the browser, anyway. (Remember, this is long before the era of Instapaper.) So I created a Gmail address, reluctantly, but only used it for Reader access. This same address later gave me access to YouTube and Google’s chat, neither of which were ever as important to me as Reader was.

The announcement of Google’s retirement of Reader, then, meant a lot more to me than simply losing my RSS syncing method. I had since moved out of the Reader web interface entirely and adopted a combo of the excellent Reeder app on the Mac and iOS, coupled with Instapaper for all my RSS reading sans browsers. Now that the back end needed to be replaced, too, I could finally retire my Gmail address and shut down my Google account altogether.

Over the past few years, I’ve been slowly moving away from every Google service I’ve ever used. Duck Duck Go has replaced Google search on my Macs. I’d love to use Duck Duck Go on my iOS devices, too, but Apple so far has only given me the option of Yahoo and Bing on my iPhone and iPad. Apple’s Maps suits me perfectly fine, especially with the announcement of the Maps app for OS X Mavericks. (Go ahead and laugh, but wherever I’ve gone, I’ve only run into minor issues with Apple’s solution.) I use Vimeo instead of YouTube for any videos I need to upload, which are few and far between. Google+ adds no value to my life whatsoever. I have no use for Google Docs. I’ve never liked Google Calendar and Contacts, either. And then there’s that Gmail account, which I never used for email in the first place.

It’s not that I hate Google, or that I take some special joy in shutting down this account. But the fact of the matter is that I simply don’t trust Google with my data. And what they offer me in return is of little benefit to me. I have good alternatives for anything I would want to do with a Google product.

A few months back, I finally shut down my LinkedIn account, and it felt great. (They still email me once in a while, which is a whole other story.) Letting my Google account go, I’m guessing, will be similarly liberating.

Sure, the alternative services that I’ve chosen are collecting data on me, too. It’s not like I’m “off the grid” by any means. But being off Google’s grid does seem like a good idea at the moment.

So what will I do for my RSS needs? Well, fortunately, the closing of Reader has caused a real resurgence in RSS offerings, so I have plenty of options. I’ve postponed the switch until now for two reasons: so I could research the best options, and, more importantly, to wait and see which services Reeder will support. (RSS is a serious part of my daily workflow. I don’t want to switch apps if I don’t have to. And I need a solution that works the same everywhere, on my Macs as well as my iOS devices.)

Unfortunately, Silvio didn’t manage to get all three versions of his Reeder apps updated in time for the shutdown, so I’ll be at least temporarily marooned with a workaround solution. Most likely I’ll just do all RSS on my iPhone until the iPad and Mac app updates arrive. Or I’ll try out a Mac alternative like ReadKit, since it’s getting a lot of good press lately. But I’m sure in a few months this will all be settled and I’ll back into my regular workflow on all my devices.

In the end, I chose Feed Wrangler as my sync service, as the streams seem like an excellent feature, and there’s a yearly subscription cost involved. (I inherently mistrust any company that doesn’t charge me money for a service.) We’ll see how that goes. I will reserve judgment for after I’ve had a few weeks working with it in Reeder everywhere.

I’m sure there will be times when not having a Google account will be a minor inconvenience to me. But I see no compelling reason at the moment to keep it active just on the outside chance I’ll need it again.

With all the extra complications of modern Internet use, I think it’s a good thing to purge the list of companies who have accounts associated with your name, just to clear the air a little. So look out, Facebook. You’re probably next.

I’ve been looking closely at iOS 7, and like many designers I have mixed feelings. Some of the changes, like the expanded use of motion, are a breath of fresh air. Animation is coming to the forefront and will only be further explored in the years to come. And that’s very exciting. In other areas, meanwhile, such as the heavy reliance on type rather than icons, the over-reliance on plain white backgrounds everywhere, and the lack of clear separation between elements such as the status bar and the title bar, I’m a little less convinced. (And I won’t participate in the icon debate, except to say that there’s more work to be done, I hope.) But I understand that this is a rough draft, that all Apple interface design is a work in progress, and that the “big shifts” (just like the original OS X) usually take a few iterations before Apple works out where they may have taken it too far in a particular direction.

