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In Praise of Bad Steve

theatlantic.com

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Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#61

Post by debaserab2 »

vacri wrote: post #56
2arrs2ells wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Weird. After reading this, I'm not sure you come from the same planet I do.

I literally had the exact opposite experience you did. I couldn't afford an iPod when it was released, so I bought the Chinese knock-off. Several, actually -- I worked at Circuit City at the time and got an incredible employee discounts on them. And all had horrendous software, as well as plenty of hardware glitches. The software rarely worked as advertised and I usually had to resort to some sort of hack or third party program to get MP3's loaded in any sort of format I wanted them to work in.

It wasn't until years later when I could finally afford an iPod Mini that I finally found an MP3 player that worked on even a basic serviceable level. I still have that iPod mini, and it works perfect. If I didn't have an iPhone already, that would be my MP3 player for when I work out.

If you're speaking to computer know-how and aptitude, I am a programmer today, so I do not feel it is my ability that held me back.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#62

Post by stickfigure »

MaysonL wrote: post #26
mikeash wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say at least five. The Macintosh was also an industry-dominating hit. While the Mac itself never dominated in terms of market share, it so dominated the market that almost all PCs shipped in the last 20 years are imitations of it. The iPod pretty much took over the portable music player market and remains the dominant player today. And finally the iPad pretty much created the tablet market and everybody else is s…

And then there were Pixar and Next.

+1 for Pixar, -1 for NeXT. You come out even.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#63

Post by stickfigure »

debaserab2 wrote: post #61
vacri wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Weird. After reading this, I'm not sure you come from the same planet I do. I literally had the exact opposite experience you did. I couldn't afford an iPod when it was released, so I bought the Chinese knock-off. Several, actually -- I worked at Circuit City at the time and got an incredible employee discounts on them. And all had horrendous software, as well as plenty of hardware glitches. The software rarely worke…

It's not entirely fair to compare the top-of-the-line product to a bottom-of-the-line product. Before the iPod even existed I had a Creative Nomad with an eight megabyte SmartMedia card. It worked, and faithfully played one single low-bitrate album at a time for years. Still would if I bothered to dig it out of the closet.

Other than offering more capacity (years later at a higher price), the iPod really wasn't radically better than my old Nomad. I'll grant that the iPod was a great product, but it wasn't a revolutionary product in the way that the iPhone was. The iPod is certainly better than the absolute worst of the market, but it was only a little better than the best of the market at the time.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#64

Post by chaostheory »

saturn wrote: post #60
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" i…

> What is unreasonable about noticing an improvement can be made in your surroundings, and endeavouring to make it?

I guess if the Steve Jobs aquarium urban legend didn't sound unreasonable, you probably have the silicon valley mindset. It's really easy to think of the current state of things and to feel that everything done up to now is 'reasonable'; especially if you live in a really progressive, techno-friendly place like Silicon Valley. You need to know the historical context from the perspective of an average non-technical person in places that aren't as open minded and progressive. One example would be an average person wondering why people wasted their time making unreliable experimental horseless carriages when clearly horses were superior. I also can't help but think of the author of Gulliver's Travels making fun of people experimenting with electricity.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#65

Post by chaostheory »

reledi wrote: post #43
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 would like that quote more if it read > Therefore all innovation because I think progress can still happen in a world that does not adapt to change, but innovation cannot.

> I would like that quote more if it read 'Therefore all innovation'

I feel that progress implies innovation. Shaw's quote was meant to be general and universal, applying to crazy inventors as well Women who wanted to vote, and people of color who wanted equal rights. All of these people probably seemed unreasonable to their peers at one point.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#66

Post by vacri »

debaserab2 wrote: post #61
vacri wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Weird. After reading this, I'm not sure you come from the same planet I do. I literally had the exact opposite experience you did. I couldn't afford an iPod when it was released, so I bought the Chinese knock-off. Several, actually -- I worked at Circuit City at the time and got an incredible employee discounts on them. And all had horrendous software, as well as plenty of hardware glitches. The software rarely worke…

The chinese knock-off was only mentioned because of it's weird play order: physical order on the disk, not any way of ordering songs by metadata or filename. That particular MP3 player wasn't very good, from memory.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#67

Post by Udo »

stickfigure wrote: post #62
MaysonL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then there were Pixar and Next.

+1 for Pixar, -1 for NeXT. You come out even.

While NeXT might have been a commercial failure, the vast majority of entrepreneurs can only dream of having such a business once in their lifetime. In the end, NeXT was acquired by Apple and the foundation of their operating system became what is now OS X. NeXT would not be called a failure if any other person had founded it - it just seems less successful by comparison in the light of Jobs' other endeavors.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#68

Post by fpgeek »

Udo wrote: post #67
stickfigure wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Pixar, -1 for NeXT. You come out even.

While NeXT might have been a commercial failure, the vast majority of entrepreneurs can only dream of having such a business once in their lifetime. In the end, NeXT was acquired by Apple and the foundation of their operating system became what is now OS X. NeXT would not be called a failure if any other person had founded it - it just seems less successful by comparison in the light of Jobs' other endeavors.

If any other person had founded it, NeXT wouldn't have been acquired by Apple.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#69

Post by _delirium »

paul9290 wrote: post #9

History shows many luminaries to be like Jobs was or even worse; ruthless and totally unethical. Thomas Edison ( http://www.reformation.org/thomas-edison.html ) comes to mind.

True, though there are plenty of very humble, friendly luminaries as well. Woz and Bob Moog come to mind.

Re: In Praise of Bad Steve

#70

Post by keenerd »

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…

You can not be serious. It shows up as an external hard drive. Copy your music over. Done. But maybe you've never used a floppy disk or flash drive? I could see it being confusing then.
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