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Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

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Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#31

Post by w1ntermute »

jroseattle wrote: post #27

Tweaker. Inventor. Visionary. Could we get a few more subjective terms in the mix? This is all about interpretation, and a highly subjective one at that. Jobs is cemented as an industry icon. He is different things to different people. Why his stalwart supporters (and lapdogs like Gruber) continue to be annoyed when anyone's interpretation doesn't match their own is childish.

> Why his stalwart supporters (and lapdogs like Gruber) continue to be annoyed when anyone's interpretation doesn't match their own is childish.

Jobs and Apple (for whatever reason) inspired in a lot of people the kind of religious fervor that companies rarely can. Jobs' death has only further amplified this.

There are a lot of tech industry icons. What I think sets Jobs apart is the level of devotion he was able to extract from his customers/fans.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#32

Post by tdoggette »

angersock wrote: post #18

This article was a bit annoying to read, as it was full of a lot of the deification of Jobs that's been around since his death. "What it was that Jobs actually did is much of the mystery of his life and his work, and Isaacson, frustratingly, had seemingly little interest in that, or any recognition that there even was any sort of mystery as to just what Jobs’s gifts really were." Why this insistence on mystery? Why t…

I don't know where you saw the Microsoft-bashing in that paragraph.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#33

Post by burgerbrain »

TetOn wrote: post #17
burgerbrain wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may seem more amazing to you, but I would argue that is only because you are not likely in a position to be amazed by the magnitude of the importance people like Edison and Turing had on this world. This is forgivable, but please note that he was talking about contribution to society, not "wow factor" .

IMHO a computer that is usable within the hour by a one year old goes far beyond "wow factor" and well into contribution realm.

I am not denying that Steve Jobs contributed to society. I'm talking magnitude of contribution.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#34

Post by anonymouslambda »

warmfuzzykitten wrote: post #16

Here's the problem with Gruber's argument. He's using something Malcolm Gladwell wrote to criticize a book that Walter Isaacson wrote. Isaacson didn't say Steve Jobs was a tweaker. Granted that Gladwell's article reveals how little he understands the nature of invention. As punishment, he should be forced to read every patent for paper clips. Nearly all invention is a change to an existing thing because the inventor…

I think he's criticizing Issacson's book for being light on the details of Jobs' actual work, thus allowing Gladwell to write an article that is uninformed in calling Jobs a tweaker.

Had Issacson done the task justice, we would all have insight into Jobs' work, which in Gruber's opinion, rises far above the level of a tweaker.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#35

Post by glenra »

pkamb wrote: post #7
Tichy wrote: post #5

That photograph where Jobs displays the pre-iPhone phones really doesn't prove anything. The Palm Pilot didn't have a keyboard, and it was an obvious idea to eventually give it calling capabilities (incidentally, my "omg this can't be true, I have been waiting for this all my life" was when I saw the first ad for a Palm Pilot, not for an iPhone). Trust in the big vendors to screw it up anyway, but still. It's not as…

I asked an interesting question here, why the Palm Pilot (and Newton) didn't originally ship with a hardware keyboard. It's fascinating to me that devices originally used handwriting recognition, then moved to physical keyboards, then to on-screen keyboards. http://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Apple-Newton-and-Palm-Pilot...

One reason is because keyboards that small are hard to type on and take up valuable screen real estate. Another reason is that there's something about writing on a pad that seems less intrusive, more casual, than typing. If you take a few notes at a meeting on a pad of paper you're more obviously still mentally present at the meeting - less involved with your note-taking process - than if you type at a keyboard.

I still miss the Newton Notepad app and want something like it - including the stylus and handwriting recognition - on an iPhone and iPad.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#36

Post by felipehummel »

jshen wrote: post #11
catfish wrote: post #9

Jobs was no Edison or Einstein. Hopper, Ritchie, Turing, and even Gates contributed more to our collective future...

I completely disagree. Watch a 1 year old child learn to use an iPad in a day! There is something very new and very revolutionary about that.

What this 1 year old child can accomplish using the iPad? I'm really curious. Would it be different with any other large touch screen interface?

