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There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

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Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#71

Post by fuzzfactor »

fragmede wrote: post #30
keiferski wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire both and I find the push to Pick a Steve Team really irritating.

Both, the sum is greater than the parts. Neither of them would be there without the other.

When you look at it squarely, Jobs could have sold any average product and made money, and Woz' product was so far above average it could have sold on its own (to a more limited extent), with each unit sold making money either way.

Money would be made by each person regardless but this combination not only got more units to fly off the shelf, it got the company off to a more above-average likelihood of future products doing well with growth from there.

The longer that structure can be maintained, the better.

Most of the time a miraculous salesman or marketing strategist has an average to below-average product to represent, and they will still do very well.

So well in fact, that they themselves may never find out what the full upside would be if they had a product that actually was above-average enough for it to be able to sell on its own one way or another. And then act as a multiplier to that.

Through the roof can be hard to avoid then.

Same business plan I had as a preteen, way before Apple got going.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#72

Post by BirAdam »

Aloha wrote: post #7
ares623 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone chooses the wrong Steve to worship.

If you're an engineer, you should admire Woz, if you're a product manager or marketeer, Jobs. Jobs was a brilliant product manager and marketeer - every bit as brilliant as Woz is an engineer. The truth is, the sharpest engineers struggle to make a marketable consumer product - because they make it for themselves, and while thats quite laudable, however it's generally a tiny market compared to one targeted at normal…

This. When Woz created the Apple I and Apple II, the entire microcomputer market consisted of hackers, tinkerers, enthusiasts, and hobbyists. Had Woz been acting alone, the Apple I and Apple II would have made a splash at Homebrew, but they wouldn't have been products. Jobs made them products. After VisiCalc, this market expanded to finance professionals, but it was still a tiny market. It was really Raskin and Jobs who proved the viability of the Xerox PARC (and SRI before them) advancements around the GUI that propelled computing to a more general audience. Then, MS caught up, dominated the market in the 1990s, and Apple came back only when Jobs returned and began pushing industrial design and OS X. From the point until quite recently, most companies R&D could have just been attending Apple product launches and imitating as best they could (that's hyperbolic, but not entirely incorrect).

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#73

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bazoom42 wrote: post #67
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #51

> his post-Apple life has mattered in ways that have nothing to do with money or power. Sounds a bit like Jimmy Carter. His best and most influential work came after he left The Oval Office.

Maybe best, but suerly not most influential.

I guess it depends on people’s priorities. He won that Nobel for some stuff he did in office, but probably more for his peacemaking efforts, afterwards.

I think his Habitat for Humanity work was pretty damn important.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#74

Post by fuzzfactor »

microtherion wrote: post #37
p00dles wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were both brilliant, but from everything that I've read, Jobs was an ass****, and Woz was the opposite, and that is a huge, huge difference. The mythologizing of Jobs is the canonical example of people condoning terrible behavior because they think that a person is smart/valuable/talented/etc. To me this is completely backwards and sets a terrible precedent - that you can act however you want if you get results…

The other huge, huge difference is that one of the Steves has demonstrated he was able to build a successful product without the other's assistance.

You could say that about the iPod or the iPhone which Woz wasn't involved in, but when you do the math, there's only one Woz and he was essential to define the company in the 20th century, and look how many people it took to "replace" him when it came to Jobs "alone" defining the company in the 21st century.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#75

Post by BirAdam »

andrewstuart wrote: post #55

People are crediting Woz here with great things but not going far enough. Woz invented the consumer personal computer. That is one of the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest.

Well, that's a highly contested claim. There was quite a bit of prior art.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#77

Post by Findecanor »

Aloha wrote: post #7
ares623 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone chooses the wrong Steve to worship.

If you're an engineer, you should admire Woz, if you're a product manager or marketeer, Jobs. Jobs was a brilliant product manager and marketeer - every bit as brilliant as Woz is an engineer. The truth is, the sharpest engineers struggle to make a marketable consumer product - because they make it for themselves, and while thats quite laudable, however it's generally a tiny market compared to one targeted at normal…

I have chosen to go by "Take no heroes, only inspiration", and take different inspiration from both.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#78

Post by al_borland »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #27
omnimus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget url of this site is Ycombinator. As far as i know that is very far from “friendly selfless genius inventor engineer”. It's more like “ambitious finance move fast and break things programmer”.

To be fair, Woz wasn't just a “friendly selfless genius inventor engineer” , he was also the co-founder of one of the most valuable tech companies in the world. And YC is, in their own words: "The Y combinator is one of the coolest ideas in computer science. It's also a metaphor for what we do. It's a program that runs programs; we're a company that helps start companies." . They're not entirely unrelated.

He was a cofounder because of his skill and Jobs talking him into it. Woz would have been perfectly happy as an engineer at HP, that was his plan.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#79

Post by jdefr89 »

aembleton wrote: post #48
postalcoder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a single person who embodies the spirit of this site more than Woz. dang could replace the guidelines with a picture of Woz and we'd all know what it meant.

Maybe Fabrice Bellard could be a candidate.

Obviously familiar with Fabrice Bellard and his technical contributions but it seems like he is a pretty private person and he keeps to himself. I don't really know much about him as a person.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#80

Post by simonh »

Peroni wrote: post #56

I once approached Woz about potentially speaking at Hacker News London, fully expecting my email to be completely ignored. A few days later, he actually responded enthusiastically and mentioned an upcoming trip to the UK. He loved the grassroots nature of the meetup and was really up for giving a talk (for free!) to the community. I then had multiple delightful interactions with his wife who managed his logistics. De…

I didn't know there is a HN meetup in LDN. How do I join up?
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