Apple to the Core

So, in a surprising turn of events, the highly polished Apple is now in the Star Chamber over diverting its profits overseas in a clever shell game. Actually, it ain't that surprising. Truth be told, Apple's Woodstock Nation vibe is part of the polishing. To quote Bob DePree:

I always thought Steve Jobs was amazing in his success of positioning Apple as the counter-culture, anti-establishment outfit, when, in fact, it was always the most capitalist, most proprietary, and most dictatorial of all computer companies. If you read the biographies of Jobs, he was personally dealing with a lot of cognitive dissonance on that score; he wanted to believe he was a counterculture acid head, when he was really an ambitious, driven capitalist.

Yep. Seems like a detour down the Hegel Highway: a classic example of thesis/antithesis/synthesis at work. Thesis: the counterculture was all about faded blue jeans and rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters. You can't be a low-rent hippie and a connoisseur at the same time; good enough has to be good enough. Antithesis: making snob appeal cool. Yes, wafting through the air of Seattle, comes the sensual appeal of the finest "artisinal" coffees, clothes, wine, yattayatta. Apple is simply the digital example of that—a cutely named, design-centric, ridiculously expensive, artisinal number cruncher—the job of Jobs. So, if Windows = a populist Holiday Inn, Apple = an elitist Ritz-Carlton disguised as a hippie commune. The synthesis of hippie and connoisseur is—of course—the hipster. (Who all have iPads and iPhones, natch.) Thus the shiny, slick beast grooves into Bethlehem to be born.