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Steve Jobs's Real Genius

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Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#21

Post by learc83 »

tintin wrote: post #18
capkutay wrote: post #5

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…

"his contributions to modern society" I'm reading this a lot, but I have a hard time figuring what Jobs contributed to society. There are a lot of cars and there are 'perfected' cars like Ferrari. But does that mean the creators of Ferrari contributed to society?

Imagine if every car manufacturer copied the design of the "perfected" Ferrari until almost every car sold was inspired by that Ferrari.

Then I would say that the designer of that car had contributed to society.

People forget what phones looked like in 2006. My parents now both have smart phones that look a lot like iPhones (but aren't) that they spend hours using a day. Like him or not, you can't argue Steve Jobs didn't have a huge impact on modern society.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#23

Post by capkutay »

antics wrote: post #12
capkutay wrote: post #5

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…

Hmm. Did we read the same article? The Jobs presented here is a narcissistic, tantrum-throwing, deluded hypocrite -- a man whose many personal flaws served as (sometimes very significant) advantages in his environment. Even the question of whether these (borderline disgusting) flaws are vindicated by his ability to cause to develop products is left open. I say this as a fan of Steve Jobs.

Well...you could say the same for biographies of John Lennon that highlighted the personality flaws that accompanied his talent. Yes, the question of whether there is a connection or not is left open, but it's still glorifying his negative attributes because it's about him. In my opinion, whatever is written about Jobs at this point, good or bad, will be associated with his talent.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#24

Post by Toady »

learc83 wrote: post #21
tintin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"his contributions to modern society" I'm reading this a lot, but I have a hard time figuring what Jobs contributed to society. There are a lot of cars and there are 'perfected' cars like Ferrari. But does that mean the creators of Ferrari contributed to society?

Imagine if every car manufacturer copied the design of the "perfected" Ferrari until almost every car sold was inspired by that Ferrari. Then I would say that the designer of that car had contributed to society. People forget what phones looked like in 2006. My parents now both have smart phones that look a lot like iPhones (but aren't) that they spend hours using a day. Like him or not, you can't argue Steve Jobs di…

Steve Jobs wasn't the designer of the iPhone. Other people made it while he cracked the whip. For some reason, a lot of the press is giving him credit for everything at Apple in spite of his infamous reputation for taking credit for other people's work.

Jef Raskin said these things in regards to the Macintosh project:

"What I proposed was a computer that would be easy to use, mix text and graphics, and sell for about $1,000. Steve Jobs said that it was a crazy idea, that it would never sell, and we didn't want anything like it. He tried to shoot the project down."

"After he took over, Jobs came up with the story about the Mac project being a 'pirate operation.' We weren't trying to keep the project away from Apple, as he later said; we had very good ties with the rest of Apple. We were trying to keep the project away from Jobs' meddling. For the first two years, Jobs wanted to kill the project because he didn't understand what it was really all about."

"I was very much amused by the recent Newsweek article where he [Jobs] said, 'I have a few good designs in me still.' He never had any designs. He has not designed a single product. Woz designed the Apple II. Ken Rothmuller and others designed Lisa. My team and I designed the Macintosh. Wendell Sanders designed the Apple III. What did Jobs design? Nothing."

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#25

Post by OoTheNigerian »

>When Vincent shouted, “You’ve got to tell me what you want,” Jobs shot back, “You’ve got to show me some stuff, and I’ll know it when I see it.”

I too am like this. I know what I want when I see it. I also know good stuff. I am sure most people are the same way too.

The main difference between us and Jobs is; we do not have the patience to wait until it it is right. The heart to tell 64 (!!!) nurses that they do not fit. The authority to tell geniuses their work suck and they should come back with more designs.

He was willing to be rude, difficult and a bully to get it right.

Are you?

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#26

Post by PakG1 »

glenra wrote: post #9
latch wrote: post #4

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…

The white man bought all the land from the natives too, when they first arrived in North America. For peanuts. The natives had no concept of what they were doing because they didn't understand the importance of what they were giving away (and economic transactions of the sort were a newfangled thing for them). High school history classes. As my teacher said, "And you might think that these guys got ripped off. Well, they did."

