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Think different about Jobs

james.cridland.net

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Re: Think different about Jobs

#31

Post by sjs »

I hope he also avoids products and media made my anyone who has not been an absolute saint their entire life. It's perfectly acceptable to dislike Jobs, no question about that whatsoever. It's also acceptable to stop buying Apple stuff for any reason. But if you're going to put a proverbial line in the sand on moral grounds then you had better stick to your guns and apply that to everything or you just end up looking ... silly.

(Nice attempt at a clever title, but it misses the intended meaning of "think different" which is not "think differently" but more along the lines of "think bigger", as in "think of something different".)

Re: Think different about Jobs

#32

Post by jshen »

bfrs wrote: post #3

---------------------------------------- From Malcolm Gladwell's "The real genius of Steve Jobs" [1]: Jobs, we learn, was a bully. "He had the uncanny capacity to know exactly what your weak point is, know what will make you feel small, to make you cringe". Jobs gets his girlfriend pregnant, and then denies that the child is his. He parks in handicapped spaces. He screams at subordinates. He cries like a small child…

" he would have kicked him out before Apple went public (à la Saverin in The Social Network) and Jobs would have been just another tantrum throwing hippie hanging around some starbucks in Berkeley or wherever it is angry hippies like to hang about these days."

And woz would have been just another engineer working for some company.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#33

Post by LaGrange »

michaelpinto wrote: post #24

I've read quite a few biographies and what i hate about Walter Isaacson is that everything becomes an oversimplified Time magazine article, which makes every character into a flat cartoon caricature. My guess is that Jobs could be a jerk, but then if you were a multimillionaire in your early 20s how could you not be a jerk? Also the tech industry is filled with tons of very bright people who are social cripples. The…

It paints Steve Jobs as a jerk far before he became a millionaire.

Also, the harsh reality is that neither of us knows if your assumption about the state of the harsh reality is valid.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#34

Post by comedian »

brisance wrote: post #29

Anyone else read Sam Smith's "The Jordan Rules"? Jordan is without doubt one of the greatest, if not the greatest, basketball player the world has seen. He is also known to be egotistical, as many competitive athletes/alpha males are (it's probably the testosterone). Like Steve Jobs, Jordan would not suffer fools gladly, would "bully" team-mates, had laser-focus etc. Had a good wingman in the form of Pippen (Tim Cook…

Copy the good qualities. Learn from and ignore the bad ones.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#35

Post by ryan-allen »

ditojim wrote: post #14
ryan-allen wrote: post #9

While you can point at how he conducted himself at Apple and scream "Monster!", what isn't mentioned in this post but is dealt with at length in his biography is how he conducted himself at Pixar. He was much more low-key about the 'products' at Pixar, he mostly was an enabler and negotiator for them. In Pixar's early days he invested an awful lot of his then-fortune into keeping it alive, and it was his cunning nego…

even if the cost is other people? your last statement is a dangerous stance.

I should have qualified the last statement. I was mostly thinking about how Jobs' was unequivocally indifferent to hurting people's feelings, taking their opinions into consideration or firing them for being what he deemed incompetent.

Specifically I wanted to contrast between populist politicians and business leaders who'd rather save face and avoid admitting to mistakes.

As someone mentioned in this post all he did was hurt people's feelings. Boo hoo!

Re: Think different about Jobs

#36

Post by maratd »

comedian wrote: post #34
brisance wrote: post #29

Anyone else read Sam Smith's "The Jordan Rules"? Jordan is without doubt one of the greatest, if not the greatest, basketball player the world has seen. He is also known to be egotistical, as many competitive athletes/alpha males are (it's probably the testosterone). Like Steve Jobs, Jordan would not suffer fools gladly, would "bully" team-mates, had laser-focus etc. Had a good wingman in the form of Pippen (Tim Cook…

Copy the good qualities. Learn from and ignore the bad ones.

The "bad" qualities are what made them effective. If they didn't have them, you would never have heard of them.

Just be yourself. You don't really have a choice in the matter. You are you. You can only be you. If you try to graft aspects of somebody else's personality onto your own, you will find that it's a rather futile effort. You can't. Find out who you truly are, discover yourself, and then embrace yourself in the fullest sense. You can be a better you, but you can't be somebody else. If that means you don't end up a minor celebrity, c'est la vie.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#37

Post by masterj »

polyfractal wrote: post #8
gbog wrote: post #7

> (Incidentally, my Kindle crashed three times while reading this book.) I don't know which Kindle the author is talking about, but it seems weird to me, I never heard of a Kindle crash and I have 4/5 around, not counting colleagues'. And, maybe it is off-topic, but maybe it is not. Why would the author add this parenthesis if it was not a necessary adjunction to his point? Maybe it was a way to underline how non-App…

The closest I've ever come to a "Kindle Crash" was a multi-second delay on page turn, which has only happened once. I've been using mine every day on my commute for the last year. No idea what the author was referring too. Maybe the new Kindle Fire?

Mine does occasionally crash / freeze, but it's because of a known issue:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/forum/kindle/Tx348MMDYTQ4AFC?_encodi...

I've just been too lazy to change the cover, and it's not been overly inconvenient yet. Amazon, to their credit, offers a refund. Perhaps this blogger is using a non-lit cover and is unaware of the issues with it?

Re: Think different about Jobs

#38

Post by ethank »

Wouldn't it be nice if the people behind the things we loved were as pure and perfect as our love for the products they created?

It doesn't happen.

I ended up great friends with someone who created a body of work I hold dear. He isn't perfect. His faults make the relationship between who he is as a person, as an artist and the body of work he's created complex. But that fissure between the creator and the created is what makes the work that much better.

Jobs seemed to be similar.

The art of creation is a messy thing indeed.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#39

Post by spacefungus »

ryan-allen wrote: post #35
ditojim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even if the cost is other people? your last statement is a dangerous stance.

I should have qualified the last statement. I was mostly thinking about how Jobs' was unequivocally indifferent to hurting people's feelings, taking their opinions into consideration or firing them for being what he deemed incompetent. Specifically I wanted to contrast between populist politicians and business leaders who'd rather save face and avoid admitting to mistakes. As someone mentioned in this post all he did…

Pretty sure the Foxconn suicide casualties didn't just have hurt feelings.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#40

Post by petercooper »

spacefungus wrote: post #21
petercooper wrote: post #13

the biography has actually made me think twice about buying anything Apple-branded again. This seems as asinine as refusing to buy a Volkswagen because VW was founded by Nazis.

Nope, it's not asinine at all. The problems this guy has with Apple are things still going on now . Your comparison is equivalent with "one time long ago cotton was picked by slaves so I won't wear cotton". That is irrational as its not happening right now. But the horrible apple conditions are alive and well.

The problems this guy has with Apple are things still going on now.

Every problem the author notes in this article is specifically with Steve Jobs' behavior, not Apple's. I'm commenting on what was in the submitted article.

However, you reiterated my point beautifully with your cotton anecdote. I'm not sure why you needed to repeat the sentiment but, yes, it's similarly irrational.

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