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What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

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Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

#21

Post by kjhgftgyui »

swombat wrote: post #8
10ren wrote: post #3

So Arrington was a lawyer, and a hot shot one at that. That may help explain why he rubs some people the wrong way - speaking as an LLB myself. I love Steve Jobs, but I think this article is disingenuous on a couple of counts. One, these disruptive industries that Jobs "created" were coming anyway. He's riding the wave, not creating it. Two, the iPod was in development at Apple before he returned (IIRC). Steve's tale…

Steve's talent (IMHO) is to get the best out of creative people, to charm people with his reality distortion field, and to tweak things slightly to make them much better Doing this is at least an order of magnitude harder than any purely technical or directly productive work. People are fickle, ever-changing, unpredictable, complex, etc. Brilliant people are even more difficult to manage. The art of surrounding yours…

And do it consistently - a lot of CEOs talk about this stuff. But then when it comes near the end of the financial quarter or a big customer asks for something, or there is a rumor of a competitor the plan all changes.

Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

#22

Post by protomyth »

sleepingbot wrote: post #6

NeXT could have ended in the perfect Linux distro, open sourced, leading the Linux kernel development, making the distros environment even richer (Mac Linux for mac users, Ubuntu-Debian & similars for those who don't buy Apple hardware, Chrome OS for netbookers; and minoritary distros for the ones who tweak their own flavor.) The world would be a better place. The hardware? Some has been good. Some really advanced to…

One of the biggest problems with NEXTSTEP that was addressed in the transition to OS X was the replacement of Display Postscript. The license and practice around that was horrible. I don't think the money was there to do that work without going to Apple.

Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

#23

Post by symesc »

swombat wrote: post #8
10ren wrote: post #3

So Arrington was a lawyer, and a hot shot one at that. That may help explain why he rubs some people the wrong way - speaking as an LLB myself. I love Steve Jobs, but I think this article is disingenuous on a couple of counts. One, these disruptive industries that Jobs "created" were coming anyway. He's riding the wave, not creating it. Two, the iPod was in development at Apple before he returned (IIRC). Steve's tale…

Steve's talent (IMHO) is to get the best out of creative people, to charm people with his reality distortion field, and to tweak things slightly to make them much better Doing this is at least an order of magnitude harder than any purely technical or directly productive work. People are fickle, ever-changing, unpredictable, complex, etc. Brilliant people are even more difficult to manage. The art of surrounding yours…

Agree completely.

Jobs himself has said what Apple (and he) has compared to others is "taste." I believe that to be true.

In relation to the human side (leading people), what Jobs has going for him is "judgement."

The older I get, the thing that attracts me to certain leaders is good judgement. Without that, a leader is a manager and not a very good one.

Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

#24

Post by pan69 »

tfh wrote: post #5
Tichy wrote: post #4

I must admit that this article rather made me realize that most of what Apple did is just to create some fancy looking PCs. The iPhone was revolutionary indeed, but overall the achievements seem overblown. I still think that Steve Jobs is cool, though.

> just to create some fancy looking PCs that's not true..

They are fancy looking PC's. What'd you mean "that's not true"?

Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

#25

Post by tfh »

pan69 wrote: post #24
tfh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just to create some fancy looking PCs that's not true..

They are fancy looking PC's. What'd you mean "that's not true"?

i meant it's not just making fancy looking PCs that got apple into what it's become today.

Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

#27

Post by bumblebird »

Tichy wrote: post #18
bumblebird wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like comparing a Porsche to a Lada. The amount of time people have to waste on PCs waiting for the OS, doing anti virus stuff, staring at blue screens of death, rebooting because it's got confused, etc etc But this isn't an OS war thread :) Suffice to say, "It's still just a PC" is completely missing the point. A top class restaurant still 'just' serves food, but you can't really compare it to Macdonalds. A…

It's so funny that all Apple fanboyism is automatically voted up. Incidentally I currently use a MacBook that is less than a year old. In recent weeks I frequently had to hard reset it because it froze to an eternal spinning sand clock. Earlier this week I noticed with Disk Utility that there were errors on the disk. I tried to repair them, had to boot from DVD for that. The repair failed. After that OS X didn't boot…

Whatever. One experience doesn't make good data.

