Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 265 posts

Re: Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

#221

Post by scarface74 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #125
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is your relationship with your father? Great. And yes, I'd resent him had he traded the weekends we spent making balsa-wood gliders, filming Star Trek home videos (paper maché + sugar against a black t-shirt + handycam) and taking desert hikes for face time in the office. But we are inarguably better off for Jobs--and countless others--having prioritised their professions over conventional needs. It simply seem…

> we are inarguably better off for Jobs--and countless others--having prioritised their professions over conventional needs You don’t know the alternate reality where jobs did not do that. Perhaps another company would have done similar things or even something completely different than also improved our lives.

What other company in 2007 was in the position to do the whole widget that Apple was? We know that Google was just interested in using Android to create a Blackberry clone and Microsoft wanted “Windows everywhere”.

Palm was mismanaged its entire life and kept spinning off and re-acquiring the same assets.

Re: Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

#222

Post by dspillett »

froggertoaster wrote: post #167
dspillett wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey. Not the lightest of shades though, to many people? I'm sure there is good in Alex Jones. It is very well buried if so, but it probably does exist. I still feel justified in never wanting to interact with him and wishing the rest of the world didn't have to either. While we shouldn't be completely dogmatic and only consider someone's bad points¹, and I wouldn't say th…

Congrats, you just compared Steve Jobs to Alex Jones and proved the original commentor's point.

Also to Churchill. Are you saying it is fine to talk about good things, but not bad things, in a person's make up & history? Do you feel that is particularly just/balanced/other? Balance comes from truth and acknowledging nuance, not cherry-picking either way.

Re: Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

#223

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

dboreham wrote: post #210
doctor_eval wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple II came out in 1977. The IBM PC in 1981. Until the PC, IBM might have been known by people but nobody had an IBM at home.

From memory, IBM PCs were not things people had at home until much later. Actually they didn't really show up outside of word processing and spreadsheets in a business setting, in the early days (so for example University CS people were using VAXen and Sun workstations, not PCs).

Household object is not the same as household name. IBM transformed computers between the 1950s and 1980s, and people were aware of that even if they did not own an IBM product. They were a mega corporation with significant advertising and marketing budgets.

Re: Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

#225

Post by epistasis »

phonon wrote: post #83
epistasis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the complexities of the Whipple procedure, I'm not sure I would go through with it either, honestly. I'm not a doctor, but I've dealt with a looot of oncologists, and with people at the end of life from cancer. Most cancer docs would choose to go through with far less cancer treatments than their patients typically choose.

His tumor was caught early and easily operable (it was a rare type of pancreatic cancer that was). No doctor would have suggested he ignore the surgical option for diet etc, changes. By the time he changed his mind/it got worse, his options were much more limited.

> easily operable

I could be wrong, but I thought the operation was a Whipple procedure, and the concern I lay out is that the operation is not easy.

Re: Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

#226

Post by soheil »

frenchie14 wrote: post #39

There's something deeply comical about this existential message ending with: > Sent from my iPad

No, no, definitely not comical, but maybe ironic because I doubt in that moment he realized that he did put a dent in the universe perhaps as big as any of the things he was referring to.

Re: Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

#227

Post by jakebasile »

greendude29 wrote: post #22
jakebasile wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest reading the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. Humans are complex creatures and a distilled one sentence summation rarely does us justice.

You can apply that logic to extol anyone. Jobs was a veritable maniac. Because he can write poetry with a crass corporate sign off doesn't add anything to him not being a shithead.

I'm not extolling or making any other value judgement on anyone. I'm saying that humans are complex and the particular human that parent was expressing incredulity about has a detailed biography available that might be of interest.

Re: Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

#229

Post by laumars »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #223
dboreham wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From memory, IBM PCs were not things people had at home until much later. Actually they didn't really show up outside of word processing and spreadsheets in a business setting, in the early days (so for example University CS people were using VAXen and Sun workstations, not PCs).

Household object is not the same as household name. IBM transformed computers between the 1950s and 1980s, and people were aware of that even if they did not own an IBM product. They were a mega corporation with significant advertising and marketing budgets.

They were but that was never in dispute.

The point I made was that IBM were slow to release a home machine. And even when they eventually did release their first PC, it was still viewed more as a business machine. meanwhile Apple and Microsoft (amongst others) were already established in the home computer market.

It took years for the PC to become dominant. Frankly their dominance isn’t even because of IBM but instead because every other manufacturer ripped off IBMs design. Some of us old timers still call those macHines “IBM-compatible” since the term “personal computer” wasn’t always specifically referring to an x86+BIOS, like it later came to be in the 90s.

I do miss the 70s and 80s era of computing. Everything felt new and magical. It was like your imagination was the only limit. A bit like web development in the 90s and AI these days. As nice as it when an industry matures, there is a lot of fun to be had in the early days when everyone is doing silly things because there’s nobody to tell us otherwise.

Re: Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

#230

Post by nirui »

sidcool wrote: post #48

It's a habit of the internet diaspora to label a person either good or bad; binary, with no wiggle room to model the complexity of psychology. Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey. He did some awful things and some great ones. That's that. It neither makes him a monster nor a saint. It makes him a... Human.

As I see it, people put label on things/others as a form of self-protection.

In layman's logic, someone who's already committed something bad in the past are likely to commit it again. Based on that logic, it's not completely unreasonable to use a critical point of someone's history to define that individual.

Of course it might be unfair, but the cost of error testing can be high, and your empathy might be exploited. Plus, if someone indeed did something wrong in their past, maybe they're the one who should put in the effort to redeem themselves.

That said, while I think it's not fair to judge someone based on few decisions they've made, I also don't blame labelers when they have good reasons.

Post reply on HN