I haven't always had an animus against Apple. In fact, when I was ten and my mother asked me what sort of computer I would get if I could get a computer, I said that, from what I'd heard, it sounded like the Macintosh (introduced just weeks earlier) was the way to go. As it turned out, we wound up getting an IBM PC (the original model, not even an XT) and I wouldn't end up using a Mac until 1989, when my school newspaper office installed three of them so we could print our own articles and not have to ferry copy back and forth to the typesetter in Anaheim. The Mac seemed okay. It was tiny and monochrome and didn't have many programs, but it was trippy to be able to switch text to different fonts — and to actually see it change before my eyes! As the years went on there were a number of points when I needed to get a new computer, and each time I considered switching to a Mac... but there was always some sticking point, whether it was "but all my games will be useless!" or "but how am I going to transfer all my files?" or "hey, can I play with your Mac for a few minutes?... damn, how do you cope with this one-button mouse?!" Throw in the fact that I could rarely afford Apple's prices, and I inevitably concluded that sticking with PCs was the way to go. But I didn't have anything against Apple as a company until... well, until Steve Jobs came back.

Two things hardened me against Apple. One day I decided to buy a song. In the past I had always just shelled out for the CD — often used copies could be found online for under a dollar. But with shipping that came to more like $5, and on this occasion I knew that I only wanted the one song. For months I had heard my friends talking about how they regularly got songs off of I-Tunes for a buck apiece, and it had just come out for Windows, so I decided to give it a try. Sell me an MP3, I-Tunes! Winamp awaits!

That was when I discovered that Apple didn't sell MP3s. Apple didn't want me buying a song from its store, inserting it into my Windows hierarchy, and playing it on Winamp. You want to buy a song from Apple? That song will live on Planet Apple. Your songs will be organized according to Apple's system, and will be encoded in some weird format that only works on Apple's player. (If there was some way to convert it to MP3 without running afoul of Apple's copy protection, I couldn't figure out what it was.) Never fear!, Apple cooed. It's much better this way. For one, it makes it so much easier to sync up your music with your I-Pod — for surely you have an I-Pod! No? Then maybe you should go get one, eh?

People always used to complain about Microsoft's monopolistic practices, but Apple, I discovered, was far worse. I use a Microsoft operating system on a Dell computer which is hooked up to a Unicomp keyboard and a Logitech trackball and from which I use a Mozilla browser to go to Amazon and buy music which I transfer to a Shenzhen Zhanyue MP3 player. Apple wants me to use an Apple operating system on an Apple computer which is hooked up to an Apple keyboard and an Apple mouse in order to use an Apple browser to go to an Apple store and buy music to transfer to an Apple MP3 player. And it will use any of those entry points to try to strongarm people into signing up for the whole package. Now, you might say, what's wrong with that? That's capitalism! To which I would reply, exactly. Apple exemplifies the fact that underlying capitalism is the philosophy of the cancer cell.

The second thing that turned me against Apple was its dealing with Apple Corps, the media company founded by the Beatles in 1968 — eight years and three months before Apple Computer. In 1978, Apple Corps filed a trademark infringement suit against Apple Computer, which settled up by paying Apple Corps $80,000 and promising not to enter the music business. Apple Computer then went right ahead and entered the music business — became the world's leading music company, in fact. And, yes, further settlements were reached that made this retroactively agreed to. But, well, you've heard the saying that "it's better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission"? You know who says that? Assholes say that. If you've made a promise not to enter the music business, and you then plunge into the music business on the theory that with the money you generate you can pay off the people you've wronged, you're acting like an asshole. And you can say, hey, that's capitalism... to which I would reply, exactly. Apple exemplifies the fact that capitalism rewards those with the fewest scruples.

With the announcement of his death came a flood of official statements from all quarters eulogizing Steve Jobs as an innovator. Obituaries that went into a little more depth clarified that he was chiefly a popularizer of technology, the guy who took expensive toys from the Xerox labs and put slightly less expensive versions into the hands of ordinary people. I've also read any number of blog posts reflecting on the way Steve Jobs thereby improved the writer's own life. So maybe this kind of monopolistic, unscrupulous behavior is what it takes to gather the power to change the world. Or maybe not. I can think of someone else who took esoteric technology and brought it to folks like me: Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. I don't have to pay a subscription fee to Tim Berners-Lee in order to access the web. I don't have to pay him a royalty every time I put up a web page. He doesn't demand that I use a TimBL-branded device to access his invention. And while I avoid Apple products, I've used the web virtually every day for over fifteen years. You can improve people's lives through technological innovation without stamping your logo over every damn thing. So why did Steve Jobs feel compelled to build Planet Apple?

Apple's monopolistic, unscrupulous behavior suggests the mind of a grasping arch-capitalist behind it, and the capitalist answer to "Why build Planet Apple?" is simple. Tim Berners-Lee has made a few million dollars, much of it in the form of prizes from grateful humanitarian organizations. Steve Jobs made eight billion. Scoreboard. This is how you win at life. But Steve Jobs — as I learned with no small amount of mental whiplash — professed to be a Buddhist, and Buddhism's answer to the question of how to "win" at life is rather different. The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is that life is characterized by suffering. Yes, money can stave off some sources of suffering. With enough money, you needn't be hungry. You needn't be too hot or too cold. If you have a minor illness you can afford to get it treated. But if you contract pancreatic cancer... $8 billion isn't enough to make you well. And no matter how much Herman Cain and his ilk may thunder that we get what we deserve and "if you don't have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!", life is largely a lottery. The amount anyone suffers is basically random; suffering can be thrust upon you in the form of childhood abuse, or being born into poverty, or a privileged life interrupted by a horrible wasting illness out of the blue. So if you know that the power of money to stave off suffering is limited — and that, as the Second Noble Truth teaches, attachment to the pleasures it can afford is itself a cause of suffering — why take aggressive steps to amass a fortune?

Maybe the money was just a side effect — maybe Planet Apple was about control. You have to listen to I-Tunes songs through the I-Tunes player, not because it'll nudge you into buying an I-Pod, but just because I want you to do things my way. I've seen this attitude ascribed to Steve Jobs a time or twenty. But, again, that strikes me as almost the antithesis of Buddhism. I know that there is a universe of variation within any given religion, but still, right there in the foundational tenets of Buddhism are the notions that, one, the demand that things be a certain way is itself a source of suffering as that demand cannot always be fulfilled, and two, the cessation of suffering is brought about in part by letting go of that demand. This is awesomely difficult and something I know I'll never achieve. But I don't understand how someone could even pay lip service to these principles while his company's practices constitute such a decisive rejection of them.

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