My personal experience:

Windows/dos user for 10 years Linux user for the next 10 years OSX for last 3 years or so

From my experience, the last 3 years has been my most productive, and I've spent far far far far less time messing about doing unuseful things (Trying to get wifi working, trying to work around OS issues etc).

Don't just dismiss everything as 'fanboyism', I used to do that 10 years ago. I thought Mac users were rich pretentious egotistical people who didn't actually know anything about computers.

Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

#28

Post by Tichy »

bumblebird wrote: post #27
Tichy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so funny that all Apple fanboyism is automatically voted up. Incidentally I currently use a MacBook that is less than a year old. In recent weeks I frequently had to hard reset it because it froze to an eternal spinning sand clock. Earlier this week I noticed with Disk Utility that there were errors on the disk. I tried to repair them, had to boot from DVD for that. The repair failed. After that OS X didn't boot…

Whatever. One experience doesn't make good data. My personal experience: Windows/dos user for 10 years Linux user for the next 10 years OSX for last 3 years or so From my experience, the last 3 years has been my most productive, and I've spent far far far far less time messing about doing unuseful things (Trying to get wifi working, trying to work around OS issues etc). Don't just dismiss everything as 'fanboyism', I…

Linux, Windows and the whole PC world has also progressed a lot in the last 13 years, it seems a bit unfair to compare the state of now with the state 10 years ago. I am not saying Mac lovers don't love their PCs for a good reason - they have their personal reasons, so be it. All I said is that basically Macs also are just PCs.

Also, it is not really fair to compare Apple to all the other PC vendors out there. Some of them probably produce crappy machines, but others don't.

Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

#29

Post by bumblebird »

Tichy wrote: post #28
bumblebird wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever. One experience doesn't make good data. My personal experience: Windows/dos user for 10 years Linux user for the next 10 years OSX for last 3 years or so From my experience, the last 3 years has been my most productive, and I've spent far far far far less time messing about doing unuseful things (Trying to get wifi working, trying to work around OS issues etc). Don't just dismiss everything as 'fanboyism', I…

Linux, Windows and the whole PC world has also progressed a lot in the last 13 years, it seems a bit unfair to compare the state of now with the state 10 years ago. I am not saying Mac lovers don't love their PCs for a good reason - they have their personal reasons, so be it. All I said is that basically Macs also are just PCs. Also, it is not really fair to compare Apple to all the other PC vendors out there. Some o…

I was listing the OS's I use mainly. I still use windows every once in a while (When I really have to), and obviously use Linux on servers, and occasionally desktops.

One of the key things that puts Apple in a different class though is that they create the hardware AND the software. That's a big bonus and gets rid of a ton of potential hickups.

Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?

#30

Post by Joboo »

Tichy wrote: post #28
bumblebird wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever. One experience doesn't make good data. My personal experience: Windows/dos user for 10 years Linux user for the next 10 years OSX for last 3 years or so From my experience, the last 3 years has been my most productive, and I've spent far far far far less time messing about doing unuseful things (Trying to get wifi working, trying to work around OS issues etc). Don't just dismiss everything as 'fanboyism', I…

Linux, Windows and the whole PC world has also progressed a lot in the last 13 years, it seems a bit unfair to compare the state of now with the state 10 years ago. I am not saying Mac lovers don't love their PCs for a good reason - they have their personal reasons, so be it. All I said is that basically Macs also are just PCs. Also, it is not really fair to compare Apple to all the other PC vendors out there. Some o…

I'm not sure why you've been downvoted... the Windows experience has improved immeasurably in the last 3 years (even XP).
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