Apple is a media company in everything it does. An extremely innovative organization, Apple has been draining on many different markets: software (less and less), hardware, consumer electronics, entertainment e-Commerce, and retail. The only thing these things have in common is, apart from their great design, their characteristics of media.

The word media comes from the latin word mediare basically meaning “to stand, sit, lie, or be in the middle”. Apple products stand in the middle of you and something else.

Let me take the reasoning further: Apple not only is a media company, Apple is a multi-media company. Apple belongs to the show industry! Not quite convinced yet? Wait a minute. As you would do in geopolitics, when you think about where a country – or company, is heading to, you take a look at its leader’s biography.

• Is it really a coincidence if Steve Jobs, when he was fired from Apple quite some time ago, went to found Pixar, a major Hollywood graphics studio? Probably not in the show industry by chance. My guess is that Apple is a replication of what emerged in Jobs’ mind during his time at Pixar, where he lacked resources, brand power and the marketing teams to achieve in making the company converge towards his vision.

• Take a look at this video, an extract from a 1997 Steve Jobs Keynote found on one of French very good blogger Julien Codorniou posts. Introducing a partnership between two great rival companies that have been shaping the computer industry landscape, namely Microsoft and Apple, Steve Jobs does nothing else than acting. Still not buying that Apple is a show company? Whether you do buy or not (yet), here’s an extract from Mike Evangelist’s “Behind the magic curtain” (The Guardian Unlimited Technology, January 5th 2006): “The big keynotes require a very large crew with separate teams for each major task. One prepares the room to seat several thousand people. Another group builds the stage with its motorised pedestals, risers, trap doors, and so forth. A third manages the stage lighting, audio and effects.Yet another sets up and calibrates the state-of-the-art projection systems (complete with redundant backup systems), and a huge remote video truck parked outside has its own crew handling video feeds for the webcasts and playback of any video needed during the show. Then there are the people who set up all the computers used in the keynote, each with at least one backup that can be instantly brought online with the flick of a switch.

  And of course there’s the secrecy. The impact of Steve’s presentations depends on surprise; so once the rehearsals begin, security people help keep the curious out and the secrets secret. It was fascinating to watch. No detail was overlooked: for example, while rehearsing the iDVD demo, Steve found that the DVD player’s remote control didn’t work from where he wanted to stand on the stage. The crew had to make a special repeater system to make it work.

  So when Steve steps out on that stage, with its stark black-on-black colour scheme, and does his apparently simple demos, he brings the combined energy and talent of all those people and many more back in Cupertino, California, and channels it to the audience. It makes me think of a magnifying glass used to focus the power of the sun on one small spot until it bursts into flames.” Click here to read the full article, Mike Evangelist’s “Behind the magic curtain” (The Guardian Unlimited Technology, January 5th 2006).

Apple’s core business is to empower you to devise your show-time corner at home, in the subway or at the office: an entertainment multimedia system. Apple belongs to the show business.

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