Jobs/Frey/reality

From the current Business Week, about Applemeister Steve Jobs:

"And now Jobs was back in charge. Wearing shorts, sneakers, and a few days' growth of beard, he sat down in a swivel chair and spun slowly, says McCluney... "O.K., tell me what's wrong with this place," Jobs said. After some mumbled replies, he jumped in: "It's the products! So what's wrong with the products?" Again, executives began offering some answers. Jobs cut them off. "The products SUCK!" he roared. "There's no sex in them anymore!"

Hear that? Products. Not branding. Products. Real stuff. Sure, you can use your brand "to tell a story" or whatever wank your mktg consultant has just charged you 200 an hour for, but you need to make products that, at the very least, are not shite.

On a similar reality/bollocks interface, James Frey has admitted that his addiction memoir A Million Little Pieces is, pretty much, bollocks.

Forgive me if I don't share Winfrey's indignation (with a side order of damage limitation to her own, personal brand). There are many thousands of people making many millions of dollars specifically telling people stuff that just ain't so. They work in advertising, PR, politics, all over. In the universe they concoct for us, Saddam had WMDs, David Cameron is the future of British politics, Posh 'n' Becks wrote their own autobiographies and in the Congo, they drink M'Bongo. If you want to turn the Frey thing into a debate about the nature of truth, Oprah, then I'll join in. If you just want to make this ex-junkie feel bad because he made you look a bit silly, then I'll pass.