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

Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 228 posts

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#121

Post by keeganpoppen »

cannot wait for this book. it is insane that steve jobs has somehow become underrated because the lesson has become “sometimes assholes are geniuses”… that is such a painfully reductive narrative it beggars belief. there is a reason he is in/on the pantheon, and to talk yourself out of it is to do yourself a disservice. it’s just that a lot of his skills are not transferable because you have to cultivate the kind of taste he spent his whole life acquiring. the only transferable skill is in finding the next one (me, obviously, xP), so that we can similarly talk ourselves into how it was obvious and evolutionary and etc.

i cannot summon any other product announcements that ANYONE cared about in the way that people in my (nerd) dorm did for steve. you don’t have to put his merits and demerits on a ledger to appreciate his greatness. just take “the good parts” and leave the bad. he is sui generis.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#122

Post by jazz9k »

In Many ways, Jobs was just like Elon Musk. He fired people left and right (check out any documentary about the apple days).

Politics rules everything. You can be liberal and literally get away with murder. Gates was hated from 2000 on and loved again when the tech community found out he supported forced vaccinations and climate change.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#124

Post by badc0ffee »

jazz9k wrote: post #122

In Many ways, Jobs was just like Elon Musk. He fired people left and right (check out any documentary about the apple days). Politics rules everything. You can be liberal and literally get away with murder. Gates was hated from 2000 on and loved again when the tech community found out he supported forced vaccinations and climate change.

And now, the thing people are most likely to bring up is him partying with Epstein and attempting to slip Melinda some antibiotics after he got an STD.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#125

Post by flomo »

abanana wrote: post #108
yardie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not be overly dramatic about that period. Apple was not days away from going bust. They were months away from filing bankruptcy. They were still a multi-billion dollar company even then. They just had very bad supply chain management. A bunch of old Macs sitting in warehouses not selling and too many people on payroll without any clear objectives. As Steve put it, "the ship was sinking and Gil (D'Amelio) was wo…

> Apple was not days away from going bust. They were months away... They just... This is historical revisionism, and there's a lot of it around, where Apple is concerned. Since those days, Apple has done a great job of controlling the narrative in the media, and has managed to bury a great deal of what was written back then. Microsoft was in the middle of one of their antitrust investigations, where they were accused…

Not sure what point exactly you are making. But the Wall Street Journal had a bunch of stuff about Apple engaging what was later known as 'Enron-style accounting'. They were a big company, and they did have a serious cashflow problem. So they needed a bailout from someone. (which happened to be Microsoft rather than wall street)

Also disagree with GP's point - Apple is definitely not Next. Next was an enterprise software company. If they were more successful they would be in the same category as Oracle.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#126

Post by Nevermark »

> I think they’re still going to make great [software]. It’s just not going to be the cutting-edge anymore.

This is what I see. The biggest test was the Vision Pro. Amazing hardware but only "another iOS" software vision for it, which is a tremendous dropped ball. Another toy-app/media kiosk with its service subscription lanyard.

To me, the Vision Pro screams out that it wants to have a richer interface than a Mac, with spacial friendly windows, a serious work environment, unfettered by a screen boundary. Ironically, to the point of tragedy, the Vision just allows importing of a Mac screen ... as a larger Mac screen.

The Vision screams out for a full spacial development environment, that by being a better place to develop software for any device, Mac or iOS, also pulls developers into creating spacial applications, by default, for themselves as much as anyone else. Again, tragically, Vision Pro development is limited to happening on 2D Mac screens (physical or imported). Xcode, terminal, JIT capable, etc.

Finally, if there is an obvious new dimension of AI that has not been tapped yet, relevent to Apple's greatest heritage, it is the combination of AI and spacial to enable entirely new modes of interaction. AI allows 3D content to be created in more efficient ways than ever before. A perfect and novel fit for spacial hardware and software, that natural habitat for 3D.

Those are three powerful and related software extensions for computing, that will happen, each within the hardware capabilities of today's Vision Pro.

I believe Steve Jobs would have gone all in, to deliver the next big thing in software interfaces, with AI in a supporting role, beyond the Mac in power and capabilities. It would have made the $3500 price tag completely sustainable. Many of us buy MacBook Pro's loaded up well above that price tag.

But, along with software innovation, Apple has lost the bicycle for the mind philosophy.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#127

Post by flomo »

pram wrote: post #117
mwenge wrote: post #107

[flagged]

FWIW I don’t think they mean “object oriented programming” like Steve knew anything about ObjC, rather the frameworks and APIs of Next/OpenStep/Cocoa and stuff like WebObjects

Jobs was going around trying to sell this to programmers at wall street banks and etc, so he definitely understood that stuff (beyond the drag-n-drop sense). You can probably find some demos on youtube.

Its basically true that there wasn't anything like the Java class library widely available in 1988.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#128

Post by bobanrocky »

flomo wrote: post #125
abanana wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple was not days away from going bust. They were months away... They just... This is historical revisionism, and there's a lot of it around, where Apple is concerned. Since those days, Apple has done a great job of controlling the narrative in the media, and has managed to bury a great deal of what was written back then. Microsoft was in the middle of one of their antitrust investigations, where they were accused…

Not sure what point exactly you are making. But the Wall Street Journal had a bunch of stuff about Apple engaging what was later known as 'Enron-style accounting'. They were a big company, and they did have a serious cashflow problem. So they needed a bailout from someone. (which happened to be Microsoft rather than wall street) Also disagree with GP's point - Apple is definitely not Next. Next was an enterprise soft…

What? Next an enterprise software company is one of the weirdest takes i’ve ever heard in my 3 decades in the industry. They were a workstation manufacturer with impressively cute UIs and an interesting software stack over MachOS

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#130

Post by mrandish »

I think a deeper dive into Job's evolution during the 12 years at Next is an excellent idea. However, I found statements like this concerning: "Apple version one was failure in many ways." In context, 'Apple version one' means Apple 1977 to 1985 (when Jobs left). But the Apple II product line was a huge success for more than a decade. That's a big thing to miss in an article claiming to correct historical misperceptions.

It also says "the Macintosh itself was not a commercial success" which is another strange claim. While the Mac wasn't the unit sales leader compared to [all PC brands combined], from 1984 to 1994 it beat PCs on revenue, margin and mind share.

Post reply on HN