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#37

Post by steve8918 »

The post is not very good.

Jobs was a visionary but he most certainly stood on other ideas that people already had. BUT THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. He took other people's ideas and made them revolutionary.

Macintosh was someone else's idea that he hijacked, and made better, but he also caused a lot of divisiveness because of it, and this ultimately caused him being kicked out of Apple.

He bought Pixar because of its hardware and software. Not because of the animation. He even admitted that if he knew that the hardware and software wasn't going to be successful, he never would have bought Pixar in the first place.

I could go on and on. Even the iPad was because of the dinner he had at some MSFT employee's house. And Apple Stores was still a store, just reimagined to make it cater to what people wanted.

Steve Jobs was an artist. He WAS an engineer, and he WAS a designer. People forget that he was into electronics just as much as Wozniak was, except Wozniak was better. He did design many elements of Apple products which is why he is on 200+ patents. His gift was being able to apply his sense of artistry to technology and make it truly beautiful, without much compromise in his vision. His artistry and unwillingness to compromise was also a curse when he almost ran out of money funding Next. He was wrong often and struck out a lot, but when he was right, they were home runs.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#38

Post by catfish »

rbanffy wrote: post #13
catfish wrote: post #9

Jobs was no Edison or Einstein. Hopper, Ritchie, Turing, and even Gates contributed more to our collective future...

I must disagree. While Jobs' contributions are not quite on the same level as what Edison, Einstein, Hopper, Ritchie or Turing did, Bill Gates did nothing at of that magnitude. Had Microsoft never existed, 8-bit home computers would have used another version of BASIC. There were a couple floating around (you can play with them with an Atari or BBC emulator). Had Microsoft never existed, IBM would have adopted CP/M as…

He is working on a cure for Malaria. Jobs did what?

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#39

Post by catfish »

TetOn wrote: post #17
burgerbrain wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may seem more amazing to you, but I would argue that is only because you are not likely in a position to be amazed by the magnitude of the importance people like Edison and Turing had on this world. This is forgivable, but please note that he was talking about contribution to society, not "wow factor" .

IMHO a computer that is usable within the hour by a one year old goes far beyond "wow factor" and well into contribution realm.

Cost 600 bucks. How does that help civilization. Oh maybe a few well pampered hipster's children get access to it, but how does that work for the rest of the world that averages 2 bucks a day income levels?

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#40

Post by steve8918 »

n8agrin wrote: post #8

Theories on Jobs' character aside, the Jobs biography is an utter mess. Some sentences feel like they were pulled from a 6th grade book report. It's riddled with obvious statements and reads like it should have been published in People magazine. I realize I'm probably being too harsh, but I wish that I felt like Isaacson had invested into this biography, this once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity, the way Jobs likely invest…

I 100% agree. I'm basically finished the book (2 more chapters to go, but I skipped ahead to the last 2 chapters out of boredom). It reads like 2 different books: before coming back to Apple the second time, and after.

The first half really makes him look like an utter wretch, and almost suggests that his success was a mistake. It basically talks about what an asshole Jobs was, and how he would yell at everyone, etc, and it wouldn't talk about what actually made him a success in his early years. There was almost nothing on it, just anecdotes from people about how he smelled, he was rude, he cried all the time, and made people hate him. I would have loved a more balanced approach to hearing about how he was able to bring the Macintosh team together through inspiration. It basically felt like "Jobs was able to get the Macintosh team together by manipulating and exploiting them with his reality distortion field." I didn't find it very good at all. I also would have liked to have read more about NeXT and what problems he had besides overspending, etc. Were there successes?

The second half of the book was more interesting, because it stopped ragging on Jobs being an asshole and talked more about what he did. There were far more anecdotes, I guess maybe because he interviewed more people from this era. But at least I got a sense of what he actually did for Apple, vs feeling like he was more lucky than good.

Overall, I think the biography stunk. It's useful in that he did get access to Jobs in the final months, and getting insight into his illness, etc, was interesting and sad, but still overall I think he did a very poor job, especially about the early years.

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