A legal transaction can still be considered stealing, and I think it's very easy to say that Xerox didn't realize what they were giving away. Now the thing is, when transacting with an entity like Xerox, it probably can't be considered criminal. :)

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#27

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #14

I like the tweaker v innovator perspective. I agree that Jobs, and Apple in general perfect rather than innovate. E.g. they didn't invent mp3 players, they just made a really good one. They didn't invent phones with browsing capabilities, they just made them really easy to use and nifty.

"I agree that Jobs, and Apple in general perfect rather than innovate. E.g. they didn't invent mp3 players, they just made a really good one. They didn't invent phones with browsing capabilities, they just made them really easy to use and nifty."

I agree that no company ever had innovated: when someone created mp3 players there were already Walkmans, so mp3 are Walkmans without tape, and digital instead of analog, before Walkmans there were other portable tape recorders and players.

Before Nokia created cell phones there were already analog phones( I have one that weights 2Kgs or 4 pounds), and before that there were "portable" (backpack) radios.

Some people had pushed the envelope of what is possible, and some people instead of recognizing that prefer to diminish what they had done so they could feel better about their small accomplishments on life.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#28

Post by lloeki »

tintin wrote: post #18
capkutay wrote: post #5

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…

"his contributions to modern society" I'm reading this a lot, but I have a hard time figuring what Jobs contributed to society. There are a lot of cars and there are 'perfected' cars like Ferrari. But does that mean the creators of Ferrari contributed to society?

> But does that mean the creators of Ferrari contributed to society?

Yes.

The amount of research thrown into the likes of a Ferrari end up trickling all the way down to your regular car. From tyre compounds to suspension design to chassis structure to aerodynamics to engine optimization, your daily car would be nowhere as safe, economical, durable and so on without cutting edge technology designed for those ultra high-end cars. I had a nasty car crash that would simply have reduced me to bits ten years ago, but survived with only a few bruises and a bunch of displaced vertebrae. I could have escaped the crash altogether had the car been a couple of years less, and had been equipped with ESP. It would have been impossible to fit such amount of technology in such a cheap and lightweight package without bringing cutting-edge technology and perfect realization to the table at some point, but that comes with an awfully high price tag which can only be afforded by consumer luxury segment and professional racing. R&D in automotive consumes absolutely unfathomable and ridiculous amounts of money.

So yes, a F458, a Corvette ZR1, a Honda NSX-R, a Zonda Cinque, a Bugatti Veyron, an Aston-Martin One-77, a Porsche GT3 RS, a Nissan GT-R, a Tesla Roadster are vehicles of perfection that bring something to the table for society as a whole.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#29

Post by chubot »

It has some truth to it, but ignores a lot of salient facts in favor of a cute argument (insert Gladwell dig here).

Steve Jobs' had many parts to his genius. Tweaking products until they were really finished was one.

But I would say the most important (and impressive) part of his genius was holistic thinking. He wasn't a programmer, a hardware engineer, an industrial designer, an advertising copywriter, or an architect, etc. But he deeply understood the essentials of those fields and was able to harness them to create a hugely successful business and set of products.

Another part of his genius was to pick the best talent and get the most out of them.

This is all obvious, but after reading Isaacson's book, which was quite good, this article is basically fluff. Gladwell basically just adds this marginally related story about tweakers so the entire article isn't regurgitating all the interesting anecdotes from the bio.

EDIT: Also, the use of the word "tweaker" is a stupid rhetorical trick -- the article is basically a troll.

"In contrast, Jobs’s vision, brilliant and perfect as it was, was narrow. He was a tweaker to the last, endlessly refining the same territory he had claimed as a young man."

Really? Does anyone honestly believe a person that was CEO of 2 different companies that changed industries has a narrow vision? This is willfully ignoring reality to make a cute little article.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#30

Post by [deleted] »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #25

>When Vincent shouted, “You’ve got to tell me what you want,” Jobs shot back, “You’ve got to show me some stuff, and I’ll know it when I see it.” I too am like this. I know what I want when I see it. I also know good stuff. I am sure most people are the same way too. The main difference between us and Jobs is; we do not have the patience to wait until it it is right. The heart to tell 64 (!!!) nurses that they do not…

[deleted]
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