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"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."
Steve Jobs was the consummate unreasonable man.
There are no words that can sum up Steve Jobs genius and his contributions to modern society. On the other hand, I can't help but notice how much press/literature there has been on his genius and I think it's starting to be excessive. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not a fan of literature that praises success and goes in-depth into the lives/processes of talented people(that's why I'm not a fan of Gladwell's Outliers bo…
I say this as a fan of Steve Jobs.
Jobs had faults and long-term insights. He liked what was beautiful. And he was really good at tweaking (and insisted on it until a kind of perfection).
But the other thing he had was imagination, insight into what was important in the long run, and really good engineers who were attracted by his insistence on excellence. It's not just about insistence on tweaking.
It's about NeXT and Pixar and excellence. Insistence on tweaking a design perfectly is correlated with excellence in imagination. They are not so different. You don't insist on tweaking something past all points of normal behavior -- unless you have that vision.
Why is it dated November 14, 2011?
Insightful and highly accurate characterization of Issacson's Biography. I often wondered whether people like Jobs have any ability to see themselves (and others) objectively, and whether that lack of ability, that narcissism, is essential to their ability to ensure their vision comes out with the purity that we saw in the iPhone, iPad, Macbook Air, etc... I also appreciate this characterization's of Jobs' rant on Ga…
> of Jobs' rant on Gates' supposed lack of imagination Where can I read this rant? Or do you have in mind Jobs' rant about __Microsoft__ having no taste which is completely different thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, thanks. I fail, however, to see how Gates philanthropy relates to imagination. As for the second quote, it is nice but in reality things were much more complicated.
What Jobs probably meant (not that I agree with it necessarily): Philanthropy is using money to enable others to innovate, in contrast to being an innovator.
There are no words that can sum up Steve Jobs genius and his contributions to modern society. On the other hand, I can't help but notice how much press/literature there has been on his genius and I think it's starting to be excessive. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not a fan of literature that praises success and goes in-depth into the lives/processes of talented people(that's why I'm not a fan of Gladwell's Outliers bo…
Much of the success in the second Jobs era of Apple is attributable to Ive, Cook, Schiller (it was in fact Schiller who first suggested the iPod's click wheel), and many others. I'm now beginning to believe that Jobs' presence is unnecessary and that without him, those who were the driving force behind Apple's recent successes will have a greater opportunity to shine.
Much of the press that has been portraying him as the inventive genius behind Apple is playing right into the image Steve was always trying to reinforce. Hopefully, this biography, as well as other objective coverage, will open up the behind-the-scenes of Apple a bit and let people in on how much responsibility other people really had for Apple's success. Steve had plenty of failures in his career, and his obsession with the color scheme at NeXT didn't contribute to any kind of leadership position in the marketplace. Fretting over the design of your oxygen mask in the hospital just sounds ridiculous, almost as if he was knowingly playing a character, to add to his own mystique as the eccentric, meticulous jerk who's so zany that he frets over the design of his oxygen mask. Steve was very image-conscious, from his Beatles haircut to his turtleneck wardrobe. I think his policy of secrecy was important specifically to aid in maintaining that carefully crafted imagery, to avoid letting the salacious or less interesting realities of both him and Apple reach the public's ears.
He was an interesting, motivating person, but I fear that future entrepreneurs will use the glorified image of Steve Jobs as justification to treat people like shit. It's not necessary and wasn't the reason for Apple's success. One must also wonder how much of Steve's stubbornness has cost Apple opportunities or how much his belittling of people has driven away talent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, he means _Gates_ google: Jobs on Gate no imagination "Bill basically has no imagination and never find anything, that’s why I think he’s more comfortable this time on philanthropy rather than technological. He’s just shamelessly take others’ ideas," There's also another much older quote, which I think is an awesome one for Bill Gates: "You're ripping us off!", Steve shouted, raising his voice even higher. "I trus…
> "I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it." The main problem with that analogy is that Jobs bought that TV set from Xerox. Xerox freely let Apple see what they were working on with the understanding that Apple would use some of these ideas. In exchange for this, Xerox got to profit from the resulting…
You should also know that Xerox sued Apple for its use of their GUI, though the case was dismissed.