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

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

#161

Post by andrekandre »

dmazin wrote: post #5

If you want more on this, I recommend Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing by Stross. I’m not sure, but it might be the only extensive book about Next other than this new one. Though it’s essentially a long hit piece. The author really had it out for Jobs. In fact it’s a completely uncharitable book now that I think about it. Hopefully this new book will be a lot less biased.

  > Though it’s essentially a long hit piece. The author really had it out for Jobs.
i read that book twice, and found it fascinating.

i agree it def feels like a hit piece, but reading it, my impression was more like 'damn, starting a business is hard' and felt more sympathetic in some weird way... like the steve as the tortured artist or something... '

also, stross does his research (mad respect, real journalism) and digs out lots of numbers and reconstructs the timeline when it was all fresh; def recommended

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

#163

Post by kalleboo »

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…

The Microsoft deal was originally negotiated by Gil Amelio, and while the monetary investment is what got the headlines and is what people remember, the most important part of the negotiations to Apple was that Microsoft committed to keep developing Microsoft Office for the Mac, which they had been threatening to cancel due to the platforms insignificance. Without Office, the Mac had no future.

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

#164

Post by jjtheblunt »

mrandish wrote: post #130

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 mispercepti…

It's also just absurd that they assert NeXT is largely forgotten, while writing for an audience very likely to include people fully aware of NeXT.

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

#165

Post by mathisfun123 »

dagmx wrote: post #160
mathisfun123 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> language when you can’t be bothered to even capitalize stuff language and orthography are two very different things (language preceded orthography by hundreds of thousands of years).

You must be a hoot at parties. Getting to pick and choose what you and everyone else around you should care about and how they define terms to fit exactly what’s important to just you. Orthography may be independent of language, but shockingly in society, it’s part of written language.

brother you were trying to "gotcha" me by saying my language is imprecise because i didn't capitalize. i'm pointing out that the two things have literally nothing to do with each other.

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

#166

Post by [deleted] »

Nevermark wrote: post #126

> 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, w…

[deleted]

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

#167

Post by not_kurt_godel »

Nevermark wrote: post #126

> 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, w…

Steve Jobs would have taken one look at the design proposal and said nobody is going to voluntarily strap that fucking thing to their face and scrapped it on the spot.

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

#168

Post by dangus »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #167
Nevermark wrote: post #126

> 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, w…

Steve Jobs would have taken one look at the design proposal and said nobody is going to voluntarily strap that fucking thing to their face and scrapped it on the spot.

Bingo. There is no saving the Vision Pro. No upgrade or alien technology can make it something desirable.

Meta is the best in the space and they’re scaling way back on their VR division. It’s just not working as a mainstream product.

Valve has the exact right idea to not bother over-investing into it. It’s a cool toy and a lot of people love it for immersive cool toy stuff like playing games. I think they know that gaming and porn and porn gaming for the loner demographic is the main VR market. Not a bunch of HR and marketing people who wash and brush their hair daily sitting around at a conference table with mark zuckerberg while they ruin their good hygiene and hair style with a sweaty headset.

Apple might have even had some relative success if they gave half a shit about gaming and made the headset compatible with existing controllers. Heck, make it SteamVR compatible, you’d literally have PC owners who don’t even own a Mac buying one.

We might even say that Meta glasses are more of the right direction but I don’t really think that’s the case either. I thought I read a report or two citing poor sales.

Sure, the glasses have less of the “giant robot dystopia computer strapped to my face” issue but they still have a lot of the same problems. They have the creeper factor, they are something you have to wear that many people have no intention of wearing or have very specific preferences for what they want to wear, and they basically do nothing that a smartphone doesn’t already do.

Can you wear meta glasses to a first date? That’s your test. You can’t: you’d weird out the other person.

On top of that, Meta glasses have no money making potential. They just burn data center compute time for zero post-purchase revenue.

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

#169

Post by dagmx »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #165
dagmx wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be a hoot at parties. Getting to pick and choose what you and everyone else around you should care about and how they define terms to fit exactly what’s important to just you. Orthography may be independent of language, but shockingly in society, it’s part of written language.

brother you were trying to "gotcha" me by saying my language is imprecise because i didn't capitalize. i'm pointing out that the two things have literally nothing to do with each other.

It’s not trying to be a gotcha, it’s pointing out the sheer arrogance to criticize someone for your own decision to take a commonly used metaphor literally, and then to go on and act high and mighty because you’ve decided to be the outlier in society who’s decided that you get to pick and choose language norms at your whim.

But you do you. I’m sure it gives some self satisfaction to pick pseudo intellectual arguments. There’s no point continuing this discussion because it’s clearly been in bad faith from the get go.

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