You're no one without an iPhone. USA, 1955-2011) want to buy equipment that Steve Jobs invented for iPhone or iPad. The Chinese communist party itself asks the workers to produce a lot for Apple and consume a lot for Apple, rather than sending the corrupt foreign capitalists to their necks, as if the Chinese socialist paradise had found the apple of wisdom. On the right and left, Apple has fascinated everybody.

In the blogs section of the Le Monde Diplomatique page, Marie Bénild has published Apple, Steve Jobs et le néocapitalisme américain. Start with: “Appel seeks a future after the death of its founder, the great creator. But as long as they drown the world with their products, can the company continue to proclaim its membership of the American counterclockwork? Has it not become an example of a new capitalism that wants to impose its hegemony under the pressure of customers in a totalitarian technological system?”

Professor Marie Bénilde has already published in 2007 her book On achète bien les cerveaux (The brains are bought cheap, it could be said in Basque), on the influence of advertising on the life of citizens. Steve Jobs' biography, written by Walter Isaacson, now seems to have pushed to write about Apple, made from the forty conversations he has had with the deceased in recent years and conversations with his environment.

Bénild believes that Apple and Jobs are the best examples of masterfully using the brand’s image in the new technocapitalism: “They symbolize the evolution of the big multinationals in Silicon Valley: they have immersed themselves in marketing and communication techniques to achieve genuine devotion to the brand itself.”

Jobs has become the guru of a new sect of entrepreneurs who not only want to enrich themselves but “change the world”. This was called “the field of distortion of reality.” The Reality Distortion Field (RDF) that Apple usually considers so important already has an entry in the English Wikipedia: “Confused with charm, charism, challenge, hyperbole, marketing, receptivity and perseverance, make yourself and others believe that almost anything can be achieved.”

The RDF can also serve to beautify the essence of the giant corporation. That is, to focus people's attention on the brand and the capital it carries, blurring the industrial processes and the dominant economic relations it keeps behind it.

The branding theory (in Basque we might call it marquetry) that Naomi Klein exhibited in the famous book No Logo in 2000 can explain the trick: the company will focus on increasing the value of its brand, leaving others in charge of all the responsibilities about the rights of workers and the environment, which cost a lot of money and can lead to legal headaches. Everything was outsourced and kept away. Theory as a reality: Apple has 700,000 workers in China.

El Avaro Mesías

Tim Cook was director in 1998, while Apple launched the fascinating motto Think Different. It was he who started Mac to take the manufacturing of all products away from the EE.UU, all the steps from manufacturing all the pieces to the composition of the machines.

The brand's supplier immediately reduced them from four to one and the warehouses in half. Walter Isaacson today summarized the merit of Cookies, the head of Apple: “In 1998, Apple went from having a stock of two months to one month. By September of the same year, Cooke managed to reduce up to six days. A year later he had a stock of two short days and eventually managed to reduce it to 15 hours.”

Almost without warehouses and awaiting new products from the fanatic shopper, the crowd that had formed in front of Apple’s stores turned the brands into marketable images, turning the wait into a merit. A great success from the point of view of marketing.

But with this strategy, it brought all the tension to the vendor's uses, also for the benefit of Apple. In China, the subcontractor company Foxconn is adopting even stricter behaviour to comply with the strict conditions imposed by the giant client.

Working hours are endless, 60 or more per week, very low wages to make a family live, below the officially approved minimum in China. Furthermore, the behaviour of employers is terribly harsh. Without starting to make the list of ill-treatment, one more drop: Following the survey of 1,800 workers conducted by China Labor Watch, 16 per cent of respondents acknowledged that the company is subject to physical sanctions. This is how suicides have proliferated in Foxconn.

However, the guru, who assumed feudalist relationships in the uses that make his products more impactful, would explain to President Barack Obama that this was the way for the United States to go. United States It will restore competitiveness: to eliminate unnecessary rules and expenditure. The same as for improving the education system: “We have no opportunity to change education until the teachers’ unions destroy it.”

No pity. Neither with the workers nor with competitors. Any company that can shut down or discard or buy until crushed. Incorporate technicians, technologies and companies, educated and enriched with free technology, but with a total emphasis on Apple product technology.

The chauffeur who talked about the revolution and the change of the world, a wealthy businessman who cultivated the image of the Buddhist vegetarian ascetic, sums up Bénilde: “Behind the rebel, a fan of Bob Dylan and an apostle of the counterculture, who before starting his company on an early journey to India, there was essentially a great talent to cover up the actions of his fast master and show him the illusions of the time. In that it looked like the businessmen who have tried to marry liberal and libertarian ideas in the May 1968 salsa.”

If Jobs has gathered his followers somewhere, that has been in the communication and press section. His most faithful missionaries have been Maquetists, designers and artistic directors. In short, journalists who tweet obsessed from their iPhones will have to learn what it means that technology owners feel trapped.

According to Marie Bénaldi, “Steve Jobs’ ‘counter-culture’ has become a time when people’s heads are dominated by buzz. But the media hasn't realized that Apple can soon become a Big Brother. (...) The hero of the Messiah made the person caught in the computer revolution believe that he could still control the game.”