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What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

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Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#81

Post by herdrick »

kamaal wrote: post #71
danabramov wrote: post #12

Reading this reminded me of a post by Miguel de Icaza: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Nov-07.html Basically, Miguel argues that Walter Isaacson failed, as did many who tried to describe Steve Jobs recently: >Whenever the story gets close to an interesting historical event, or starts exploring a big unknown of Steve's work, we are condescendingly told that "Steve Activated the Reality Distortion Field". >Every.…

After reading his biography by Walter Isaacson. I lost all respect I had for Steve Jobs. At the end of the book it felt like he rode on the successes of other geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive and many others. His biggest advantage seems to have be, that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 were made. After that it was riding on others success and building cult of personality around him. Walter Isaacs…

Oh no no no! I thought the same about Jobs back in 1985 but everything that we've learned about him since points up how irreplaceable he was. Without Jobs, Wozniak would have been a brilliant, happy, but obscure engineer at HP, Ive talents would have been mostly wasted, and Jef Raskin would still have, maybe, gotten a shot to build the Swyft and the Archy which even in our universe are obscure. Without Jobs you would never have heard of any of them. Instead you would be claiming that Steve Jobs rode on the success of .

EDIT: I should be clear that I thoroughly admire Steve Wozniak (one of my first heroes), Jony Ive, and Jef Raskin.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#82

Post by venus »

kristopher wrote: post #2

Two things that stood-out: >"Many years later, when NeXT acquired Apple for negative -$400M" and >"We would "throw them into the cauldron", and stir it, and soon nobody remembered exactly whose ideas were which. This let us make a great soup, a great potion, without worrying about who had what idea. This was critically important, in retrospect, to decouple the CEO from the ideas."

> critically important, in retrospect, to decouple the CEO from the ideas

And I wonder how critically important it was, also, that the mixing pot be attended in person, with spoken words the only ingredients allowed?

If it's done by email, no-one forgets which idea was the CEO's.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#83

Post by philwelch »

transitionality wrote: post #80
philwelch wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging from the Isaacson biography, Jobs would have been fine had he actually attended to the fact that he had cancer right away, rather than spending a year ignoring it.

He didn't ignore it, he wasted that year on alternative medicine voodoo. This detail may not have made it to the Isaacson book, I didn't read it.

It did make it into the book--Jobs mostly spent that year eating differently, but it wasn't a major focus of his life and aside from the change in diet he did more or less ignore it. If he obsessed over it as much as he actually obsessed over things at times, perhaps things would have gone differently. But it's clear that he did not.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#84

Post by philwelch »

leoc wrote: post #55
plunchete wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that at that time I had tons of music (using winamp) and photos on my computer (scanning was the way at that time).

Yes, even if you exclude MP3s of commercially-recorded music as not really personal , it would be very hard to defend the proposition 'iMovie gave birth to the idea of "personal digital media"' or even 'iMovie first made "personal digital media" a reality'. Apple (and MS) had been trying to make consumer video editing a reality since at least 1991 and the launch of QuickTime (an awkward date if you want to centre eve…

Quicktime circa 1991 was not really "personal digital media"-grade technology. It was pixelated, postage-stamp sized videos even on a 640 x 480 screen. It wasn't until 1998 and the Sorenson codec that Quicktime began to approach what we would recognize today as usable video.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#85

Post by rimantas »

kamaal wrote: post #71
danabramov wrote: post #12

Reading this reminded me of a post by Miguel de Icaza: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Nov-07.html Basically, Miguel argues that Walter Isaacson failed, as did many who tried to describe Steve Jobs recently: >Whenever the story gets close to an interesting historical event, or starts exploring a big unknown of Steve's work, we are condescendingly told that "Steve Activated the Reality Distortion Field". >Every.…

After reading his biography by Walter Isaacson. I lost all respect I had for Steve Jobs. At the end of the book it felt like he rode on the successes of other geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive and many others. His biggest advantage seems to have be, that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 were made. After that it was riding on others success and building cult of personality around him. Walter Isaacs…

  > that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2
  > were made
This sound like Apple was happening at some garage and Jobs and Wozniak were just walking by. Did the same happen with NeXT and Pixar? Jobs was responsible for Apple happening, and he was also responsible for Wozniak being at Apple. You may not like the guy, but denying that he had a visions is silly. Videos available online show that he envisioned what he have now back in 1995 or even 1987.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#87

Post by rjzzleep »

i actually like it, it's basically the same that everyone else did that made a successful product. iterate.

there's nothing magical about it. if that's what you look for, you will be disappointed. he wasn't some kind of genius. he just tried out what worked and iterated.

it's the same reason why macbooks looked so smooth, while stupid acer was still putting fan ins on the bottom of the laptop until intel gave them ultrabook designs. really? who would do that. clearly none at acer has ever used an acer laptop for actual portable usage.

typed from my acer ultraportable with fan in at the bottom

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#88

Post by kamaal »

rimantas wrote: post #85
kamaal wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading his biography by Walter Isaacson. I lost all respect I had for Steve Jobs. At the end of the book it felt like he rode on the successes of other geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive and many others. His biggest advantage seems to have be, that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 were made. After that it was riding on others success and building cult of personality around him. Walter Isaacs…

> that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 > were made This sound like Apple was happening at some garage and Jobs and Wozniak were just walking by. Did the same happen with NeXT and Pixar? Jobs was responsible for Apple happening, and he was also responsible for Wozniak being at Apple. You may not like the guy, but denying that he had a visions is silly. Videos available online show that he envisioned what…

Book really gave a huge negative image to him, after which frankly I lost all respect for the man. You build impressions on what you read.

What he was in reality I have no clue of.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#89

Post by madeofchalk »

philwelch wrote: post #56
cheald wrote: post #5

Between this and the Safari story, I'm struck at just how deep Apple's internal secrecy ethos runs. The idea that there is that level of dedication to keeping a project hidden, not just from outsiders, but from almost the entire rest of the company just blows my mind. It certainly explains how they're able to keep projects secret for as long as they do.

The military calls it "need to know basis". From the perspective of keeping secrets, it would be pretty dumb if you let every PFC in the army access diplomatic cables that had little to do with his actual duties.

'Confidential, Need to know only' would probably be the most common phrase within Apple

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#90

Post by msutherl »

rimantas wrote: post #85
kamaal wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading his biography by Walter Isaacson. I lost all respect I had for Steve Jobs. At the end of the book it felt like he rode on the successes of other geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive and many others. His biggest advantage seems to have be, that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 were made. After that it was riding on others success and building cult of personality around him. Walter Isaacs…

> that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 > were made This sound like Apple was happening at some garage and Jobs and Wozniak were just walking by. Did the same happen with NeXT and Pixar? Jobs was responsible for Apple happening, and he was also responsible for Wozniak being at Apple. You may not like the guy, but denying that he had a visions is silly. Videos available online show that he envisioned what…

To be fair, he looked at what was happening in research and thought "I can make this happen in the market" – all the ingredients were there in PARC, etc. That he was able to fixate on that goal and make it happen, however, is a triumph.
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