SOUTH AFRICA’S hard-won democratic freedom would not have been possible without Apple computers — the humble Macintosh gave activists an important edge over the IBM mind-set of the apartheid government and it was the Apple revolution which ushered in an unbelievable period of innovation and transformation. Sadly, the egalitarian goals of Cupertino were never fully realised in the developing world over the ensuing decades, as the local Apple Core monopoly insisted on catering exclusively to the high-end South African consumer The result is a lost generation who are only now getting to grips with what Apple has achieved. Thus Steve liberated as much as he infuriated. While I am no longer a naive Apple fanboy, I secretly yearn for the simplicity of Job’s vision, especially when my open-source hardware stack fails into the chasm of complexity. RIP STEVE JOBS

Here is a link to Steve Jobs at the funeral of OS9

As rejoinder, local media appear ambivalent to the part played by Apple in South Africa’s transformation. This is not surprising, given the belief in a “miracle” and the role of the “party”. Instead of garnering local opinion, media houses simply reprinted news stories from the Independent and NY Times. It would seem our media is thus colonised to the core.

Tag: Steve Jobs