Apple As Big Budget Conceptual Art?

Steve Jobs is a top caliber conceptual artist. His vision seems to be more of an aesthetic vision than a technical or even a marketing vision. In this regard, I think that the Apple saga may be far from over. I'm mindful of Dave Hickey's observation in Air Guitar, his wonderful book of essays about pop culture: when the automobile became something of a commodity, Harley Earl, who headed the design division at General Motors after WW II, turned the auto industry from one driven by manufacturing innovation into one driven by design. As the computer industry is increasingly commoditized, will the computer market too become more of an "art market", one that, in the words of Hickey, "stopped advertising products for what they were, or for what they could do, and began advertising them for what they meant"?

- Tim O'Reilly

[via birdhouse]