Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Praise of Bad Steve

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 86 posts

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#51

Post by 2arrs2ells »

ScottBurson wrote: post #6

I've never worked for Apple and never really aspired to, mostly because my interests didn't overlap with what I thought I would probably be doing there, but partly, I have to admit, because I had heard the stories of Steve the tyrant and was put off by them. Maybe my ego is sturdier now, because I wonder if I wouldn't have enjoyed the challenges he set people. One thing is for sure, you could know that if you did wha…

If this sentiment is common enough (I know I've felt it), I wonder if the Apple applicant pool will change in the post-Steve era.

Folks who are less confident (or - more modest) might be more likely to apply now.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#52

Post by 2arrs2ells »

vacri wrote: post #45
msbarnett wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could argue about the domination of the Mac or the impact and legacy of NeXT and Pixar, but... You really don't think the iPod was an industry-dominating hit? They sold hundreds of millions of them, and no other company ever really came up with a successful answer to them. It was left to Apple itself to kill them with the iPhone.

The ipod was around for three years before it took off in sales, and there were plenty of other music players available at the time that were more popular and had better functionality. Most of the iPod's initial success wasn't because of anything innovative about the product , but because of very, very savvy marketing . It's very interesting to watch all this historical revisionism that paints Jobs as the mysterious…

Did you ever own a non-iPod MP3 player? The user experience on those devices was usually terrible (especially navigating through songs without a scroll wheel). Loading songs onto those players was painful, or at least nowhere near as simple as iTunes (especially once Apple bought SoundJam).

Additionally, Jobs' relentless addition/pruning of the iPod lines (mini/shuffle/nano/color/touch/etc) kept Apple with both a streamlined offering and ~70% market share.

I'm not arguing that the first ("less space than a nomad") iPod was a revolutionary device at launch. But dismissing the iPod's success as "savvy marketing" is doing the device a huge disservice.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#53

Post by gfunk911 »

vacri wrote: post #45
msbarnett wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could argue about the domination of the Mac or the impact and legacy of NeXT and Pixar, but... You really don't think the iPod was an industry-dominating hit? They sold hundreds of millions of them, and no other company ever really came up with a successful answer to them. It was left to Apple itself to kill them with the iPhone.

The ipod was around for three years before it took off in sales, and there were plenty of other music players available at the time that were more popular and had better functionality. Most of the iPod's initial success wasn't because of anything innovative about the product , but because of very, very savvy marketing . It's very interesting to watch all this historical revisionism that paints Jobs as the mysterious…

I'm a programmer. 3-4 years ago, I bought an iRiver. It got great reviews, it was supposedly better than an iPod, and you could put Real Rhapsody music on it. I literally spent over an hour attempting to load music on it, and failed. It used some kind of Windows Media Player plugin to load music with an interface from hell. I never even attempted to load Rhapsody music on it, god knows if it would have worked.

The iPod didn't win by accident, or cause of marketing. Sometimes the best product wins.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#54

Post by brettvallis »

jonnathanson wrote: post #34
ScottBurson wrote: post #6

I've never worked for Apple and never really aspired to, mostly because my interests didn't overlap with what I thought I would probably be doing there, but partly, I have to admit, because I had heard the stories of Steve the tyrant and was put off by them. Maybe my ego is sturdier now, because I wonder if I wouldn't have enjoyed the challenges he set people. One thing is for sure, you could know that if you did wha…

I've worked briefly at Apple, but had only one face-to-face encounter with Steve. It was intensely scary. He was loved -- LOVED -- on the Apple campus. But he was also feared. And I felt that fear when I saw him. He was, and remains, the only person I've been genuinely "star struck" upon encountering. A lot of that was born of admiration, but just as much was born of terror. In retrospect, I realized that I wasn't re…

Not childish, on the contrary: quite mature, accurate, articulate and insightful.

Mostly we fear ourselves, what we are, what we aren't, etc. Whether the dialogue is accurate or not, well, that's up to us individually, and so is what we do with it.

Situations and experiences can hold a mirror up to us - so to speak - wherein we're forced to confront these fears of ourselves. It's interesting that the Steve persona did that to you. I doubt it was intentional on his part, just part of who he was, a part of the legacy he had created and you.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#55

Post by vacri »

gfunk911 wrote: post #53
vacri wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ipod was around for three years before it took off in sales, and there were plenty of other music players available at the time that were more popular and had better functionality. Most of the iPod's initial success wasn't because of anything innovative about the product , but because of very, very savvy marketing . It's very interesting to watch all this historical revisionism that paints Jobs as the mysterious…

I'm a programmer. 3-4 years ago, I bought an iRiver. It got great reviews, it was supposedly better than an iPod, and you could put Real Rhapsody music on it. I literally spent over an hour attempting to load music on it, and failed. It used some kind of Windows Media Player plugin to load music with an interface from hell. I never even attempted to load Rhapsody music on it, god knows if it would have worked. The iP…

