Steve Jobs: One Last Thing

Movie Review

“Steve Jobs: One Last Thing”

The documentary I decided to write a review about is about the life of Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs. Jobs was a very interesting individual that had done a lot in his short life. Jobs very quickly created a new culture, achieved a higher social status, and had an enormous impact on the economy.

            Jobs’ work at Apple led the company to create products that eventually led to fans of the company living an “Apple Lifestyle.” People love these products to the point that they don’t want to use anything else. People wait in line for days for some of these products to be released. Some to replace products they already own and work perfectly fine (replacing an iphone 5 for a 5s). These extreme cases of fandom seem to be increasing as well, and some people almost worship a man who in truth, just made computers and ripped off a lot of friends in the process. This “fandom” for Steve Jobs and Apple is more like a sub-culture than anything. While Apple products are very popular to almost everyone around the world, these “Applemaniacs” take it a little too far.

            Steve Jobs was also able to make a jump out of his social class. He was adopted by a middle class family and was nothing but a poor college student/dropout until he started to see the fruits of his labor in Apple. When he was 23 years old, he was worth 100 million dollars. At the time of his death, he was the 110^th richest man in the world. Jobs was relentless in being a success and it ended up costing him a lot of friends and at one point, his own company. However, his success led to the man becoming one the 20% of the population that controls 90% of the wealth.

            When we discussed the economy, we talked about the different types of economies and the revolutions that changed them. In America, we are in a post-industrial economy. What Jobs did with computers was a revolution in and of itself.

The computing industry was advancing by the time Jobs was born but he radically changed the game by making computers more personal. He made computers what they are today, where they are used every single day for a wide variety of reasons. The computing industry is one of the largest industries in the world now and in part, thanks to Steve Jobs.

            Steve Jobs himself I believe to be a symbolic-interaction theorist. He always talked about how the attention to detail was key to the best experience possible. He wanted these products to change the way people lived their lives and they have. The very small details of these machines, such as a mouse or keyboard, are now something almost all of us see and use everyday. While jobs was not a sociologist and probably wouldn’t know what symbolic-interaction theory was, he definitely understood what it was all about.