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Steve Jobs's Real Genius

newyorker.com

81–90 of 152 posts

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#81

I never met Jobs and I know nothing about him personally. But if the stuff in this article is true, he was an obnoxious prick, genius or not.

I would love to work for such an obnoxious prick. I am tired of all of the incompetents in the corporate world who just try to get along with each other while accomplishing little or the startups producing yet another "social" site.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#82
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, yeah, sure... Since a writing class I took was probably one of my favorite courses in college, I used to hold writers in high regard as creative people. Not anymore. For example, what Gladwell just wrote simply illustrates that he has no knowledge whatsoever of how creative process works. For one, all creativity is tweaking. Einstein obtained his relativity theory by basically iteratively tweaking known theorie…

You should read a bit more of Gladwell's works as well as his background before labeling him as a "relatively dumb medium".

Well if the article in question exemplifies Gladwell's thinking, then I will save reading more of him for a rainy day, and will instead read about those people who do things instead of those who talk about those who do. As someone said, one's time on Earth is limited.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#83

>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…

Of all of the things to celebrate in Steve Jobs I'm not sure this is the best one. If anything its the easiest to mis-construe. Can you imagine how many people exist that are like Steve Jobs except without being able to "know good stuff"? And how hellish those people are? shudders Acting like this is super risky, if you don't get it right then everyone hates you and you don't have results.

Maybe my comment hinted I appove of diminishing people. I do not.

However, I wish I had the patience, clout, timing and resources to say no, until I am satsfied with the outcome (Hopfully before the use expires).

I would love to do so being as humane as possible

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#85
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Job's approach to development goes something like this: 1. Build a talented team. 2. Keep it small. 3. Give them time. 4. Keep them focused on the end goal not the internals of the project. 5. Cut all non essential features.

6. Don't tolerate crap. 7. Turn your product announcements into theatrical performances. 8. Have as your main goal keeping the end users happy, not the middle men.

5 and 8 to me are the really important ones wrt granparent's question.

It is a lot easier to avoid and eliminate debt when you are ruthlessly focused on a few key features.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#86
post #29

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 archit…

>Gladwell [...] adds this marginally related story about tweakers so the entire article isn't regurgitating [...] anecdotes

I think you're missing the main point here. The computer revolution, as a large scale technological and social transformation, does bear comparison to the Industrial Revolution. Where does someone like Steve Jobs stand in this comparison? He was obviously neither the inventor of a fundamental technological advance (James Watt) nor the guy who provided the money and business expertise (Matthew Boulton). The article makes a good case that the closest analogy is actually with the people who took Watt's steam engine and eventually improved its efficiency fourfold (and, BTW, the term "tweakers" comes from the referenced Meisenzahl & Mokyr paper).

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#87

Who is this Gladwell guy and what did he invent or made that is worth noting? Or did he simply take someone else's opinions using someone else's language and tweaked them a little bit to make them appear as his own?

Not sure if you're being serious or not...

But this is probably the worst Gladwell article I've ever read. I just finished the Jobs biography, and Gladwell is just repeating parts of it. I know Gladwell has a set number of words he has to deliver to the New Yorker each year, but I'm actually kind of surprised the New Yorker accepted this article. It's practically just plagiarism.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#88
post #9
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…

No, the analogy is perfect for what happened, and a killer comeback on Gate's part. I don't think Steve appreciated competition and tried to kill it with a shotgun instead of a better product, this is very evident with the attack on Android, and with the absolutely absurd patents that have been filed by Apple.

Short term Steve Job's model of doing things has worked out really well, but if it was allowed to continue (and grow) at the rate it was, it would have created a stagnant world where having a screen on a phone would be patented by Apple.

Tim Cook is an excellent choice for the next CEO and he will probably do very nicely at Apple; his changes are very welcome in my mind.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#89
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Chapter 10 of Issacson's book spends quite a bit of time talking about Raskin vs Jobs on the Macintosh. Raskin is sourced several times for that chapter. The Macintosh would have been a very, very different product if Jobs had not taken over, and demanded a very different system than the one Raskin had envisioned. The Issacson Analysis (backed up by Atkinson) was that Raskin had envisioned an underpowered, less expen…

The Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, iPad all came about because of Steve Jobs, and have changed the technology that we use every day. Love him, or Hate him, you can't take that away from him.

My argument is that they did not happen because of Steve Jobs but in spite of him. Schiller, Ive, and others were behind those devices, and the image Steve intentionally put out there was that he was some perfectionist design savant. In reality, he was an image-obsessed control freak who was infamous for taking credit for other people's ideas.

You can have design accountability without being a rigid, meddling asshole. Apple will not only successfully continue on without him but may have greater opportunities to be more flexible and open-minded.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#90
post #29

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 archit…

"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." I still have no clue about how he managed to do it. For examp…

Steve may have just gotten lucky to find him, but Ali Ozer ended up shaping the NeXTStep libraries that became Cocoa (when naming infrastructures after hot drinks became the rage ;-), and has maintained his control of shaping ever since.

So Jobs got "lucky" (luck favors the prepared, of course) in his finding Ali to obsess about the NS and Cocoa libraries in all dimensions, with the same kind of taste-making abilities as Jobs had at the larger whole ecosystem level.

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