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Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

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Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#111

Post by 908B64B197 »

scottyah wrote: post #95
iamerroragent wrote: post #26

I have a thing for not taking advice from someone that doesn't listen to their doctor.

Always get second+ opinions, in my experience doctors rarely come to the same conclusion and it can be bad for your health. Anyone who trusts strangers based solely on titles or past performance is going to have a bad time.

Something I always keep in mind: the medical field is one where the provider gets paid no matter the outcome.

You notice nobody in the field advertise their success rates or makes any firm commitments...

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#112

Post by camjw »

iamerroragent wrote: post #94
camjw wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone ascribes talent and expertise in building products to Steve Jobs purely because he made a shit ton of money... its because he made really good products. I wonder what random flaw we could pull out on you? Do you put sugar in your coffee?

Jobs is a salesman. Not an engineer. An eye for aesthetics perhaps. Getting people to buy your shit is a necessary function for any business. For advice on actually making something, I'd consider Woz more.

Yes that is very true only engineers build products /s

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#113

Post by ozim »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #72
rrgok wrote: post #58

This may feel a little depressing, but I would like to hear the HN community's thoughts on this. Every time I hear about making progress or creating something beautiful, the first thing that comes to mind is: for how long? As humans, do we think about how long we are going to chase the ever-moving goal post of progress? Do we have a ballpark idea of it? Or are we moving like a dog chasing its own tail, going in circl…

> Software Engineering make me only realize that people are never happy. I'm not convinced this is an innate property of humanity, rather I think it is a conditioned behavior to keep us buying things. Pay attention to what marketing tells you, what it really tells you, behind the ostensible message. It is not telling you good things about yourself or your life, and it is bombarding you constantly with these intrusive…

Even my dog gets tired of eating the same feed all the time or playing with the same toy. It gets excited when I bring new toy and is much more eager to eat when I switch feed to a different type from time to time.

I don’t have a TV so my dog is not watching ads so I expect marketing does not affect it.

Might still be that other dogs it plays with tell stuff “I got a new toy, get your owner to buy you new one too”.

I think it is innate property of living things to need different things/experiences and what not in order to survive/thrive.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#114

Post by iamerroragent »

peteradio wrote: post #105
iamerroragent wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is that even groups we often associate with backwards thinking still will do the reasonable thing like caring about their health and listening to medical professionals.

So, excepting for their strict doctor standards they are otherwise quite backwards thinking (according to you)? So I again can't quite tell what the Amish have to do with this and whether they should generally be trusted. Sure on the doctor metric they excel, but is there any other standard by which you would characterize a peoples standards of opinion?

Are you sincerely suggesting that Amish, to the general American population, are not considered backwards thinking when it comes to technology and dress?

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#115

Post by iamerroragent »

camjw wrote: post #112
iamerroragent wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs is a salesman. Not an engineer. An eye for aesthetics perhaps. Getting people to buy your shit is a necessary function for any business. For advice on actually making something, I'd consider Woz more.

Yes that is very true only engineers build products /s

No. Children build the products.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-child-l...

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#116

Post by pedalpete »

iamerroragent wrote: post #26

I have a thing for not taking advice from someone that doesn't listen to their doctor.

That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I used to have the same attitude, but it is deeply beneficial to not assume that one mistake a person makes proves that anything else they do is worthless.

Let's face it, you could also say that you won't take advice from Jobs because of his "management style" and the way he treated people.

You wouldn't say that you don't take golf advice from Tiger Woods due to his philandering, would you?

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#117

Post by hammyhavoc »

anthk wrote: post #98
keiferski wrote: post #54

I still remember exactly where I was when Steve Jobs died. I think it was because at that moment, I had a realization about him: that there was no other person in recent memory who made such an impact on the everyday lives of people. He wasn’t some grand political figure that uplifted millions with inspiring rhetoric or an athlete that had achieved some amazing physical goal. But every single day, pretty much everywh…

What? Stallman alone changed the world 20 times more than Jobs. The indirect effects of GCC, Emacs, the FSF and GNU around Linux and servers are astounding. From Android's core to the 90% of the growth of companies on tech. And not just tech: physics, genomics... lots of them backed and helped with free software from GCC to Coreutils. At least to build and port BioPerl sucessfully. And, still, Perl's growth was close…

Stallman isn't as celebrated as much as one might otherwise expect because he can be quite socially abrasive. There's also the controversies in the recent past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies

Whilst Jobs was only human and there are plenty of anecdotes about negative personality traits in regard to how he treated others, he was definitely someone who knew how to work a room of average people rather than a room of neckbeards.

For a further example of social abrasiveness within open source, look to Linus Torvalds. As with Stallman, a genuinely brilliant chap, but some people aren't meant to be in the public eye, they're people who are in their element behind-the-scenes.

Software isn't very sexy. Curvy, pretty consumer hardware is something the average Joe can lust after. Ask the average Joe on the street if they know what Emacs or Linux is, but they'll know about consumer-oriented Apple products.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#118

Post by hammyhavoc »

rrgok wrote: post #58

This may feel a little depressing, but I would like to hear the HN community's thoughts on this. Every time I hear about making progress or creating something beautiful, the first thing that comes to mind is: for how long? As humans, do we think about how long we are going to chase the ever-moving goal post of progress? Do we have a ballpark idea of it? Or are we moving like a dog chasing its own tail, going in circl…

Counterpoint: "but can we improve on that?" hopefully keeps you in work, unless you're unfortunate enough to work at a company that hires-and-fires upon completion of the latest version of a niche piece of software.

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#119

Post by hammyhavoc »

iamerroragent wrote: post #26

I have a thing for not taking advice from someone that doesn't listen to their doctor.

Whilst I understand the sentiment, this also assumes that doctors are never wrong, which unfortunately, they frequently are. Malpractice suits anyone?

Re: Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words

#120

Post by sublinear »

petilon wrote: post #77
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I can agree with this take. > He assembled the top talent to produce the best products that pushed our experience with technology forward. Assembling top talent is something a lot of people could do, what made Jobs special is that he did that while still actually giving a shit about the quality of the product his company produced. "Oh, he just" is less a way of dismissing jobs than it is a way of saying…

> Assembling top talent is something a lot of people could do Absolutely not. First you need the ability to recognize top talent. That's already super hard. Then you have to convince them to come work for you. Top talent is not always just motivated by money alone, so how do you attract them? Then after you hire them you have to retain them, which is also hard, because you have to understand what they are building, a…

> First you need the ability to recognize top talent. That's already super hard.

Yeah that's exactly why Jobs never did that. Nobody has to "recognize top talent" to assemble it.

He knew that talent likes a good challenge without being micromanaged. The talent becomes top talent when they overcome the challenges and accomplish something new and exciting. You retain them by maximizing their autonomy. That's all.

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