3-4 years ago is not when the ipod got big. 3-4 years ago is when the iphone came out.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#56

Post by vacri »

2arrs2ells wrote: post #52
vacri wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ipod was around for three years before it took off in sales, and there were plenty of other music players available at the time that were more popular and had better functionality. Most of the iPod's initial success wasn't because of anything innovative about the product , but because of very, very savvy marketing . It's very interesting to watch all this historical revisionism that paints Jobs as the mysterious…

Did you ever own a non-iPod MP3 player? The user experience on those devices was usually terrible (especially navigating through songs without a scroll wheel). Loading songs onto those players was painful, or at least nowhere near as simple as iTunes (especially once Apple bought SoundJam). Additionally, Jobs' relentless addition/pruning of the iPod lines (mini/shuffle/nano/color/touch/etc) kept Apple with both a str…

Yes, I owned several MP3 players of the era, one of them an iPod video. I found the ipod at the time to be one of the most frustrating to load media onto - as one memorable example, it wouldn't let me load .mp4s into the 'TV' folder, because .mp4s are 'Movies'. No argument will be entered into. wtf?

Loading music was no better or worse than other players I had, but iTunes was still horrendous bloatware. Why do I need to install Quicktime - absolutely and utterly useless to me - to simply move files from hard drive to ipod?! Some MP3 players I had just let you drag and drop with a file explorer and they would 'just work', plus you could use the software to do it 'properly' if you felt like. One chinese knock-off I had simply played the songs in the order you copied them on, which was weird :) Then there's things like radios - ipod had none, despite it being a clear feature people wanted for years.

But yes, I had several MP3 players of the era, and the ipod was nothing special in terms of user experience. The hardware case was pretty, admittedly.

People are viewing the early digital music player market with the rosy-coloured glasses of historical revisionism. Apple are top dog now, so it somehow stands to reason they always were? Logical fallacy. The early ipods weren't great, and it wasn't Apple out there leading us all into the digital music new world, there was a passel of competitors.

I think you also underestimate marketing - higher market share does not mean that the product is inherently better (betamax vs VHS, anyone? Or the OS war of your choice?). Apple has an incredible marketing team, and frankly good marketing does mean something significant, or there wouldn't be so much money in it.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#57

Post by vacri »

vacri wrote: post #55
gfunk911 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a programmer. 3-4 years ago, I bought an iRiver. It got great reviews, it was supposedly better than an iPod, and you could put Real Rhapsody music on it. I literally spent over an hour attempting to load music on it, and failed. It used some kind of Windows Media Player plugin to load music with an interface from hell. I never even attempted to load Rhapsody music on it, god knows if it would have worked. The iP…

3-4 years ago is not when the ipod got big. 3-4 years ago is when the iphone came out.

Not sure why this got downmodded. The ipod came out in 2001. It didn't really take off until 2004. The guy I'm responding to is talking about UX from 2007-08, well after the maturation of the digital music player. iRiver sucking in 2007 does not mean that the iPod didn't suck in 2002.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#58

Post by masklinn »

Someone wrote: post #27
nikuda wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be, but I've heard this same story told about a Sony exec. instead of Steve, and that was before iPod's time. It was a camera that he dropped into a body of water though. The rest is same.

Funny that both devices cannot really be made without air in them. That first iPod had a hard disk. Hard disks have disk heads that float on air. Typical lenses aren't flat at the back; CCDs or films are. You could fill that void with glass with a different index of refraction, but that would only make the thing heavier, not smaller.

> That first iPod had a hard disk. Hard disks have disk heads that float on air.

Hard disk drives are sealed, you're not going to get much air out of dropping an HDD (especially a 1.8" one) in water.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#59

Post by AlisdairO »

vacri wrote: post #45
msbarnett wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could argue about the domination of the Mac or the impact and legacy of NeXT and Pixar, but... You really don't think the iPod was an industry-dominating hit? They sold hundreds of millions of them, and no other company ever really came up with a successful answer to them. It was left to Apple itself to kill them with the iPhone.

The ipod was around for three years before it took off in sales, and there were plenty of other music players available at the time that were more popular and had better functionality. Most of the iPod's initial success wasn't because of anything innovative about the product , but because of very, very savvy marketing . It's very interesting to watch all this historical revisionism that paints Jobs as the mysterious…

I agree on the marketing being important, but I remember thinking at the time it first came out that the iPod was by far the smallest hard disk mp3 player I'd seen - the first that might be practical for the non-geek market. Were there others around that time that I'm not aware of?

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#60

Post by saturn »

chaostheory wrote: post #24

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernard Shaw

I have always thought that quote was ridiculous. What is unreasonable about noticing an improvement can be made in your surroundings, and endeavouring to make it?

There is a grain of truth I suppose, vis-a-vis humanity's general restlessness, fixing what ain't broke, etc, but I think that this generalisation that anyone who isn't perfectly happy and satisfied with the exact present state of things is "unreasonable" is not true at all.

Post reply on HN