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jOBS: The Dumbest Movie Name in History?

Steve-jobs


By now, thankfully, most Apple watchers have stopped making wild product-based pronouncements about the company that begin with the words "Steve Jobs would." As in: Steve Jobs would have nixed Apple Maps; Steve Jobs would never have allowed Siri to launch in such a disappointing form; Steve Jobs would have annihilated Android already.
Not only is it impossible to know where Apple would be today with its founder at the helm, but Jobs himself insisted to his successor that all such questions were out of bounds. "I never want you to ask what I would have done," he told Tim Cook back in 2011, referring to the in-fighting at Disney after its founder died. "Just do what's right."
But when it comes to questions of Jobs' own image, something he jealously guarded, we're on much safer ground. So let me state clearly for the record: Steve Jobs would have detested the name of the biopic screening for the first time this month at the Sundance Film Festival, "jOBS."
Yes, that is exactly how the title of the movie is supposed to be rendered: lowercase "j", uppercase "OBS." Exactly what you'd get if you tried to type his last name on a Windows PC and didn't realize the Caps Lock was on. It makes absolutely zero sense.
Worse, it's an insult to the memory of a man who adored typography throughout his life, and who always, always sweated the smallest of details.
Presumably the producers were trying to echo Apple's "i" name structure, as in iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTunes and iBooks. Two things about that: firstly, the word that followed the "i" was always complete unto itself. Secondly, the lowercase "i" was intended to stand for two things: internet and individual.
So what on Earth is an "OBS"? What does the "j" stand for? Even if we take this title on its own terms, what is it trying to say?
jOBS is an indie film, unlike the forthcoming Aaron Sorkin-penned Jobs biopic; the producers are not beholden to the crazy ideas of some clueless executive at a large studio. For all we know, the movie itself, which covers Jobs' live from 1971 to 2000, is a work of genius. All the more reason not to saddle it with sloppy branding.
It's not the first time a ridiculous name has been attached to a biographical Jobs project. When Walter Isaacson was tapped by Jobs to write his authorized biography, the marketing department at his publisher Simon & Schuster came up with the title "iSteve: the Book of Jobs." Luckily, Isaacson soon nixed the name as "too cutesy." It was renamed, simply, Steve Jobs.
Jobs left the content of the book to Isaacson, but he insisted on absolute control over its cover. He wanted it to look as spare and beautiful as an Apple product. He chose the typeface, a classic Helvetica, and dictated its size.
One of the proudest boasts of Jobs' life -- indeed, one that took up a third of his famous Stanford commencement speech -- was bringing well-designed typefaces to a desktop computer for the first time. "The Mac was the first computer with beautiful typography," Jobs told students. That never would have been the case had he not audited a calligraphy course at Reed College after he dropped out.
"I learned about serif and san serif typefaces," he said, "about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great."
I interviewed Jobs dozens of times in the 1990s and 2000s, enough to see that this kind of attention to detail wasn't for show. His love of design was genuine, as was his ability to hit the roof when it fell short. He really did care about the tiniest of minutiae. This is a guy who burst into tears when it became clear that the first edition iMac would have to ship with a CD tray, and was only calmed by his team's insistence that later versions would load disks into the machine without one.
So given all that, what do you think Jobs would have to say about this movie name -- a travesty of his own -- splashed all over posters, ads and the credits of the film itself? (Which, by the way, has been made without any involvement from Apple.)
It's too late to change anything for the film's Sundance screening. But its wider release is still three months away. In indie movie marketing, that's plenty of time. So I implore the producers: whatever you have to say about the man's life, respect his passion. Respect his name. And please, please, uppercase that J.
Photo via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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