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Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

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Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#41

Post by iletina »

This is really a silly article. I would really recommend that you guys read Gladwell's piece as it is at least well written. Gruber's Fireball is mostly thrown at straw-men.

Gladwell makes a distinction between "visionaries" who invent new things and "tweakers" who refine, perfect and make new inventions work. Gladwell proceeds to argue that Jobs falls into the tweaker category.

Gruber keeps talking about "innovations", a word Gladwell does not use, without bothering to explain what he means by it or how it is different from Gladwell's idea of "tweaks." But he has no problems claiming that Jobs "innovations" were not tweaks. He asks: "Does anyone really think Apple’s entry into the music industry was a 'tweak'?" Yes, according to Gladwell's definition of the term it was. It seems that Gruber did not bother to try to understand what Gladwell meant by the term "tweak."

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#42

Post by rbanffy »

catfish wrote: post #38
rbanffy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Actually, he's funding the work, not curing Malaria himself. And he's doing that in order to redeem his legacy, something that wouldn't be necessary (redeeming his legacy, not curing Malaria) had he not made Microsoft in the first place.

And, BTW, he didn't invent this idea of amassing vast resources with shady deals and then becoming a philanthropist and redeem himself with this. Andrew Carnegie did it first.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#43

Post by lukifer »

steve8918 wrote: post #37

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…

> Even the iPad was because of the dinner he had at some MSFT employee's house.

I call bullshit. Steve was interested in tablets since learning about Alan Kay's DynaBook concept in the 70's. The MSFT engineer angered him into pursuing the concept sooner, nothing more.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#44

Post by officemonkey »

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...

Although I really liked Graffiti on the Palm, I think I may be faster on the iPhone keyboard (especially with the basic autocorrect stuff turned on). I wish there was a way to try graffiti on the iPhone and do some basic typing tests to see for myself.

On the other hand, I get really frustrated with the autocorrect on the iPhone. It correct proper nouns FAR too often.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#45

Post by wizzard »

catfish wrote: post #39
TetOn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

So if something doesn't help every single person in the world, rich or poor, it's not a contribution? Wow, you have some high standards.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#46

Post by burgerbrain »

wizzard wrote: post #45
catfish wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

So if something doesn't help every single person in the world, rich or poor, it's not a contribution? Wow, you have some high standards.

If we're comparing it to things as ubiquitous as computer technology itself and electric lighting, then I don't think it is unreasonable to point out that the relatively exclusive nature of the ipad puts it at a disadvantage in such a contest.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#47

Post by lukifer »

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…

> Why this insistence that Jobs had some magical special sauce that all of us are lacking?

I agree with this. The say I see it, Jobs' only superpower was obsessiveness, and the willingness to say "not good enough", over and over again.

Regarding the "tweaker" concept, I think there's an important distinction: Apple (and Pixar) didn't take existing tech or design and iterate on them; rather, they created whole new tech from scratch, which they then iterated on. The Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, CG animation: they all aimed at a pre-existing concept, re-engineered a whole new thing to address that concept, and THEN iterated ruthlessly internally.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#48

Post by warmfuzzykitten »

anonymouslambda wrote: post #34
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.

I wonder if critics have actually read the book. There's quite a bit about Jobs' actual work and you get quite a bit of insight into what he did and how he went about it.

Gladwell is quite capable of spinning some idiotic theory on his own. You can't blame Isaacson for his shortcomings.

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#49

Post by joejohnson »

Oh my god. John Gruber is really showing his true fanboy colors here again and again. He is going to cry about these "misrepresentations" of the great visionary Steve Jobs until people stop listening to him (and posting this garbage on HN). I understand why people are so drawn to studying a successful individual's life, but we must accept that every story must make some educated assumptions. Ultimately, who cares?!

Re: Getting Steve Jobs Wrong

#50

Post by warmfuzzykitten »

lukifer wrote: post #43
steve8918 wrote: post #37

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…

> Even the iPad was because of the dinner he had at some MSFT employee's house. I call bullshit. Steve was interested in tablets since learning about Alan Kay's DynaBook concept in the 70's. The MSFT engineer angered him into pursuing the concept sooner, nothing more.

Not quite. Steve liked DynaBook, but he thought it was a laptop computer. If he'd taken the job as head of Apple Research, that's what he would have produced. Apple had a tablet - the Newton - and Steve killed it when he came back. It turned out what he hated about tablets was the need for a stylus, which was the Microsoft approach (like the Newton), and that's what he wanted to prove wrong.
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