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Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

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Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#91

Post by cheez »

hellofunk wrote: post #79
corford wrote: post #53

Beautiful interview. Love him or hate him, you have to respect him. I loved this passage: Playboy: Do you know what you want to do with the rest of this lifetime? Jobs: There’s an old Hindu saying that comes into my mind occasionally: “For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.” As I’m going to be 30 in February, the thought has crossed my mind…

> For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you. So if you live longer than 60, I wonder that means of those years in-between, after age 30.

Trying to undo the damage of the first 30 years.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#92

Post by bjshepard »

valuearb wrote: post #65
wavefunction wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs had many flaws which are often elided in his hagiographies.

As did Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Lincoln, Washington, Churchill, et al.

Gandhi was a straight up racist. Lincoln participated in an ethnic cleansing campaign as a young man. Washington was one of the founders of a slave empire and a slaver himself. Churchill, a genocidaire, financially linked with arms dealers, and militarist.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#93

Post by code_duck »

agumonkey wrote: post #22
thecompilr wrote: post #7

> Jobs: Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in this café [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise instructions. I might say, “Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand erect. Lift left foot. Bend left knee until…

Jobs wasn't Woz level, but he was no fool either.

I wasn't aware that people doubted the intelligence or acumen of Steve Jobs.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#94

Post by ykler »

Dude is 29 years old and already this timeless bullshit that in my day kids were idealistic and now they just care about money. (Although, maybe there are fluctuations about the mean and 1985 was an extreme.)

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#95

Post by ykler »

"People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve productivity. But it wouldn’t have worked. It required that people learn this whole sequence of strange incantations, Morse code, dots and dashes, to use the telegraph. It took about 40 hours to learn. The majority of people would never learn how to use it." He is probably right. And yet, how tragic. Forty hours is not that long. Imagine that the telephone hadn't been invented. Would we still today be living in a society where people went to the telegraph office to send telegraphs but basically no one could telegraph themselves?

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#96

Post by marktangotango »

hellofunk wrote: post #90
marktangotango wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI he's applying logical operations to sentences as logical propositions, which is valid and precise. Not hand wavey, and condescending like you are doing.

Looks like all three of us are being a bit condescending here. Here is the actual logic: if people are not inherently bad at teaching, that means they are mostly effective at it, right? Were most of the teachers you've had in your life effective at teaching? Mine certainly were not. Perhaps you were having problems with the use of my word "nothing" instead of "mostly," which is just a colloquialism. Idioms of languag…

It's clear you are arguing for the sake of arguing and this community is worse for it.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#97

Post by mikeash »

WalterBright wrote: post #76
mikeash wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is true of many other animals, but I wouldn’t say a cat is particularly good at explaining how to hunt.

I have a cat who was separated from its mother too early. It shows some vague abilities at hunting, but is quite inept at it. I've also seen a documentary that claimed humans have a unique ability to respond to pointing. Pointing is a big part of teaching. No animal has as lengthy a childhood as humans, and that is to teach them how to survive. It just doesn't make any sense that people are inherently bad at teaching…

That's my point. I don't think cats are very good at explaining things, but they still manage to teach their young to hunt. I see that as coming from a strong ability to imitate, rather than a strong ability to explain.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#98

Post by hellofunk »

marktangotango wrote: post #96
hellofunk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like all three of us are being a bit condescending here. Here is the actual logic: if people are not inherently bad at teaching, that means they are mostly effective at it, right? Were most of the teachers you've had in your life effective at teaching? Mine certainly were not. Perhaps you were having problems with the use of my word "nothing" instead of "mostly," which is just a colloquialism. Idioms of languag…

It's clear you are arguing for the sake of arguing and this community is worse for it.

That's an unfair assumption to make. Calling me hand-wavey doesn't add anything to the community either.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#99

Post by noonespecial »

jjeaff wrote: post #66
panic wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most salespeople take a product that exists and convince you to buy it. Steve took a product that didn't exist and convinced you to build it. His talent was organizing people around a common vision, not just selling the result.

I think more importantly was getting together the people to sell it. Much or even all of the product apple had built were already products. But Steve was able to package it and spin it in a way that made it exciting and must have. One of their watershed products was the iPod. I had a several mp3 players before the iPod was created. But apple made them cool and thus mainstream.

I had them too. They all sucked. Apple didn't make them cool, Apple made them work (in a human way that the others just didn't). That made them cool.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#100

Post by jasonwelk »

marktangotango wrote: post #89
hellofunk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that we are not talking about numbers, we are talking about human behavior. Applying a formula to that, as you are attempting to do, is not going to give you the conclusions you expect.

FYI he's applying logical operations to sentences as logical propositions, which is valid and precise. Not hand wavey, and condescending like you are doing.

I don't perceive the tone you are projecting onto the OP, fwiw.
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