And that’s where my work moving forward comes in. Unlike Apple, I only have a handful of apps to conform to this new iOS 7 design language, so I can take some extra time with them. And the number one guiding principle for me is this: Don’t overcorrect.

I think a lot of designers will be tempted to strip out all adornment in their apps and try too hard to copy the stock Apple apps. This would be a mistake.

Take my app x2y, as an example. I started thinking about what I would need to do to make this fit in with iOS 7 immediately following last Monday’s keynote. And what I’ve concluded is that it does need some work. But not as much as I initially thought.

Sure, I can further flatten out the already pretty flat toolbars, remove the highlights and shadows from my custom number pad, maybe back off on some of the background texture. And I can get rid of some of the custom adornments that don’t really need to be there, such as the logo on the top of the interface. But should I switch from the dark grey to a more iOS 7-common white background? I don’t think so. When I use this app, I’m usually in my dark office, with my focus on my iMac’s 27” screen. The last thing I want is my iPhone or iPad blasting white light at me just so I can make some image size calculations.

And what about the font? Helvetica Neue Light is nice, and I actually like the system-wide movement toward thinner fonts on Retina screens. On the other hand, Futura is a major part of x2y’s personality. Those sharp, beautifully recognizable numbers were chosen for a reason, and I can’t see replacing them just because the system font has changed. I can, however, in the interest of improving clarity, make those fonts larger in some places.

After a few days of playing around, what I ended up with is something along the lines of this. A change, to be sure, but not a drastic one. A look that won’t be out of place on iOS 7, but would still work on iOS 6 as well.[1]

One of the nice things about iOS as opposed to OS X is that once your app is launched, it takes over the entire screen. So while you want it to fit in with other apps on the system, there is plenty of room for your own app’s personality to shine. You can have a custom look and feel, so long as the user experience is consistent and it doesn’t look too out of touch.

My advice to my fellow designers is to not take the new look of iOS 7 too literally. Remember the core of what Apple’s trying to achieve—clarity, deference, depth—and interpret those principles in your own fashion. Sure, hard light from 90-degrees above is giving way to more diffuse, ambient lighting, and heavy drop shadows and distracting textures are likewise passé. But don’t try to make all your apps look like iOS 7 Mail. That would be counterproductive.

After all, Letterpress looked and worked just fine on iOS 6. Twitterrific fits in nicely on either system. Because good design is good design. It’s much better to be in the position of potentially influencing Apple’s next version of iOS (as those two apps clearly did) than to be copying the current version.

1. Note, this is three days worth of work on the next version of x2y. The final product may vary quite a bit as it gets refined over the next few months.  ↩

Android’s Market Share Is Literally A Joke | Tech.pinions – Perspective, Insight, Analysis: “The company that buys market share must inevitably go out of business or reverse its course and fight its way back up to profitability. The company with the value and the profits, on the other hand, has the advantage of holding the high ground and can choose to take market share at will.”

(Via John Kirk for Tech Opinions.)

This, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with developers on the App Store trying to get to the top of the charts at any cost. They’re buying market share by maximizing downloads instead of profits. And most end up making little money as a result.

Kirk’s piece here is examining iOS Phones vs. Android, but the same concept applies to the software sold on these devices as well. Having more users is actually a bad thing when the cost per user is higher than the profit per user.

People like to cite Microsoft when talking about the value of market share, but they always seem to forget that Microsoft never sacrificed profit margin to get that market share. It was the hardware manufacturers—Dell, Sony, HP, Gateway, etc.—who were caught up in the pricing wars. Microsoft pitted them against each other and sat back on a pile of gold as they tore each other to pieces.

Google? Not so much with Android.